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Introduction of Naval Cypher No. 5

Hi Fellow Wikipedians! I think Naval Cypher No. 5 needs to be covered, in this article. It is the introduction of that cypher, which rotated the Atlantic war back to the Allies, as after it was introduced, Germany could no longer read Allies naval communication. They hit a wall. I have a document here: www.ijnhonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/pdf_budiansky1.pdf

which is an entry from the journal International Journal of Naval History. From the document, it states:


In May 1943 U.S. Navy codebreakers helped crack three Enigma messages sent in the extremely difficult “officers-only” system that was used to relay intelligence to submarine commanders. All revealed that the Germans had incredibly precise knowledge of Allied convoy movements: location in latitude and longitude to a degree, speed to a tenth of knot. The U.S. Navy codebreakers immediately went to the convoy operations command and asked to see any messages the convoys had transmitted, to see if any of the Allied signals could have been the source of this German intelligence. The Navy codebreakers were summarily told that the messages were top secret and they could not see them. Only after appealing directly to Admiral King was this bureaucratic door broken down. It was then instantly obvious that the Allied transmissions matched up precisely with the German intelligence reports. With this proof in hand, things happened fast. A new convoy code, Cypher No. 5, was immediately issued and ordered into effect, and that was that. The Germans never broke the convoy code again.


I never knew this until today. It might already be in the article. Thanks. scope_creep (talk) 23:33, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

The code the Germans broke was the simple low-grade cypher introduced for Merchant Ships, who could not carry their own specialised Cypher Clerk, and thus it was known by the British to be less secure than the normal Admiralty codes as used by warships.
Upon the outbreak of war in 1939 it was realised that the vast numbers of British merchant ships (around 12,000 ships of 100 GRT and higher) precluded the providing of every ship with a trained cypher clerk, and so a simplified cypher was developed able to be used by a ship's master with little or no training in codes and wireless cyphers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.55.54 (talk • contribs) 10:20, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

CE

Cleaned the bibliography up a bit but the citations are all over the place, sfns, harvnbs, <>s and some of the cited material may have the wrong author (Rohwer not the author of Die italienischen U-Boote in der Schlacht im Atlantik 1940–43 [The Italian submarines in the Battle of the Atlantic 1940–43] (in German)? see note in biblio. RegardsKeith-264 (talk) 10:13, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

"Codebreaking by itself did not decrease the losses"

This statement is contrary to what most tellings of the Enigma story say. The graphs are interesting, but do not, of themselves, support the statement, and are not referenced — might this be WP:OR? It is difficult to compare the relative effects of codebreaking, extended air cover and centimetric radar from these graphs. Can the "Enigma period" on the graph be subdivided into the periods before, during and after the blackout caused by the introduction of the 4-rotor Enigma? Even then shouldn't the vertical axis of the graphs be some sort of rate rather than bare numbers? If there was an increased tonnage in the convoys, one might expect increased losses expressed as tonnage. Is there an appropriate denominator figure of the tonnage setting out, to give a proportion of tons setting out that was sunk? --TedColes (talk) 21:56, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

I think the whole section is a confusing WP:SYNTHESIS. We cannot look at a graph and interpret it. The section does not uses sources that provide the broad perspective of the BotA and tell us the importance of each defense or how they became even more effective in combination. Instead, the section uses sources to make certain statements, but then contradicts those statements with statements from other sources. Some of the sources are even suspect. That Germany believed Enigma was secure and therefore could not impact operations does not make it so. The Germans suspected that the Enigma might be broken but refused to believe Enigma had been compromised; instead they found other explanations. At times when an Enigma break would be obvious to the high command, German submarines had been redeployed to the US and the Mediterranean. It is clear that the Allied countermeasures became so intense that Germany could not sustain its losses, so it left the field.
We've gone from nonsensical ideas such as Ultra won the war, to Ultra shaved two years off the war, to a bland statement "by itself did not decrease the losses". The last statement is absurd on its face. Yes, many steps were taken to minimize shipping losses, and many of those steps decreased the losses. Ultra, by itself, probably did save a lot shipping. Rerouting a convoy to avoid a wolfpack is an effective technique. Kahn's Seizing the Enigma has an example of such rerouting. Convoys, by themselves, made passage safer. HF/DF, by itself, made passage safer. Radar on the air cover, by itself, made passage safer. Carriers filled the mid-Atlantic air gap and made passage safer. Homing torpedoes made passage safer. Enigma, in conjunction with centimetric radar, destroyed milchcows and limited German submarine operations. The Second Happy Time took U-boats away from the crossing to US shores where the targets were easy. There are lots of defenses and other influences; we cannot look at them and conclude what was and what was not important. We need secondary sources for that.
I think Rohwer's book had a chapter about shipping and U-boat losses, but I've forgotten its conclusions.
Glrx (talk) 21:23, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
The statement is true in the literal sense, however what the British and their allies did using the information obtained through codebreaking did save ships. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.150.11.216 (talk) 09:01, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

