World Battlefronts: AT SEA: Year of Crisis

Few realized the perilous situation of British naval power in the waning months of 1941. The crippling of U.S. strength at Pearl Harbor in December was the black climax to a situation already so dark that the Admiralty never dared reveal it. Last week the story was finally told by First Lord of the Admiralty A.V. Alexander.

The great carrier Ark Royal, the cruiser Sydney and the battleship Barham were destroyed within eleven days in November 1941. On Dec. 7 came the U.S. disaster at Pearl Harbor, three days later the sinking of the battleship Prince of Wales and the battle cruiser Repulse off the coast of Malaya. The Royal Navy, upon which Britain depended for her strength and the U.S. for security in the Atlantic, faced the worst crisis since April 1917.

Said Alexander: “Fortunately the enemy did not know of our precarious position. In the Mediterranean we had three cruisers left. . . .” The three cruisers, screened by a few destroyers, bluffed Italy’s fleet of 19 cruisers and six battleships, numerous destroyers and submarines. Two of the cruisers, the Aurora and Penelope, with the destroyers Lance and Lively, intercepted one Axis convoy of ten cargo ships and two destroyers and sank all twelve. British submarines, raiding the overwater supply line to Rommel in North Africa, sank 1,335,000 tons of Axis shipping. Malta, bombed and isolated, faced starvation, and between January and August 1942 British warships convoying merchantmen made six attempts to go to her succor, punched through four battered convoys. The aircraft carrier Eagle was lost with some destroyers, thousands of merchant tons.

The German fleet, chiefly employed to raid Atlantic shipping lanes, was finally chased in to the northern European coast and held there. By the spring of 1943 Britain once more ruled the waves of the Atlantic; in the Pacific, the U.S., with some help from Royal Navy units, had forced the Japanese fleet back into defensive corners. With the surrender of the Italian fleet, the Allies gained complete control of the Mediterranean.

The Royal Navy paid heavily. Last official figures of H. M. ships listed as lost since the beginning of the war: three battleships; two battle cruisers; five first-line and two converted aircraft carriers; 25 cruisers; 14 armed merchant cruisers; 102 destroyers; 56 submarines; 21 corvettes; 259 yachts, sloops, trawlers, minesweepers, mine layers and miscellaneous small auxiliaries—some 700,000 tons, almost as much total tonnage as the Japanese fleet at the beginning of 1937.