Silver streaks on the dark water. Terrifying explosions ripping across the night sky. Silent marauders slipping away and a few hundred thousand tonnes of shipping, food and war material sliding into the cold depths of the Atlantic. These are the telltale characteristics of a German U-boat Wolf Pack strike, a Wolf Pack that came very close to being the deciding factor that would tip the balance of power in favor of Adolf Hitler’s Germany.
The brainchild of Admiral Donitz, the Wolf Pack was designed to strike and defeat the heavily armed convoy system of transportation that was keeping Britain alive with injections of food and material shipped over from the United States of America. The idea was that when a U-boat made contact with a convoy, the captain shadowed the convoy while appraising U-boats in the surrounding area of the contact, after which the U-boats would muster upon the shadowing vessel.
At a given signal, the U-boats would simultaneously launch their torpedoes at multiple targets and then slip away before the protecting armed ships launched a search for the marauders. This system worked far more effectively than the one previously used by the German U-boat raiders, in which a single submarine fired torpedoes upon a single enemy target and then attempted to slip away undetected. The confusion and sheer weight of numbers of torpedoes being fired at the convoy made it very difficult for ships to maneuver out of harm’s way or to successfully launch an attack against a targeted submarine.
A number of submarine aces rose to prominence during the war. Amongst these were men such as the commander of U-47, Günther Prien, and Joachim Schepke who commanded U-100. German strategy and daring encompassed the destruction of more than two hundred and fifty enemy ships as well armed vessels vital to the defense of Britain such as Ark Royal, Royal Oak and Hood. So successful were the Wolf Pack operations that Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of England for a great deal of the war, and the living symbol of British resistance, was once heard to exclaim that “… the only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril.”
When the U-boats launched an attack on a convoy, individual submarine captains would choose their favored method of striking at the enemy. Otto Krteschmer, and many other commanders, chose the dangerous tactic of heading straight into the center of a convoy and hitting ship after ship as they sailed past. Other commanders chose to stay outside of the strike zone of protective vessels, such as destroyers, and to fire individually upon shipping or to loose a spread of torpedoes into the convoy.
The Wolf Pack strategy was extremely successful and could quite possibly have brought Britain to its knees. However, with the advent of weapons which were at the cutting edge of ground breaking British science and technology, the tide began to turn against the German submariners.
Sonar allowed British ships to detect German submarines and the development of the hedgehog depth charge defense system was to ultimately result in the swinging of the balance of power in the Atlantic in favor of Britain and the Allies.