Canada in World War II - Part 3: Shipping Lanes and Sea Battles

Great sea battles are the unsung, underrepresented part of World War II. You think tanks, mass infantry charges, even to a lesser extent the aircrafts with the zeppelins and bombers but ships sometimes fall out of the consciousness. In my mind the reason for this is twofold; it doesn't come across in images well (massive open spaces with ships firing from who knows how far away doesn't have the same impact as a tank rolling beside infantry) and the second is it's the most abstract and hard to imagine. The battlefield, in this case the oceans, are massive to the point of being difficult to fathom (pun!). Plus, it's hard for it to feel as consequential when the loss of life on the seas isn't as massive as that on the land. The death toll isn't near the tragic destruction in the land battles; it's a battle for supplies. The ships themselves are incredibly expensive, and the most important part of their duties is to protect the supply run across the oceans to fuel the war machine in Europe. On ships, loss of life isn't of any great relevance; it's all about cargo. 

A u-boat, being all sneaky and evil.

Now, even if it wasn't something that lends itself to film as much as the rest of war, the ocean battles were of massive importance in World War II. The one thing that really bothered Churchill was the U-boat menace (named for the German name Unterseeboot, or, quite obviously, translated to "under-sea boat" or submarine). Naturally, Canada had a large role here as we were tasked with protecting much of the shipping over to Europe, but we had one major problem of note; our navy kind of sucked. We almost didn't have a military navy at all after World War I, considering dismantling what we had, but it got linked with the British Royal Navy and was saved. Our job would be similar to what we would do in World War I; escorting ships across the ocean to get to Europe in massive convoys. However, without many ships to do so, we soon had a large number of ships that ended up waiting in port in Halifax, unable to get out of there. They needed boats, they needed a lot of them, and they needed them fast. They quickly came up with a solution - with mixed results.

A colorized (obviously) picture of a WWII Corvette,
the HMCS Regina. It was a flower class Corvette. Who
named that? The Germans had names like the Kriegsmarine,
the Luftwaffe, and other intimidating crap. We get flowers.
Darn it, Canada. Missed opportunity. I'm far too upset
about this.

They came up with a new boat that was meant to carry an anti-submarine focus; the $500,000 (which is incredibly cheap, considering) Corvette. The British wanted a heck of a lot of them. In the lattter half of summer in 1940, 64 Corvettes and 24 minesweepers were under construction in Canada.

They weren't great. Called "the cheap and nasties" by Churchill, the boats would turn rusty due to lack of proper shipbuilding techniques and earned plenty of jeers from the British (if there's one thing the British can do, it's sneer and/or jeer). Nevertheless, you had to like the boats because of the distinctly Canadian feel (looking past the rust, of course). Their crew often wore hockey sweaters. Their names would be Canadian cities. Their guns would often have distinctly Canadian insignias. My personal favourite, from a boat named after Moose Jaw (which is of course the most Canadian of city names in our whole great country)had a fire-breathing moose chasing after a fleeing Hitler. The crew themselves seemed to be interesting enough as well, seeing as they would not only have to live with cockroaches but grew fond of them due to the fact they'd eat bed bugs. They'd even make it fun by racing them! How cool is that? Also dreadful. Mostly dreadful.

In a lot of ways this was the Canadian navy's "young man's first car"; loveable in their Canadiana as they may have been, they kinda, well... sucked. The ship didn't have many guns considering the job it needed to do, the convoys it was escorting were far too large, and due to the British going through the rather stupid move of not sharing a lot of their tech with us, were behind the times in terms of the critical sonar technology used when hunting submarines. Adding on to the fact that our sailors were inexperienced, mostly merchant types (or some who had essentially no sea experience at all) they were in for a rough run. Two collisions occurred early in the war due to the zig-zag pattern the convoys followed to avoid u-boats resulting in deaths and destroyed ships sent a negative impression of the far-too-green Canadian navy to the rest of Europe.

'cause we got a great big convoy, rockin' through the night!
Yeah we got a great big convoy, ain't she a beautiful sight?
Coooooonvoooooooy!

When they were out on the water, the job was exceedingly difficult. Their main task was to prevent u-boats from destroying the important cargo ships, but the u-boats were fast, sneaky, and when put into trouble would simply dive. If they were damaged by depth charges from the Canadians, they would limp back to Germany, get repaired, and hustle back. Eventually aircraft became a help, but there was a dead zone in between the oceans where the planes couldn't reach, and the u-boats took their hunting there. That dead zone, or "air gap" as they called it, was exceedingly dangerous territory. 

As ineffective as the Corvettes were, the Canadians still commanded 35% of the fleet - the problem was the also accounted for 80% of the losses. The U.K. eventually sent many of them to the easier route of protection from Gibraltar to the U.K. as the Canadian navy just wasn't cutting it by 1942 - but considering the circumstances of a lack of ships numerically, a lack of quality in those ships, short training, and a desperate need of equipment the British failed to provide, it would be hard to expect anything but a failure. Nevertheless, from 1940-1945 7,357 ships carrying 41,480,161 tons of cargo made it across the ocean, and many of those made it across because of the fourteen u-boats that Canadians sunk from 1941-1943. It could have been a lot more. Fortunately, by 1943 u-boats became less effective due to long-range bombers, offensive hunting groups and escort aircraft carriers. 

The only thing missing from this line of battleships is a
name like Death Machine across the top to make
it a death metal album cover.

All this was happening with a threat on the home-front, as well. A couple of u-boats found there way into the St. Lawrence river and sunk a number of mostly merchant ships. The fear of more attacks, while the St. Lawrence was bombarded by friendly aircraft and destroyers, resulted in a temporary shut-down of the river. Caught between a rock and a hard place, the Canadian forces had to allocate enough ships to defend while still pressing hard with protecting the shipping lanes with already incredibly beleaguered crews. For King, there was no easy answer on how to handle it.

The Canadians helped greatly in this critical part of the war, in spite of the British whining every step of the way. It was a little like asking someone to help you move, asking you to bring a couch down by yourself, and then complaining when you drop it a few times.

Well, darn it, Britain, you got your couch.