...works for me too. Parsecboy (talk) 18:47, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

@Parsecboy: "Lies, damn lies, and statistics." Mark Twain.
The original edit did not work.[1] Try it. It did not use {{see also}} correctly because it did not specify the #particular section.
I reverted: "Undid revision 745159441 by Keith-264 (talk) broke link"
Keith-264 then claimed to revert me with "‎Enigma cipher: Works all right at this end, you sure?". Yes, I am damned sure it did not work. Instead of a simple revert, Keith-264 changed what he had added before so it would work. If you look at the Keith-to-Keith diff, it is not zero: [2] Glrx (talk) 20:51, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
Fair enough - I hadn't noticed he had changed the link. Parsecboy (talk) 20:57, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
"Lies, damn lies, and statistics" - actually it was Disraeli. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.247.9 (talk) 12:49, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Merchant ships

Is it true that British merchant ships were armed and carrying munitions from the very beginning of the war, just like passenger liners did in World War I? (213.122.111.231 (talk) 14:32, 19 September 2016 (UTC))

Armed merchantmen encompasses the entire subject, but yes there were armed merchant cruiser and auxiliary cruisers from near the outset of the war on both sides. Llammakey (talk) 17:16, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
So ships carrying food were considered legitimate military targets from 3 September 1939? (213.122.111.231 (talk) 18:32, 19 September 2016 (UTC))
According the German cruiser Admiral Graf Spee article, the German units were ordered to conform to prize rules at the onset of war which made them search the ships for contraband before sinking them. Llammakey (talk) 19:06, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
Weren't merchant ships already fitted with swivel guns though? (213.122.111.231 (talk) 19:09, 19 September 2016 (UTC))
You're thinking of the Defensively equipped merchant ship I believe. Llammakey (talk) 19:46, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
The prize rules favoured Germany in that being situated on a continent any munitions supplied by third-parties could be delivered to Germany over land.
Britain OTOH is an island and so any munitions supplied had to come in by ship.
DEMs were introduced in order to force U-boats to use valuable torpedoes rather than their deck gun. Counter-intuitive perhaps but the U-boat had a plentiful supply of deck gun ammunition but only relatively few torpedoes. This reduced the U-boat's time on patrol and allowed more convoys more time to get through unmolested.
Before 1939 torpedoes were reserved for attacking warships, merchant ships were intended to be attacked using the deck gun. The DEMs ships forced the U-boats to use their torpedoes instead. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.53.211 (talk) 10:29, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
BTW, a ship is only classed as carrying 'munitions' if the munitions make up a substantial part of the ship's cargo. A few boxes of small arms ammunition or shells on a ship whose main cargo is something else does not constitute a ship to be classed as 'carrying munitions', otherwise any ships with small armouries to be used for their own protection against possible piracy would be so-classed. 'Armed' means fitted with at least one deck gun. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.150.18.173 (talk) 14:32, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Belligerents: Belgium ?

