BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC: Lucky Thirteen

Thirteen torpedoed British merchant seamen scrambled from their swamped lifeboat into a half-ship they found floating in mid-Atlantic. They wolfed the canned chicken, hardtack and liquor they found, but their “SS Stern” settled slowly. When its deck was barely awash they had a farewell party They drank their fill and hornpiped to the jangling tones of a portable phonograph. None of them remembered much after that until a passing ship picked them up.

Others were not so fortunate. Axis U-boats still scour the central Atlantic in packs, trying to break up Allied convoys en route to North Africa. North American coastal waters several hundred miles out have been cleared of subs, except for an occasional lone scout. But in the old North Atlantic graveyard, convoys to Russia and Britain suffer systematic and heavy attacks. Sixty-seven sinkings reported last week brought the war total up to 3,801 ships sunk, of which 2,029 were Allied ships. So far, 63,154 seamen of all nations have been killed or are missing.

Nearly 600 Axis subs have been damaged since the beginning of the war (how many of that number were sunk is unknown*) but the Germans appear to be making more than are destroyed. They are turning out U-boats which can catch most merchantmen.

The Battle of the Atlantic is far from won. Seafaring men last week agreed with Winston Churchill that the submarine menace may well get much worse before it begins to get better.

*The U.S. Navy claimed during World War I to have sunk 725 U-boats; in a post-war checkup the Germans admitted that the U.S. craft had actually sunk 16.