![]() Against the sea lanes, upon which depended Britain’s ability to feed and maintain itself in the war, Germany deployed U-boat submarines, surface raiders, mines and aircraft, says historian GH Bennett. ![]() In a struggle for control of the sea lanes from Britain to the Americas, the Royal Navy and United States Navy were pitted against the German Kriegsmarine. In March 1941 Winston Churchill coined the phrase ‘Battle of the Atlantic’ to describe a six-year series of battles that opened on 3 September 1939 and did not conclude until the last day of the war. It means another long day ahead of them and already six ships in the convoy have been hit and destroyed. Krause, having eaten barely half a sandwich and drunk only a couple of cups of coffee in that time, is utterly exhausted, cold, hungry and thirsty, but keenly aware he must keep going until they push through this screen of U-boats and get back within the range of Allied air cover. ![]() It is freezing cold, the ice covering the surfaces and rails of the destroyer’s deck. One U-boat was destroyed in the grey afternoon of the day before, and since then, Keeling and one other of Krause’s four-ship escort team – a Polish destroyer, the Viktor – have been pursuing another enemy sub without success, despite unleashing some 50 depth charges between them. Commander George Krause has been on the bridge of his destroyer, the USS Keeling, for nearly 24 hours, locked in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with a wolf pack of German U-boats – exactly how many is not clear. The mid-Atlantic, sometime in the winter of 1942.
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