Talk:Losses during the Battle of the Atlantic

Sources

War from the top

“ ...In May 1943, the amount of matériel brought across was 251,832 tons. In June, it more then doubled to 542,001 tons and reached a 1943 peak of 1,018,343 tons in October, declining only slightly to 910,482 tons in December. The number of troops also rose, from 19,220 in May to 49,972 in June. by October, the total was 105,557; by December, 133,716. ”

-- War from the Top, pg. 224; Alan F. Wilt.

Very Special Intelligence

“ The first five months of 1943... In January, thanks partly to exceptionally severe weather but also to increasingly successful evasive routing, shipping losses caused by U-boats were only just over 200,000 tons; in February they rose to 360,000 and in March they soarced to 627,000 tons; in April they dropped back to 328,000 and in May fell still further to 264,000. ”

-- Very Special Intelligence, pg. 173; Patrick Beesly, Ralph Erskine, W. J. R. Gardner

Graphs

I have added a graph of the number of subs sunk month-by-month, as this is the only column with figures for every month. If we can find the missing figures, I will do graphs for other columns. -- PhantomSteve (Contact Me, My Contribs) 17:49, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Move?

This page could do with being moved. Second Battle of the Atlantic is a re-direct now to Battle of the Atlantic (1939-1945). There never was a "second" battle of the Atlantic. Xyl 54 (talk) 00:13, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Moving the article to something like Losses during the Battle of the Atlantic (1939-1945) sounds very sensible to me Nick-D (talk) 03:28, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

OK, done. Xyl 54 (talk) 03:16, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Scope

Also, what is the scope of this page? Is it losses during the WWII Atlantic campaign? It appears to include shipping (and U-boat) losses in all sectors at sea, not just in the Atlantic. Xyl 54 (talk) 00:17, 17 July 2010 (UTC)"

What is the meaning of this page? There is no explanation, and I can't figure it out. Column 2 "imports to allies" is undefined and mostly blank. Is this the total tonnage that got through? or that tried to get through? or something else? Column 7, "total allied shipping sunk" seems to always exclude that sunk by mines. Why? Didn't they count? Also, although column 7 is always very close to the total of columns 3,4, and 5, it is never quite exact. Why? Also Column 7 is blank whenever column 2 is blank - suggesting a common source, but ignoring the obvious data in columns 3-6. So, could someone who has some information about this page, please consider defining the meaning of the columns? Also the references given seem remarkably old, and there are many more recent references (starting with Churchill: The Second World War Vols 1-6). --- vernonp2@aol.com

A listing of losses by month is very useful, and seems hard to get elsewhere. But I agree that the column "Total Sunk" contains only a few entries and these are demonstrably not the totals sunk. It would indeed appear that they are a selection of the totals sunk excluding by mines, but even on this definition there are discrepancies, some very large. In particular, November 1941 seems to exclude substantial losses by warships etc. Exbrum (talk) 16:55, 7 March 2021 (UTC)