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Turning point in Battle of the Atlantic

The Battle of the Atlantic was one of the most crucial campaigns of the Second World War. It was certainly among the longest, lasting 2074 days: from 3 September 1939, the day war was declared, to 7 May 1945, the day Germany surrendered. Allied ships were sunk with loss of life in the Atlantic on each of those days, and on virtually every day in between. It also ranged across vast distances, from South America’s River Plate, where the New Zealand cruiser HMS Achilles helped trap the Admiral Graf Spee in December 1939, to the freezing Arctic Sea, through which Allied convoys shipped vital supplies to the Soviet Union.

Britain was a maritime power with the world’s largest merchant fleet, but its heavy dependence on imported food (including large quantities of meat and dairy products from New Zealand), fuel and raw materials made it vulnerable to a blockade. Germany's Atlantic strategy was simple: to starve Britain into submission by destroying merchant ships and their essential cargoes faster than they could be replaced. As Prime Minister Winston Churchill remarked in 1941, ‘Everything turns on the Battle of the Atlantic.’

Although mines, bombers and surface ships would claim many victims, the deadliest threat was the submarine, or U-boat. The Allies' defence against, and eventual victory over, the U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic was based on three main factors: the convoy system, in which merchant ships were herded across the North Atlantic and elsewhere in formations of up to 60 ships, protected, as far as possible, by naval escorts and patrolling aircraft; the painstaking, secret work of Allied signals intelligence, especially the breaking of the U-boats' sophisticated Enigma code; and, especially from 1943, the deployment of longer-range aircraft and more powerful, better-equipped escort forces.

The 24th of May 1943 is often regarded as a key turning point in the campaign. On that day Germany’s Admiral Dönitz, alarmed at the heavy losses inflicted by increasingly strong Allied escort forces (a total of 41 U-boats were sunk that month), ordered the temporary withdrawal of U-boat ‘wolf packs’ from the North Atlantic. The U-boats would soon return, and the threat to Allied shipping would remain until May 1945, but Germany would never regain the initiative.

Although it was waged half a world away from New Zealand, the Battle of the Atlantic was vital to this country's interests. A German victory, which would have severed our links with Britain and hugely undermined the Allied cause, was one of the gravest threats New Zealand has ever faced. Thousands of Kiwis took part in this bitter struggle, manning the warships of the Royal Navy and Royal New Zealand Navy, the troopships, freighters and tankers of the Merchant Navy, and the aircraft of the RAF Coastal Command and the Navy’s Fleet Air Arm. Many served with distinction, including Coastal Command pilot Lloyd Trigg, who won the Victoria Cross in August 1943 for a ‘masterly attack’ which sank U-468. His Liberator bomber was lost with all its crew, and his posthumous VC was awarded on the evidence of the U-boat survivors.

Image: Merchant ships en route to Britain

Spitfire pilot describes attacking enemy transport

Royal Air Force Spitfire pilot, Philip Stewart, from Whanganui, describes how he went about destroying enemy trains and other vehicles.

Transcript

Well you attacked them until they blew up.

And so they literally blew up?

Literally blew up, yes. They would stop and then you wouldn’t be content with that of course, you would make absolutely certain that they weren’t going to get mobile again. You’d see large lumps flying off them, that sort of thing. Sometimes they might explode to some extent.

How much skill did it take to control not only flying but shooting, when you were going in for a specific moving target like that?

Well a fair amount. You, of course, had your gun sights which were the most important thing, but also we’d been very much trained. We did a lot, a lot of gun practice. At times when we weren’t busy on operations, we used to go out to shooting ranges on the coast. So we usually with the shingle banks and things like that, at Portsmouth particularly there was one. There were targets set up and we did a lot of gunnery practice, if you like, shooting at them with both cannon or machine gun. So it was a skill that you learnt from practice.

Royal Air Force Spitfire pilot, Philip Stewart.

Philip Stewart in 2004

Philip Stewart interviewed by Alison Parr, 14 September 2004. Ministry for Culture and Heritage D-Day Oral History Project.

Images from Philip Stewart collection.

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Naval officer Eric Krull describes D-Day

Eric Krull, from Manawatu, was the second officer on a Royal Navy landing craft. Here he describes the scene on Gold Beach on D-Day.

