Word: packs
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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When his U-boats sailed out to war, Doenitz was a Vice Admiral commanding the most effective underwater force in any navy. And he knew how to apply the force. He introduced wolf-pack tactics (Rudeltaktik) for attacking convoys. He varied this technique with individual sorties, sometimes into enemy ports or rivers...
Instead of one attacking U-boat cruising more or less haphazardly, he used a number of them working as a unit. The wolf pack was expanded; by last year he had the U-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...
Initial U-boat successes fell off when the British woke up to the fact that the submarine was still a grave menace, and escorted their convoys more heavily. But after the fall of France, when the U-boats had bases along the entire west coast of Europe, the wolf-pack system raised hob with Allied shipping. Of some 57,600,000 total deadweight tons of British shipping, U-boats sank at least 17,600,000 tons in three and a half years. Working in the Nazis' favor was the vast demand on Allied shipping for the supply of many...
...Hill Beside the Valley. When early this month the British First Army pushed northward into hills on the valley rim, they found the going good. They took the high ground above Medjez-el-Bab. Up the nearby heights by mule pack they hauled artillery. With the artillery already in place west and south of Medjez-el-Bab, a great horseshoe of batteries covered the valley where it de bouches on the plain before Tunis. All the batteries pointed toward three objectives: the fortified hill known as Long Stop and the two hills in front of it. Without Long Stop, dominating...
...finish; a big South American number combines hot dancing with jokes ("Army life is terribly strict-lights out at 9 o'clock, women out at 10"). For the finale, veterans of World War I clamber on to the stage while the cast slides into the past with Tipperary, Pack Up Your Troubles, Mad'moiselle from Armentieres. Then the cast roars into the future with...