Battle of the Atlantic Tableau

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Battle of the Atlantic Tableau
Battle of the Atlantic Tableau

Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago

Hitler was intent on starving the British into surrender by sinking the supply ships they so desperately needed - and he had the perfect weapon to do it, the Unterseeboot ("undersea boat"), or U-boat. U-boats could slip underwater, sneak up on unsuspecting merchant ships and destroy them with explosive torpedoes. They nearly brought Germany to victory in WWI, and they were back with a vengeance in WWII.

Targeting Americans
After declaring war on the United States, Hitler wasted no time in turning his U-boats on American ships. In January 1942, he launched Operation Paukenschlag ("Drumbeat")- a series of surprise U-boat attacks within 100 miles of America's eastern seaboard. In the first two weeks, 25 ships totaling 200,000 tons, were sent to the bottom of the sea. Between January and July 1942, more than 2 million tons of Allied shipping were sunk by successive waves of German U-boats deployed from the St. Lawrence Seaway to the Gulf of Mexico., On June 19, 1942, Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall wrote, "The losses by submarines off our Atlantic seaboard and in the Caribbean now threaten the entire war effort."

By late summer 1942, the German U-boat assault began to falter as escorted convoys grew more numerous and Allied anti-submarine patrols were mobilized in greater numbers. Still, the U-boats continued to inflict heavy losses on Allied merchant shipping. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill feared that the U-boats' successes in U.S. waters would lead to an acute shortage in merchant ships and cut off vital supply lines between the United States and Great Britain. As Churchill would later record: "The Battle of the Atlantic was the dominating factor all through the war. for a moment could we forget that everything happening elsewhere on land, at sea and in the air, ultimately depended on its outcome."

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Taken on: August 24, 2012
Tags: Everybody's photos tagged with MSI MSI Everybody's photos tagged with museum of science and industry museum of science and industry
Sets appears in:   • Chicago Museum of Science and Industry    • U-505 German Submarine   
Camera: Canon PowerShot G11, f/2.8, 1/20 sec, 6.1mm, ISO 400 (more info) (hide info)
Camera: Canon PowerShot G11
Aperture: f/2.8
Exposure Time: 0.05 sec (1/20)
Focal Length: 6.1mm
ISO: 400
Exposure Bias: -2/3 EV
Flash: Off, Did not fire
Exposure Mode: Manual
Metering Mode: Multi-segment
White Balance: Auto
Color Space: sRGB
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