Transcript

As you looked up the beach it was a mess; there were stranded craft and all sorts of little craft, big craft, a hell of a mess really, but we didn’t get to know anything about the others much because we were all on our own and had to look after ourselves. There was no method of getting in touch or walking along to see how they were or anything like that. I thought it was hopeless. I thought we’d never make it. I thought, you know, this is a failure.

How noisy was it in the peak of all that?

Very noisy.

So what were the sounds?

Well, sounds of vehicles and guns and shouting, all that sort of thing.

And what could you see ahead of you on the beach? Anything?

Well, in our particular spot not much except our own and a few, I could see a few soldiers further up the beach, but, you know, we were so involved with our own business that we weren’t looking about much.

And what about in the water around you with the kind of the chaos of those small craft going under, were there bodies floating around?

Yes. There were, debris and bits of the boat.

Any people who were still alive? Are you aware of any?

I think the ones that were alive could scramble ashore.

Did you see that happening?

Mm, mm.

Eric Krull in uniform.

Eric Krull in 2004

Eric Krull interviewed by Alison Parr, 9 December 2004. Ministry for Culture and Heritage D-Day Oral History project.

Images from Eric Krull collection

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John Morris and the French Resistance

Royal Air Force bomber pilot, John Morris from Cambridge, New Zealand, describes Lucienne Vouzelaud, one of the French Resistance workers who helped him to safety after his plane was shot down in France.

Transcript

Lucienne was a very strong person. She spoke some English or good English really, but she tended to negate the idea. She said she didn’t speak English, but in fact she did. She was a very able person, very strong personality; she had these two little boys and she was still prepared to take tremendous risks for the likes of me. And I discovered after the war that she had something like 40 airmen through her house, mostly Americans, and been in grave danger all the time. But she survived … And so the two of us got on our bikes, she’d got two bikes.

You and Lucienne?

Yes. And she was taking me on to somebody else, now I forget where to, but the big thing was that we're riding on the road and came round a corner, and here are a lot of German soldiers right across the road, and they were obviously digging defences or doing something like that. Well, it was too late to turn round, and quick as a look she fell off her bike, she fell off deliberately and fell so that she got grazed, you know, and all of these young German soldiers rushed to help her because she was a really attractive young woman, and I just rode on so nobody sort of noticed me. And after a while when I got about 100 yards up the road, I turned round, and I thought, God, I’d better go back, and she was lying on the ground at this stage, and she saw me and saw what I was doing, and as soon as she saw me starting to come back, she jumped up, you know, and made a sudden recovery and jumped on her bike to join me and off we went. So lucky really.

And the Germans just let her go?

They were all astonished I suppose, but it’s amazing what an attractive young woman can get away with.

Royal Air Force bomber pilot, John Morris (right).

John Morris in 2005

John Morris interviewed by Alison Parr, 15 February 2005. Ministry for Culture and Heritage D-Day Oral History Project.

Images from John Morris collection.

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A Navy Commanding Officer describes D-Day

Jack Ingham, from Petone, was the commanding officer on a Royal Navy landing craft. Here he describes his journey across the English Channel on D-Day.

Transcript

Well the wind was easing, the seas weren’t quite as bad, and about midnight came the drone overhead. Hundreds and hundreds of planes going across. This was the bombers first, they were going to do what damage they could on the beaches, and then the clouds parted every now and again, and you could see the shapes going over, hundreds and hundreds of planes. And then there was a lull, and then another batch of planes came across, and they made a different noise from the bombers, and these were the gliders and the parachutists, and when they were going we knew we were getting close to France by that time ... As dawn was breaking, and each second that it got lighter there’d be more ships you could see further out, just an amazing sight. Ships of all shapes and sizes and very comforting to see the big battleships there. Yes.

So the sea was really thick with them?

It was thick with them.

Jack Ingham during the Second World War and in 2004

Jack Ingham interviewed by Alison Parr, 13 October 2004. Ministry for Culture and Heritage D-Day Oral History Project.

Images from Jack Ingham collection.

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James Stellin Memorial Park

Stellin Memorial Park in the suburb of Northland, Wellington. The memorial lookout includes a plaque and an information panel about James Kingston Stellin.