What was Belgium participation in the Atlantic front ? and why it isn't mentioned anywhere in the context of the article ? 196.204.161.190 (talk) 10:21, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

See here - Belgian crews operated a pair of Flower-class corvettes that escorted convoys during the campaign. Parsecboy (talk) 01:17, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
Belgium was not at war after 1940, having surrendered to Germany. Hence Belgium wasn't a belligerent. Prior to 1940 Belgium had been neutral, as had been the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway. They also were not belligerents. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.247.9 (talk) 12:57, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
Escaped Belgian fishermen manning a pair of corvettes does not mean Belgium was a belligerent. Work permit (talk) 15:51, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Effectiveness of air raids on Brest

This is another article (German cruiser Prinz Eugen is a comforting exception) that gives an incomplete set of reasons for the evacuation of Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen from Brest in Feb 1942. The many air raids on the ships in the naval dockyard there, and the continuous risk of serious damage were major influences on the naval staff. This has at least equal weight with a wish to defend Norway and attack arctic convoys. It is of note that for much of the second half of 1941, these three ships were all being repaired from air raid damage and therefore not available for use. The workload for the Atlantic coast dockyards on these major surface ships was such that this slowed down the maintenance work on the submarine fleet.
ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 07:22, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Operation Drum Beat

This sentence in the second paragraph was a bit confusing: "King could not require coastal black-outs - the Army had legal authority over all civil defence - "

I suggest a small change: "King could not require coastal black-outs as the US Army had legal authority over all civil defense and not the US Navy -" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mcrodgers2 (talk • contribs) 05:12, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Could King not just have asked his US Army equivalent nicely if they wouldn't mind ordering a blackout. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.172.235 (talk) 10:46, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
I'd suggest no change is necessary; taking that phrase out of context is breaking the narrative flow: "King could not require coastal black-outs - the Army had legal authority over all civil defence - and did not follow advice the Royal Navy." There's nothing unclear about that sentence as it now stands. TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 21:53, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Civilian Experience Section

HI, I just added an edit for 'Civilian experience'. Please take a moment to look at my edit. I couldn't find a final number for how many civilians died at sea during the battle of the Atlantic, but apparently ancestry.com has records of all civilian deaths in WW2, but I couldn't filter it to see how many were at sea. I have a pictures of a primary source for my Grandmother's experience being torpedoed on SS City of Simla, but I'm concerned this may violate guidelines as her memoir has not been published anywhere. Most of the facts are verifiable and clear in published articles elsewhere. Pim edits (talk) 18:30, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

The Commonwealth War Graves site[3] has free access to the same information as the Ancestry site. Civilian deaths are included for WW2. The data appears to be entered so that a civilian death due to the loss of a ship has the name of the ship in the field "cemeterymemorial". You can export search results into a spreadsheet and then filter every entry in that field for starting with "M.V." or "S.S.". This appears to give a total of civilian losses due to sinking of a ship. (That is 1,324 lives.) Notable sinkings, like the Benares, are in the list. There are some problems with this:
1. The sinkings are not just in the Battle of the Atlantic.
2. Extracting the data in this way probably would be WP:OR.
3. The CWG data are notorious for having inconsistent data entry methods, so it is hard to know if this technique captures every such death.
Probably better to search for a book on civilian deaths at sea in WW2.
ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 20:59, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
With the exception of the DEMS gunners, who were soldiers serving in the Royal Artillery, the crews of the merchant ships were all civilian members of the Merchant Navy. That's why when decorations (medals) were awarded to ship's crewmembers they were awarded civilian decorations and not military ones. Hence every UK merchant ship crewman lost at sea in the period 1939-45, around 32,000 of them, was also a civilian death.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.173.127 (talk) 09:47, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
(1) DEMS gun crews were led by either Royal Navy or Royal Artillery personnel. RN gunners were more common.
(2) The Commonwealth War Graves Commission treat Merchant Navy casualties separately from civilians. In some cases, merchant marine casualties were as a result of supporting military operations. (Consider, for instance, those lost in Air raid on Bari - the ships sunk were delivering ammunition, fuel and other war supplies to a port directly supplying the front line. There were many merchant marine deaths on this occasion.) At the very least, there are some shades of grey on whether or not they could be considered civilians. However there is little doubt that those who were, say, passengers on a ship sunk by a U-boat could be civilians under the most limited definition of the term. Regardless of this, it would be difficult to cover the subject in the article, unless a suitable WP:RS could be found, without this being WP:OR.
ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 14:58, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
Well most of these were just going about their business of transporting goods: Empire_ship#War_losses without doing anything offensive to anyone. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.173.73 (talk) 11:52, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Minor belligerents

