Eighty years ago a brutal convoy battle marks a turning point in the Battle of the Atlantic and the US Army comes of age in Tunisia

 

The battle of convoy ONS 5 marked a turning point in the Battle of the Atlantic. Admiral Doenitz was able to field about forty U-Boats to attack the slow, westbound convoy of 42 merchantmen. The British, though, had intelligence of all his moves and had sufficient warships to  deploy 15 escorts albeit not all simultaneously. Atrocious weather prevented refuelling warships at sea. The U-Boats sank no less than 13 of the merchantmen but lost seven of their number, with a further seven badly damaged. It was not a sustainable rate of exchange.

In a hard-fought battle the US 43 Division, which a few weeks before had been classed as unfit for combat, dislodged the Germans from Hill 609, the last significant terrain feature protecting their enclave around Tunis. The operation had been intended as a minor holding action but now opened the way for the final elimination  of the Axis from North Africa. It also showed that the US Army had come of age operationally although the perception of many senior Britiish officers remained coloured by earlier, less happy memories.

The next allied move was to be the invasion of Sicily and deception operations were already under way to lead the Germans to other potential targets. The corpse of a Welsh vagrant had been kitted out with the identity of a British staff officer, supposedly killed in an air crash, and was put into the sea off Huelva in Spain, whence it would find its way into Francoist and thus German attention.  It carried documents discussing a fictitious attack on the Balkans as the next goal, with the invasion of Sicily mentioned as a deception. Operation Mincemeat succeeded even though it relied on the  advice of Sir Bernard Spillsbury, an eminent forensic expert who knew little about deaths at sea. Any sea-side coroner would have pointed out glaring improbabilities in the state of the corpse