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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Lontano1 (talk | contribs) at 23:45, 30 July 2020 (→‎Assessment Additions: new section). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Template:Vital article

Former good articleBattle of the Atlantic was one of the History good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
April 17, 2006Good article nomineeListed
May 10, 2006Good article reassessmentDelisted
Current status: Delisted good article

Belligerents: Belgium ?

What was Belgium participation in the Atlantic front ? and why it isn't mentioned anywhere in the context of the article ? 196.204.161.190 (talk) 10:21, 31 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

See here - Belgian crews operated a pair of Flower-class corvettes that escorted convoys during the campaign. Parsecboy (talk) 01:17, 1 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Belgium was not at war after 1940, having surrendered to Germany. Hence Belgium wasn't a belligerent. Prior to 1940 Belgium had been neutral, as had been the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway. They also were not belligerents. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.247.9 (talk) 12:57, 1 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Escaped Belgian fishermen manning a pair of corvettes does not mean Belgium was a belligerent. Work permit (talk) 15:51, 14 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Merchant ships

Is it true that British merchant ships were armed and carrying munitions from the very beginning of the war, just like passenger liners did in World War I? (213.122.111.231 (talk) 14:32, 19 September 2016 (UTC))[reply]

Armed merchantmen encompasses the entire subject, but yes there were armed merchant cruiser and auxiliary cruisers from near the outset of the war on both sides. Llammakey (talk) 17:16, 19 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
So ships carrying food were considered legitimate military targets from 3 September 1939? (213.122.111.231 (talk) 18:32, 19 September 2016 (UTC))[reply]
According the German cruiser Admiral Graf Spee article, the German units were ordered to conform to prize rules at the onset of war which made them search the ships for contraband before sinking them. Llammakey (talk) 19:06, 19 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Weren't merchant ships already fitted with swivel guns though? (213.122.111.231 (talk) 19:09, 19 September 2016 (UTC))[reply]
You're thinking of the Defensively equipped merchant ship I believe. Llammakey (talk) 19:46, 19 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The prize rules favoured Germany in that being situated on a continent any munitions supplied by third-parties could be delivered to Germany over land.
Britain OTOH is an island and so any munitions supplied had to come in by ship.
DEMs were introduced in order to force U-boats to use valuable torpedoes rather than their deck gun. Counter-intuitive perhaps but the U-boat had a plentiful supply of deck gun ammunition but only relatively few torpedoes. This reduced the U-boat's time on patrol and allowed more convoys more time to get through unmolested.
Before 1939 torpedoes were reserved for attacking warships, merchant ships were intended to be attacked using the deck gun. The DEMs ships forced the U-boats to use their torpedoes instead. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.53.211 (talk) 10:29, 25 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
BTW, a ship is only classed as carrying 'munitions' if the munitions make up a substantial part of the ship's cargo. A few boxes of small arms ammunition or shells on a ship whose main cargo is something else does not constitute a ship to be classed as 'carrying munitions', otherwise any ships with small armouries to be used for their own protection against possible piracy would be so-classed. 'Armed' means fitted with at least one deck gun. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.150.18.173 (talk) 14:32, 27 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

...works for me too. Parsecboy (talk) 18:47, 25 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Parsecboy: "Lies, damn lies, and statistics." Mark Twain.
The original edit did not work.[1] Try it. It did not use {{see also}} correctly because it did not specify the #particular section.
I reverted: "Undid revision 745159441 by Keith-264 (talk) broke link"
Keith-264 then claimed to revert me with "‎Enigma cipher: Works all right at this end, you sure?". Yes, I am damned sure it did not work. Instead of a simple revert, Keith-264 changed what he had added before so it would work. If you look at the Keith-to-Keith diff, it is not zero: [2] Glrx (talk) 20:51, 25 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough - I hadn't noticed he had changed the link. Parsecboy (talk) 20:57, 25 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
"Lies, damn lies, and statistics" - actually it was Disraeli. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.247.9 (talk) 12:49, 1 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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"Codebreaking by itself did not decrease the losses"