An IP keeps trying to add minor belligerents that are not mentioned in the article. I think this makes no sense, since the infobox presumably should be summarizing important information in the article itself. If it doesn't warrant major mention in the article, presumably it does not warrant mention in the infobox. To that end, should we not also delete poland, south africa, france, and other belligerents that are not even worthy of a cited mention in the article? Lets discuss the criteria for inclusion. Per Template:Infobox military conflict, When there is a large number of participants, it may be better to list only the three or four major groups on each side of the conflict, and to describe the rest in the body of the article---- Work permit (talk) 16:36, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Agreed. I favour including South Africa as there was a long-running U-boat campaign against the country which formed part of the Battle of the Atlantic, but including NZ and Denmark is silly given that their contributions were small. The claim that Vichy France was involved in this campaign is highly dubious. Nick-D (talk) 08:47, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
Agree - only major participants should be included Lyndaship (talk) 08:59, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Short description

The short description of this article has just seen some activity. I have altered a version that seems to be completely wrong (if anything, it was Germany trying to blockade Britain). Any thoughts on what the short description should ideally say?ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 08:21, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

reasons for reversion

User:Snagemit, I have made this reversion[4] because there are a number of unexplained changes which appear to be wrong. Among them are:
(1) the reduction in the amount of information in the caption to the first picture. This is an Imperial War Museum photo. If you think the caption on commons is wrong, you need to demonstrate that it is wrong, with cited references.
(2) Changes to names of "commanders and leaders" - if you want to change these away from the names of the Wikipedia articles on these people, there have got to be some very convincing reasons. (Again, cited sources)
(3) The change to the information on aircraft loss in the infobox is a change to factual information. Have you checked the source? Do you have another source? If so, make clear what information you are using.

Given these obvious failings, one has to question the other changes made.ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 12:49, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Tonnage per month completely missing?

Is it impossible to add the most important part about this whole chapter of WW2 - the figures of Allied tonnage sunk per month? Has it been decided over the years to ditch it because of contradictory reports (just a guess)?--Adûnâi (talk) 12:06, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Please, translate miles into kilometres

Why does this article use miles instead of kilometres? It was an international battle.--Adûnâi (talk) 10:02, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Western maritime (and aerial) navigation uses the nautical mile as it makes navigation much easier, however it would probably be a good idea to include the kilometre figures as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.55.40 (talk) 08:47, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Work done in inter-war years

Looking at this article, I am concerned by the accuracy of:

The Royal Navy, like most, had not considered anti-submarine warfare as a tactical subject during the 1920s and 1930s.

Sources such as Llewellyn-Jones:The Royal Navy and Anti-Submarine Warfare, 1917-49[1]: 10  directly contradict this, for example:

The interwar years have been portrayed as a period of stagnation in anti-submarine development, both tactically and technically. However, recent research has begun to prove that this was not the case, especially after 1932 when British anti-submarine policy was reviewed.

Llewellyn-Jones goes into this in greater detail and also gives some history of the development of ASDIC (again, something that happened in the inter-war years) - not only the technology but the tactics to make best use of this device. Looking at another source, the biography of Frederic John Walker[2], it is clear that the Royal Navy went into WW2 with a small number of anti-submarine specialists who had learnt and developed the latest skills in the interwar years. This is also made clear by Llewellyn-Jones. A little understood (on Wikipedia) RN innovation was the method of plotting a submarine once it had been detected - these tactical plots were essential for any reasonable degree of success to be achieved and the most modern WW2 escorts had semi-automated plotting tables to help with this. The origins, however, were firmly in the pre-WW2 development work that was done.ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 08:22, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Llewellyn-Jones, Malcolm (2006). The Royal Navy and Anti-Submarine Warfare, 1917-49 (Kindle ed.). Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN 0 415 38532 6.
  2. ^ Burn, Alan (1993). The Fighting Captain: Captain Frederic John Walker RN and the Battle of the Atlantic (Kindle 2006 ed.). Barnsley: Pen and Sword Books. ISBN 978 1 84415 439 5.
Quite so, the subject of anti-submarine warfare was not considered an area to enter if one wanted quick promotion in the RN, however there were a number of very talented officers and men who did excellent work on the subject in the inter-war years. The main problem in the early war years was the lack of a sufficient number of small ships equipped with ASDIC. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.55.40 (talk) 08:57, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Assessment Additions

Hi I'm new to editing on Wikipedia, and I made some edits in good faith after seeing the "Who?" supertext in the Assessment section.

