Word: convoying
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...took the worst beating given any convoy in World War II. The destroyers first shelled and torpedoed three Jap transports. One blew up. Another sank. A third listed, apparently was sinking when the destroyers withdrew. They returned, with U.S. cruisers. Shell and torpedo fire sank five more transports. A U.S. submarine torpedoed, probably sank a Jap aircraft carrier. U.S. bombers sank two transports, shot down five of twelve Jap fighters. Dutch bombers hit two Jap cruisers, five transports, a destroyer, a Jap warship which looked like a battleship. A Dutch submarine sank a Jap destroyer...
Before the main naval and air attack developed, the Jap reached his first objective, Balikpapan (where he found the wells, refineries, pipelines in scorched ruins, and Dutch troops ready to battle him ashore). But his convoy losses constituted a real defeat. His cruisers were reported in Macassar Strait only after the battle had well begun; he would scarcely have risked such valuable escorts unless he was hard-pressed. In that sector at least, he was definitely short of fighters to screen his own ships, bombers to attack the U.S. warships...
...American troops last week landed in Northern Ireland, German U-boats were grimly at work sinking American ships off the Atlantic Coast. The two facts suggested a reasonable connection: the Germans had set out to attack the U.S. convoy but it had slipped through their net, and having missed their first objective the Germans chose their second best...
...Wolf Pack. Two years ago this week Karl Doenitz declared that "it makes no difference to the present-day German U-boat fleet' whether British ships sail alone or are convoyed. . . . The truth is that the danger increases for neutral ships when they are members of a British convoy." But as U.S. strength showed up in British convoys, Karl Doenitz changed his mind, shrewdly withdrew a large part of his U-boat fleet into his native Baltic, emerged with a new, radical offensive technique known to the Germans as the Rudelsystem, to the Allies as the "wolf pack...
Another favorite Doenitz variation on this theme: the wolf-pack leader singles out one ship in a convoy, draws the escort's attention to the single encounter while the rest of the pack, often operating on the surface in the dark, move in on the unprotected merchant units...