This statement is contrary to what most tellings of the Enigma story say. The graphs are interesting, but do not, of themselves, support the statement, and are not referenced — might this be WP:OR? It is difficult to compare the relative effects of codebreaking, extended air cover and centimetric radar from these graphs. Can the "Enigma period" on the graph be subdivided into the periods before, during and after the blackout caused by the introduction of the 4-rotor Enigma? Even then shouldn't the vertical axis of the graphs be some sort of rate rather than bare numbers? If there was an increased tonnage in the convoys, one might expect increased losses expressed as tonnage. Is there an appropriate denominator figure of the tonnage setting out, to give a proportion of tons setting out that was sunk? --TedColes (talk) 21:56, 21 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think the whole section is a confusing WP:SYNTHESIS. We cannot look at a graph and interpret it. The section does not uses sources that provide the broad perspective of the BotA and tell us the importance of each defense or how they became even more effective in combination. Instead, the section uses sources to make certain statements, but then contradicts those statements with statements from other sources. Some of the sources are even suspect. That Germany believed Enigma was secure and therefore could not impact operations does not make it so. The Germans suspected that the Enigma might be broken but refused to believe Enigma had been compromised; instead they found other explanations. At times when an Enigma break would be obvious to the high command, German submarines had been redeployed to the US and the Mediterranean. It is clear that the Allied countermeasures became so intense that Germany could not sustain its losses, so it left the field.
We've gone from nonsensical ideas such as Ultra won the war, to Ultra shaved two years off the war, to a bland statement "by itself did not decrease the losses". The last statement is absurd on its face. Yes, many steps were taken to minimize shipping losses, and many of those steps decreased the losses. Ultra, by itself, probably did save a lot shipping. Rerouting a convoy to avoid a wolfpack is an effective technique. Kahn's Seizing the Enigma has an example of such rerouting. Convoys, by themselves, made passage safer. HF/DF, by itself, made passage safer. Radar on the air cover, by itself, made passage safer. Carriers filled the mid-Atlantic air gap and made passage safer. Homing torpedoes made passage safer. Enigma, in conjunction with centimetric radar, destroyed milchcows and limited German submarine operations. The Second Happy Time took U-boats away from the crossing to US shores where the targets were easy. There are lots of defenses and other influences; we cannot look at them and conclude what was and what was not important. We need secondary sources for that.
I think Rohwer's book had a chapter about shipping and U-boat losses, but I've forgotten its conclusions.
Glrx (talk) 21:23, 21 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The statement is true in the literal sense, however what the British and their allies did using the information obtained through codebreaking did save ships. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.150.11.216 (talk) 09:01, 9 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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Introduction of Naval Cypher No. 5

Hi Fellow Wikipedians! I think Naval Cypher No. 5 needs to be covered, in this article. It is the introduction of that cypher, which rotated the Atlantic war back to the Allies, as after it was introduced, Germany could no longer read Allies naval communication. They hit a wall. I have a document here: www.ijnhonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/pdf_budiansky1.pdf

which is an entry from the journal International Journal of Naval History. From the document, it states:


In May 1943 U.S. Navy codebreakers helped crack three Enigma messages sent in the extremely difficult “officers-only” system that was used to relay intelligence to submarine commanders. All revealed that the Germans had incredibly precise knowledge of Allied convoy movements: location in latitude and longitude to a degree, speed to a tenth of knot. The U.S. Navy codebreakers immediately went to the convoy operations command and asked to see any messages the convoys had transmitted, to see if any of the Allied signals could have been the source of this German intelligence. The Navy codebreakers were summarily told that the messages were top secret and they could not see them. Only after appealing directly to Admiral King was this bureaucratic door broken down. It was then instantly obvious that the Allied transmissions matched up precisely with the German intelligence reports. With this proof in hand, things happened fast. A new convoy code, Cypher No. 5, was immediately issued and ordered into effect, and that was that. The Germans never broke the convoy code again.