I did not know, and after some rather fruitless research I still do not know, how to appropriately cite a report from the Naval War College. While I think that it is closest to an academic report by a journal, I think it might require different attention than such.

Opening sentence changed to: "It is maintained by G. H. Persall that "the Germans were close" to economically starving England, but they "failed to capitalize" on their early war successes."

Added: "In the early part of the war, Britain's leaders quickly realized that the "cumulative effect of the monthly losses was a 'mortal danger'" to their supplies and therefore their sustained effort and presence in the war. "They were losing ships at the rate of over 7 million a year, more than three times as fast as the shipyards could build them."" As well as (what I think is) an appropriate citation to Terry Hughes's book with page number.

I've added a few [citation needed] tags. Specifically in (what is now) the 3rd and 4th paragraphs.

Please be kind. I made these changes in good faith of adding sources for us to look into for a more comprehensive historical understanding. However, I'm sure I've made mistakes and that these will be changed going forward. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lontano1 (talk • contribs) 23:45, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

I have deleted the addition by User:Mathglot as the provision of a more recent reference does not solve the original problem. The first paragraph of the "Assessment" section lays out 2 opposing arguments: (i) presented by one historian, mentioned in isolation in the article, that the U-boat war came close to starving Britain into starvation and surrender, which is counterbalanced (ii) by quoting 2 examples out of "others" that this opinion is incorrect. So, the balance of the article is that whilst one historian thinks the U-boat war nearly succeeded, the majority do not.
Therefore, to throw in the opinions of the cited source goes against the existing balance of the article. This raises the question: does this new source introduce something new? It is a book focused on FD Roosevelt and his intent to involve the USA in WW2 - so this is the interface between politics and military events. To this we add Churchill's known ambitions to get the USA involved in the war, either just industrially, but ideally militarily too. All the correspondence available in this book was available to those writing the military history of the Battle of the Atlantic. I do not see how this does anything to materially alter the balance that existed in the article.
If one were to seek to update this section, I would point editors to Maudsley's The War for the Seas, wherein he says, among other things on the subject:
The actual shipping problem was not acute, and as we have seen, it was being dealt with. The official historian of British wartime merchant shipping did state that the summer of 1941 was ‘the most anxious moment of the war’ because the volume of imports had been declining and the future flow of imports was unclear, but anxiety regarding the future was not the same as current reality.
This view fits well with the picture of two political leaders both being (justifiably) worried about how tonnage losses would work out, but these fears being unfounded. Whilst the deleted material may be relevant in a more blow-by-blow account of the campaign, I do not see that it fits into the overall assessment of what happened.ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 14:31, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
Britain throughout the war had a three-month stockpile of all essential imports, and only on a handful of occasions did shipping losses require these stockpiles be used. Once shipping losses fell these reserves were re-built. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.55.40 (talk) 09:00, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Article structure

The structure of this article appears somewhat chaotic. The technological advances/issues are collected into 2 separate parts of the article in a way that makes little sense to me. Does anyone else have reservations about the structure of the article? Would it be better to discuss the technological developments separately, so that they are not interspersed with the narrative?ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 15:29, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Serious imbalance

We now seem to have a serious imbalance in the article in favour of massive coverage of Bermuda. This is out of all proportion to discussion of Bermuda in sources that cover the Battle of the Atlantic. If anyone wants to retain this material, I suggest a new article Bermuda in World War II (or such like). Either way, this article needs to be trimmed to retain balance. (WP:PROPORTION) ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 08:16, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

I agree, and have reverted this material. I also agree that a specialised article on the topic of Bermuda's role in this campaign is likely viable. Nick-D (talk) 09:30, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
Agreed - it looks to be good material, though, so hopefully @Aodhdubh: will move it to a Bermuda in World War II type of article. Parsecboy (talk) 10:19, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

This article claims an Archimede sub was sunk in 1943. The article on the Archimede class says otherwise

