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by d5kenn on July 31st, 2003

d5kenn

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How were German u-boats able to sneak out of the Mediterranean Sea, past British listening stations at the Strait of Gibraltar?

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  • by Muaddib on August 7th, 2003

    Muaddib

    To the best of my knowledge, the infiltration of U-boats into the Atlantic from the Mediterranean did not occur very often. In both World Wars the majority of Germany's subs were based around the North and Baltic seas as well as the Bay of Biscay(WW2). However, it was by no means impossible for German subs to slip past Gibraltar to strike or escape Allied shipping in the Med. As a matter of fact in 1916 the German battlecruiser Goeben and her light cruiser escort, Breslau, steamed all the way from Germany to Turkey without interruption. If large surface ships could make the trip, then a U-Boat certainly could as well.

    Even a surfaced a sub is very difficult to see. Only the conning tower is normally visible and that rarely pokes above the freeboard of a typical ocean-going vessel. Thus, the easiest means of slipping past the British was for a U-boat captain to await the arrival of an allied merchant convoy on a moonless or cloudy night, then creep up to the convoy and tag along. Merchant ships had no sonar, few searchlights, and virtually no trained ASW officers at all so on a dark night a sub could get quite close (even within a few hudred yards!) and remained totally unobserved. The sound and profiles of the merchant ship(s) would completely mask the sub from shore-based detection. Thus, a U-boat would just follow the convoy, perhaps diving for a time at the narrowest part for extra stealth (though could be risky 'cause diving made very distinct hull-popping sounds that could be detected). Should, in fact, the sub be detected it would only be "visible" for a few hours (or less) before it disappeared into the Atlantic. If no attack could reach it in that time the detection did little good. This tactic worked for both World Wars, although constant air patrol, vastly improved sound detection equipment, better equipped merchant vessels, better trained crews, and intercepted ENIGMA traffic made the journey extremely perilous by 1942, and nearly impossible by 1943.

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