I never knew this until today. It might already be in the article. Thanks. scope_creep (talk) 23:33, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The code the Germans broke was the simple low-grade cypher introduced for Merchant Ships, who could not carry their own specialised Cypher Clerk, and thus it was known by the British to be less secure than the normal Admiralty codes as used by warships.
Upon the outbreak of war in 1939 it was realised that the vast numbers of British merchant ships (around 12,000 ships of 100 GRT and higher) precluded the providing of every ship with a trained cypher clerk, and so a simplified cypher was developed able to be used by a ship's master with little or no training in codes and wireless cyphers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.55.54 (talk • contribs) 10:20, 29 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

CE

Cleaned the bibliography up a bit but the citations are all over the place, sfns, harvnbs, <>s and some of the cited material may have the wrong author (Rohwer not the author of Die italienischen U-Boote in der Schlacht im Atlantik 1940–43 [The Italian submarines in the Battle of the Atlantic 1940–43] (in German)? see note in biblio. RegardsKeith-264 (talk) 10:13, 8 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Effectiveness of air raids on Brest

This is another article (German cruiser Prinz Eugen is a comforting exception) that gives an incomplete set of reasons for the evacuation of Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen from Brest in Feb 1942. The many air raids on the ships in the naval dockyard there, and the continuous risk of serious damage were major influences on the naval staff. This has at least equal weight with a wish to defend Norway and attack arctic convoys. It is of note that for much of the second half of 1941, these three ships were all being repaired from air raid damage and therefore not available for use. The workload for the Atlantic coast dockyards on these major surface ships was such that this slowed down the maintenance work on the submarine fleet.
ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 07:22, 17 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Operation Drum Beat

This sentence in the second paragraph was a bit confusing: "King could not require coastal black-outs - the Army had legal authority over all civil defence - "

I suggest a small change: "King could not require coastal black-outs as the US Army had legal authority over all civil defense and not the US Navy -" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mcrodgers2 (talk • contribs) 05:12, 28 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Could King not just have asked his US Army equivalent nicely if they wouldn't mind ordering a blackout. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.172.235 (talk) 10:46, 14 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'd suggest no change is necessary; taking that phrase out of context is breaking the narrative flow: "King could not require coastal black-outs - the Army had legal authority over all civil defence - and did not follow advice the Royal Navy." There's nothing unclear about that sentence as it now stands. TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 21:53, 14 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Civilian Experience Section

HI, I just added an edit for 'Civilian experience'. Please take a moment to look at my edit. I couldn't find a final number for how many civilians died at sea during the battle of the Atlantic, but apparently ancestry.com has records of all civilian deaths in WW2, but I couldn't filter it to see how many were at sea. I have a pictures of a primary source for my Grandmother's experience being torpedoed on SS City of Simla, but I'm concerned this may violate guidelines as her memoir has not been published anywhere. Most of the facts are verifiable and clear in published articles elsewhere. Pim edits (talk) 18:30, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Commonwealth War Graves site[3] has free access to the same information as the Ancestry site. Civilian deaths are included for WW2. The data appears to be entered so that a civilian death due to the loss of a ship has the name of the ship in the field "cemeterymemorial". You can export search results into a spreadsheet and then filter every entry in that field for starting with "M.V." or "S.S.". This appears to give a total of civilian losses due to sinking of a ship. (That is 1,324 lives.) Notable sinkings, like the Benares, are in the list. There are some problems with this:
1. The sinkings are not just in the Battle of the Atlantic.
2. Extracting the data in this way probably would be WP:OR.
3. The CWG data are notorious for having inconsistent data entry methods, so it is hard to know if this technique captures every such death.
Probably better to search for a book on civilian deaths at sea in WW2.
ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 20:59, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
With the exception of the DEMS gunners, who were soldiers serving in the Royal Artillery, the crews of the merchant ships were all civilian members of the Merchant Navy. That's why when decorations (medals) were awarded to ship's crewmembers they were awarded civilian decorations and not military ones. Hence every UK merchant ship crewman lost at sea in the period 1939-45, around 32,000 of them, was also a civilian death.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.173.127 (talk) 09:47, 19 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
(1) DEMS gun crews were led by either Royal Navy or Royal Artillery personnel. RN gunners were more common.
(2) The Commonwealth War Graves Commission treat Merchant Navy casualties separately from civilians. In some cases, merchant marine casualties were as a result of supporting military operations. (Consider, for instance, those lost in Air raid on Bari - the ships sunk were delivering ammunition, fuel and other war supplies to a port directly supplying the front line. There were many merchant marine deaths on this occasion.) At the very least, there are some shades of grey on whether or not they could be considered civilians. However there is little doubt that those who were, say, passengers on a ship sunk by a U-boat could be civilians under the most limited definition of the term. Regardless of this, it would be difficult to cover the subject in the article, unless a suitable WP:RS could be found, without this being WP:OR.
ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 14:58, 19 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Well most of these were just going about their business of transporting goods: Empire_ship#War_losses without doing anything offensive to anyone. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.173.73 (talk) 11:52, 6 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Minor belligerents