This article currently says: "In Brazilian waters, eleven other Axis submarines were known to be sunk between January and September 1943—the Italian Archimede". The uboatnet citation only contains U-Boats listed, rather than any Italian subs. The article Archimede-class submarine lists the following end-dates for the four ships of that class: 1941 (the only one sunk during the war), 1946, & two in 1959, one of which is the Archimede itself aka "General Mola". 208.59.185.238 (talk) 04:44, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 19 January 2021 and 7 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Loganhorn.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 15:26, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Vichy France

Vichy France remained neutral, and refused to declare war on the UK in 1940. It should not be listed as a belligerent. (Westerhaley (talk) 13:10, 2 May 2021 (UTC))

I've removed it, as you are quite correct. Parsecboy (talk) 22:00, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Small island country

The third paragraph begins: "As a small island country, the United Kingdom was highly dependent on imported goods." Where is the source that the UK is a small island country? In reality Great Britain is one of the biggest islands in the world, and the size of the country is above average for modern members of the UN. Of course it is small relative to USA, Canada and USSR, the biggest countries in the world. 92.24.51.184 (talk) 08:40, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

HIDDEN comments

While there is occasionally justification for WP:HIDDEN text in articles, there are two dozen such comments in this article, and a quick scan shows that most (all?) do not meet the criteria at § Appropriate uses for hidden text, and should probably be removed. As an example, I removed two such hidden comments from the "Assessment" section in this edit as unjustified unsourced OR or editorializing to no good purpose, present since 2012 when they were added by now indeffed sock Trekphiler (talk · contribs). The rest of the hidden comments should be examined and removed if unjustified. Mathglot (talk) 01:59, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Uncited text versus Mawdsley's opinion

The article's unreferenced statement:
The Battle of the Atlantic was won by the Allies in two months. There was no single reason for this; what had changed was a sudden convergence of technologies, combined with an increase in Allied resources (bold added)
is contradicted by Mawdsley with:
In reality the heart of the spring 1943 victory was the British sea/air forces, and their highly trained crews and first-rate electronic equipment. (Mawdsley, Evan. The War for the Seas: A Maritime History of World War II (p. 570).)
Mawdsley then goes on to emphasise, in discussing the "electronic equipment" aspect, the wide availability of centimetric radar, better inter-ship communication and the common use of HF/DF. This is set alongside crew training in carefully developed tactics, more and better ships (which, among other things, allowed Support Groups to be allowed to specifically hunt and attack submarines, as apposed to Escort Groups which were obliged to stay with their convoys), whilst more long range A/S aircraft further limited U-boat activity.

The disparity between the article and Mawdsley is of concern – especially since the article text is uncited. The two statements have some similarity (in that a large number of factors came together at roughly the same time), but Mawdsley's picking out of one group of factors as key seems to deserve some representation in the article. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 00:06, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Reversion of revision 1183372197 by User:Klutserke

I have reverted revision 1183372197 by Klutserke. To answer the edit summary for the reverted edit:

The US carrier anti-U-boat activity was important in the region of the Atlantic they patrolled (as made clear in the cited source). Bogue was the most effective of these ships. Omitting this would leave out an important contribution to the battle, as this was an intended refuelling area for U-boats.

