Battle of the Atlantic
The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest continuous military campaign in World War II to defeat the Germans in 1945. The British Royal Navy repeated the blockade of Germany of World War II, and Germany repeated its attempt to blockade Britain by using U-boats. The German Navy also tried to use surface warships in the Atlantic Ocean, but lost them in various battles.
| Battle of the Atlantic | |||||||
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| Part of the Second World War | |||||||
 Officers on the bridge of an escorting British destroyer stand watch for enemy submarines, October 1941 | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
 United Kingdom Canada United States[a] Brazil[b]Other participants:
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 Nazi Germany Italy[d] Vichy France[e]List
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
 Dudley Pound Andrew Cunningham Martin Dunbar-Nasmith Percy Noble Max Horton Frederick Bowhill Philip de la Ferté John Slessor Leonard W. Murray Royal E. Ingersoll Jonas H. Ingram |
 Erich Raeder Karl Dönitz Günther Lütjens † Otto Schniewind Alfred Saalwächter Wilhelm Marschall Theodor Krancke Martin Harlinghausen Angelo Parona Romolo Polacchini | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
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36,200 sailors killed 36,000 merchant seamen killed 3,500 merchant vessels 175 warships 741 RAF Coastal Command Aircraft lost in anti-submarine sorties |
~30,000 U-boat sailors killed 783 submarines lost 47 other warships lost ~500 killed17 submarines lost | ||||||
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Battle Of The Atlantic Media
A lookout of a convoy escort, posing his binoculars on a depth charge thrower with which depth charges were launched to the sides of the escort
German submarine pens in Lorient, Brittany
Grand Admiral Erich Raeder with Otto Kretschmer (left), August 1940
A U-boat shells a merchant ship which has remained afloat after being torpedoed.
The battlecruiser HMS Hood (in the distance) steaming into battle minutes before she was sunk by the German battleship Bismarck on May 24, 1941.
Losses of merchant ships (blue) and u-boats (red) in 1941
A SB2U Vindicator scout bomber from USS Ranger flies anti-submarine patrol over Convoy WS-12, en route to Cape Town, November 27, 1941. The convoy was one of many escorted by the US Navy on "Neutrality Patrol", before the US officially entered the war.
Sea Hurricane Mk IA on the catapult of a CAM ship
The distinctive HF/DF "birdcage" aerial can be seen at the masthead of HMS Kite