An IP keeps trying to add minor belligerents that are not mentioned in the article. I think this makes no sense, since the infobox presumably should be summarizing important information in the article itself. If it doesn't warrant major mention in the article, presumably it does not warrant mention in the infobox. To that end, should we not also delete poland, south africa, france, and other belligerents that are not even worthy of a cited mention in the article? Lets discuss the criteria for inclusion. Per Template:Infobox military conflict, When there is a large number of participants, it may be better to list only the three or four major groups on each side of the conflict, and to describe the rest in the body of the article---- Work permit (talk) 16:36, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. I favour including South Africa as there was a long-running U-boat campaign against the country which formed part of the Battle of the Atlantic, but including NZ and Denmark is silly given that their contributions were small. The claim that Vichy France was involved in this campaign is highly dubious. Nick-D (talk) 08:47, 9 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Agree - only major participants should be included Lyndaship (talk) 08:59, 9 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Short description

The short description of this article has just seen some activity. I have altered a version that seems to be completely wrong (if anything, it was Germany trying to blockade Britain). Any thoughts on what the short description should ideally say?ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 08:21, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

reasons for reversion

User:Snagemit, I have made this reversion[4] because there are a number of unexplained changes which appear to be wrong. Among them are:
(1) the reduction in the amount of information in the caption to the first picture. This is an Imperial War Museum photo. If you think the caption on commons is wrong, you need to demonstrate that it is wrong, with cited references.
(2) Changes to names of "commanders and leaders" - if you want to change these away from the names of the Wikipedia articles on these people, there have got to be some very convincing reasons. (Again, cited sources)
(3) The change to the information on aircraft loss in the infobox is a change to factual information. Have you checked the source? Do you have another source? If so, make clear what information you are using.

Given these obvious failings, one has to question the other changes made.ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 12:49, 18 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment Additions

Hi I'm new to editing on Wikipedia, and I made some edits in good faith after seeing the "Who?" supertext in the Assessment section.

I did not know, and after some rather fruitless research I still do not know, how to appropriately cite a report from the Naval War College. While I think that it is closest to an academic report by a journal, I think it might require different attention than such.

Opening sentence changed to: "It is maintained by G. H. Persall that "the Germans were close" to economically starving England, but they "failed to capitalize" on their early war successes."

Added: "In the early part of the war, Britain's leaders quickly realized that the "cumulative effect of the monthly losses was a 'mortal danger'" to their supplies and therefore their sustained effort and presence in the war. "They were losing ships at the rate of over 7 million a year, more than three times as fast as the shipyards could build them."" As well as (what I think is) an appropriate citation to Terry Hughes's book with page number.

I've added a few [citation needed] tags. Specifically in (what is now) the 3rd and 4th paragraphs.

Please be kind. I made these changes in good faith of adding sources for us to look into for a more comprehensive historical understanding. However, I'm sure I've made mistakes and that these will be changed going forward.

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