The article does not state that FIDO homing torpedoes were used at an early date, just that they were the weapon employed when US ships used HF/DF. Mention of this is integral to the HF/DF coverage, as the torpedoes would be useless without the means of detecting the submarines in the first place. The problem we have is with the article structure. It slices the account into time-bound sections. Therefore the coverage of HF/DF is trapped in one of those sections, when it was technology that was important almost to the end of the war (when the Kriegsmarine finally realised their radio transmissions were a weakness). What should be considered is moving all the technical developments into one part of the article. So that would be sonar/ASDIC, radar, HF/DF, the various improvements to depth charges followed by ahead throwing weapons, bubble target evasion devices, submarine-launched acoustic homing torpedoes and operational research. However, that would be a piece of major surgery for the article and should not be undertaken lightly. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 23:35, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Hoi @ThoughtIdRetired, thank you for detailing your motivation for the revert. Here my detailing for the reasons why I took the line with escort carriers and Bogue out of the HF/DF chapter: the HF/DF chapter is a long chapter, describing the HF/DF principles and tactical use when HF/DF was introduced in 1941. Why should it be mentioned in this rather technical chapter that HF/DF was also used by escort carriers in 1943 and then particularly Bogue ? Lots of ship classes had HF/DF, there's nothing exceptional nor innovative about escort carriers being equipped with it and then using it to direct their airplanes. If e.g. convoy escorts got HF/DF bearings they directed their VLR aircraft to the U-boats as well. So I saw no reason why escort carriers and Bogue were singled out to be mentioned here.
I'm not sure if it is correct to state that FIDO were the weapon employed when US ships used HF/DF. Checking Blair Vol II, pp. 541-545 I see that Bogue used its HF/DF during its operations but its aircraft were not using FIDO yet. So US ships could bring their HF/DF to good use without FIDO as well. Also, the FIDO could also be used without HF/DF, the FIDO was also carried by VLR aircraft operating without the help of HF/DF.
If you feel strongly that Bogue should be mentioned in the article, I think there are two good places : Bogue could be mentioned as the first US escort carrier in the Atlantic in the section where the introduction of escort carriers is described or alternatively Bogue could be mentioned for its 1943 operations in the june 1943 - may 1945 section, which needs expansion anyway. Klutserke (talk) 23:19, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for your answer. I feel that the article needs to make clear that HF/DF was not only used by British and Canadian ships, but also by the USN. The mention of Bogue allows an encyclopaedia user to follow a link to see an example of one of the ships that carried out this role. So, among other things, this mention is to assist the encyclopaedia user.
The current text does not say that only FIDO was used by Bogue's aircraft. Clearly a weapon cannot be used if it is not yet available. However, we have a robust source (Mawdsley, a well respected WW2 academic historian) who says that FIDO was used. I have to say that I am hesitant about Blair as a top quality source. He is a journalist who wrote historical books. His motivation was to make a living out of selling books. (His article in Wikipedia even mentions one of his historical errors on submarines!) An academic historian would be preferable if you had a choice, as they are used to working in a peer-reviewed environment in which too many mistakes affect their academic reputation.
For the rest of it, we are back to the article structure again. This is one of the perennial failings of Wikipedia. An article starts off relatively short, without a full appreciation of the subject. It is then later expanded. However the article structure is usually fixed by the first attempt. In this case, we are looking at a competition of industrial production (enough merchant ships and warships against enough submarines) working alongside a technical (for want of a better word) competition. This was all the various advances, taking in radar, HF/DF, operational research, etc. If we stick faithfully to the article structure (i.e. a sequential account) all the technical stuff gets distributed around the article and therefore de-emphasised. In my opinion, that would make this a worse encyclopaedia article, because the technical stuff was a major part of the story. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 09:37, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
I have a doubt if the link to Bogue will assist the encyclopedia user much in finding info on the HF/DF, the Bogue article does not mention the use of HF/DF at all. Your concern to make clear that HF/DF was not only used by British or Canadian ships, could be better addressed then by simply stating that briefly as such in the HF/DF entry, which would be more consistent with the general flow of that entry. Klutserke (talk) 20:20, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
So the fix on this would be to improve the article on USS Bogue. However, I note that User:Klutserke has gone ahead and acted on their own opinions, rather than see if any consensus is built on the point. Not something that I am going to make too much of a fuss over, but a nudge on how Wikipedia works seems appropriate. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 22:40, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
My sincere apologies, I had no inkling I was rushing too fast. I thought that after no further reply after 2 days and you starting a new thread below, the matter was ok to proceed with. I moved the Bogue out of the HF/DC section and moved her in the june1943-may 1945 section, with mentioning of her using the HF/DF in the operations. As proposed above. In order to get an idea about how consensus building is usually done, can you tell how you had expected the consensus building to proceed ? Had you expected I try to involve other people ? or create a topic/discussion at a forum ? Have I missed some step or procedure ? Klutserke (talk) 23:00, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
Not to worry – this isn't the biggest issue in Wikipedia. I had been hoping that another editor would have expressed an opinion. If you wanted to see some Wikipedia guidance on an editor being silent on a point, see WP:SILENCE – but I am not sure how much that helps. It is the perennial difficulty that if you really need someone else to express an opinion and nobody does, there is not really anywhere else to go. My real point is about the structure of the article, and nobody seems to want to grasp the nettle on that one. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 13:03, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
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