Word: convoy
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
These ships had yet to go into concerted action. Allied observers thought it possible that they might be used for a carefully coordinated air-surface-submarine campaign against the convoy lanes, or otherwise be held in readiness to strike directly at an Allied invasion armada...
...boats working in "echelons of divisions," patrolling in three lines or more abreast, the center line ahead of the two flanks, the U-boats strung out in a herringbone pattern astern of the leader. In perfect coordination, this array of underwater raiders lay in wait for convoys previously spotted by scouts or long-range air reconnaissance. By night, submerged, they moved under the convoy. When they came up, a few of them would draw the convoy's escort vessels off. The rest could then pick off their targets at leisure, firing by direct control from their conning towers...
...Weapon's Deeds. Doenitz knew that the convoy system licked the U-boats in World War I. When he was building his fleet for World War II, he guessed that the same tactics would be used again by the Allies, and trained his men accordingly...
Tonnage available to supply Britain's vital needs was cut, in effect, by various demands and limitations to perhaps 20,800,000 tons. The additional limitations of convoy operation further reduced the effective total to some 9,600,000 tons. Result: the loss of every ship sunk on the Atlantic run was doubly felt by the Allies...
Gloomily, Sheean flew back to England and accompanied a British patrol to a North Atlantic rendezvous with a convoy of "the dirty little tramps that saved the world." Then he went out to China. It was a return to his youth of Personal History. He still has snide innuendos for Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his Government, pleasant things to say about Chinese Communists, and fine passages on the misery and grandeur of the Chinese people...