Carradice - The Second World War at sea in photographs. 1942

First published 2015

Amberley Publishing
The Hill, Stroud
Gloucestershire, GL5 4EP

www.amberley-books.com

Copyright Phil Carradice 2015

The right of Phil Carradice to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781445622491 (PRINT)
ISBN 9781445622729 (eBOOK)

Typeset in 10pt on 12pt Sabon.
Typesetting and Origination by Amberley Publishing.
Printed in the UK.

If the year 1941 had, overall, been one of trauma for Britain, at least by its close there was the consolation of knowing that the country would no longer have to fight alone. After her surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Japan may have joined Germany and Italy in an axis of totalitarian power but the Allied cause was now greatly aided by the military and industrial might of the USSR and the USA.

In the long run, as most astute commentators and politicians realised, such power as Russia and America could bring to the conflict would almost inevitably lead to an Allied victory.

As if to underline the point, at the Arcadia Conference in Washington on 1 January twenty-six nations agreed to combine their efforts and resources in order to defeat the Axis powers.

Just a few days later President Roosevelt proposed a budget to fund 8 million tons of shipping along with thousands of tanks, aircraft and other vehicles by the end of 1943. Slowly but surely the economic strength of the USA was being brought into play.

Victory, however, was still a long way ahead when 1942 dawned, and the submarine war continued unabated. America began to understand the problem when the U-boats started to sink large numbers of merchantmen off the east coast of the country. Cities like New York were not blacked out and navigation buoys were lit up like Christmas trees. There were no anti-submarine defences in place and for the U-boat commanders and their crews it was a second Happy Time.

By February the U-boats had expanded their field of operations to the Caribbean, where thousands of tons of Allied and neutral shipping was soon heading to the bottom of the sea. It would take time for the Americans to understand and grasp the significance of the U-boat problem, something that was surprising as for some time they had been seeing, at first hand, the effects of the attacks on British convoys to and from the USA.

Ultimately, it was navety on the part of the Americans, a belief that despite the Pearl Harbour attack they were blessed with a degree of invulnerability that other nations did not possess. It was an attitude that would take time to dispel.

At the beginning of February the German battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, along with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, made what has been referred to as the Channel Dash from Brest where they had been holed up for over a year back to their home base in Germany.

The sudden sortie took everyone by surprise and it was not until mid-morning on 12 February, several hours after they had left port, that the British defences were even aware that the two battlecruisers were on the move. By then it was too late the German squadron was almost through the Dover Strait.

As one London newspaper ruefully reported, the Germans had done what the Duke of Medina Sidonia, commander of the Spanish Armada, had failed to do in 1588 and successfully traversed the Channel. Hurriedly organised British attacks using land-based aircraft, coastal artillery and motor torpedo boats led only to the loss of forty-two aircraft.

Escorted by over 100 smaller vessels, as well as dozens of aircraft under the command of Adolf Galland, the Channel Dash was a remarkable achievement and although the Scharnhorst suffered damage after hitting a mine when she was almost home, the Royal Navy and the RAF had proved to be powerless to prevent the enemy ships making port.

Further disaster came on 15 February when Singapore, Britains largest base in the Far East, capitulated to the Japanese. General Percival surrendered the base along with 138,000 men. Japanese losses during the campaign had been less than 10,000.

As if that was not enough, on 27 February came the Battle of the Java Sea. A combined Dutch, British, American and Australian force under the command of Rear Admiral Karel Doorman attempted to intercept a Japanese squadron escorting the invasion fleet bound for Java. The battle, the largest ship-to-ship engagement since Jutland in 1916, was a disaster for the Allies. The Dutch cruisers De Ruyter and Java were sunk, the Exeter badly damaged and Rear Admiral Doorman killed.

The following day, the Australian cruiser Perth and the American Houston were sunk in the Sunda Straits. On 1 March, as she limped towards Ceylon (Sri Lanka), the Exeter, one of the victors of the Battle of the River Plate, was hunted down by the more powerful Japanese cruisers and also sunk. The battles delayed the invasion of Java but by the beginning of March the inevitable had happened and the Japanese had landed on the island.

The war in Europe continued badly with highlights such as the commando raid on Saint-Nazaire, despite the deaths of many of the attacking soldiers in the operation, being hailed in the British newspapers as an example of glorious sacrifice. The delayed explosion of ammunition on the old four-stacker Campbeltown which had rammed the dock gates meant that the operation was at least partly successful.

The Malta convoys continued, at a terrible cost to men of the Merchant Marine, and in April the besieged island of Malta was awarded the George Cross, the first time such a medal had been awarded to a corporate body rather than an individual. It was undoubtedly a well-deserved accolade but the men of the Merchant Navy could have been excused for wondering what they had to do to gain some type of recognition.

The tide of war began to change when, on 7 May, an American fleet encountered a Japanese force at the Battle of the Coral Sea, the action effectively removing the threat of an invasion of Australia. It was the first time that a major ship action had ever been fought where the major vessels never actually saw each other, all of the damage being inflicted by carrier-borne aircraft.

Although the Americans actually suffered greater ship losses the aircraft carrier Lexington being a major casualty the battle was a strategic victory for the USA. Of particular importance was the severe damage inflicted on the Japanese fleet carriers Shkaku and Zuikaku, which were forced to return to base for repairs. As a consequence they missed the next, vitally important action in the Pacific sea war.

The victory at the Coral Sea was followed up less than a month later when, in a series of related actions between 4 and 7 June, the Americans fought and won the Battle of Midway. It was a wide, sprawling battle that because of its consequences was, arguably, the most significant naval action of the whole war.