Stellin was a New Zealand Pilot Officer serving in the RAF who on 19 August 1944 gave his own life to save the inhabitants of a French Village. See also the memorial to James Stellin in France.

Stellin was born in Wellington and attended Scots College. The information panel says, 'In 1964 following the death of his father, the land now known as Stellin Memorial Park was bequeathed to Wellington City Council in memory of James Stellin. This lookout was built later in 1977.'

His father, James Stellin, served with the Wellington Mounted Rifles Regiment in the First World War. See his service record here

Credit:

Jamie Mackay, 2011

BY-SA

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Monowai – the ship that rescued Anne Frank's father

The Monowai photographed in Milford Sound during a summer cruise in 1933.

The Monowai's mission of mercy

New Zealand has a small connection to the poignant story of Anne Frank, via her father, Otto, and the merchant ship TSS Monowai.

On 22 April 1945, shortly before the end of the war in Europe, the Monowai sailed from England for Odessa on the Black Sea carrying 1600 Soviet citizens who had been captured serving with the Germans in France. The ship then embarked Jewish Holocaust survivors from Western Europe - including Otto Frank - who had been liberated from the Auschwitz death camp by the Soviet army. On 21 May it sailed from Odessa for Marseille, arriving on the 27th.

In The Footsteps of Anne Frank (1959), Ernst Schnabel wrote that: 'The Monowai flew the New Zealand flag, and had come all the way from New Zealand so that a few survivors from Europe could return home.' The men slept in hammocks, while the women were accommodated in cabins. Otto was impressed by the ship's comfort, the abundant food and the kindness of its crew.

By this time Otto had discovered that his wife, Edith, had died at Auschwitz, but he knew nothing of the fate of his two daughters, Anne and Margot. On board the Monowai, he wrote to his mother in Switzerland:

My entire hope lies with the children. I cling to the conviction that they are alive and that we’ll be together again, but I’m not promising myself anything.

In July, back in Amsterdam, he learned the devastating news that both girls had died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen in March 1945, just weeks before the camp’s liberation. Otto lived until 1980, by which time Anne Frank’s remarkable teenage diary had become an icon of 20th century literature.

Wartime service

Best known in peacetime as a trans-Tasman liner, the Union Steam Ship Company's Monowai served throughout the Second World War in various roles.

From 1940 to 1943 the steamer flew the white ensign as an armed auxiliary cruiser with the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy (from 1941 the Royal New Zealand Navy), manned by a mixture of naval regulars, reservists and merchant seamen. In 1942 HMNZS Monowai fought off an attacking Japanese submarine near Fiji. The following year – with many Kiwi officers, engineers and crew still aboard – the ship reverted to the red ensign, as a troop transport for the British Ministry of War Transport.

Te Puea's gift

Throughout its war service, the Monowai carried on its bridge a model of the legendary Maori canoe Tainui and a ceremonial cloak presented by Waikato leader Te Puea Herangi. Captain G.R. Deverell and his successor, G.B. Morgan, were said to have donned the cloak whenever the ship was in danger of attack.

During the D-Day landings of 6 June 1944 the Monowai served as an assault landing ship, delivering 1800 commandos to Gold Beach. In 1945, after crossing the English Channel 45 times with a total of 73,000 Allied troops on board, it was deployed as a repatriation ship for refugees and former prisoners of war.

After a second voyage to and from Odessa in June 1945, the Monowai shipped Indian troops home from the Middle East. When Japan surrendered in August, it was dispatched to Singapore as a ‘mercy ship’ to repatriate British prisoners. On 13 September the vessel sailed with 650 service personnel and 199 civilians on board, arriving in Liverpool on 8 October.

Numerous other repatriation voyages followed, before the worn-out Monowai was finally handed back to the Union Company in 1946; after a major refit, it returned to the Tasman run in 1949. The veteran ship was withdrawn from service in 1960 and scrapped in Hong Kong.

Further information:

TSS Monowai, 1925-1960 (NZ Maritime Record)
Anne Frank Exhibition in NZ
Carol Ann Lee, The Hidden Life of Otto Frank, Viking, London, 2002
Ernst Schnabel, The Footsteps of Anne Frank, Longmans, London, 1959

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference:1/2-018737-F

Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image

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James Stellin memorial in France

This memorial to New Zealand Pilot Officer James Stellin was erected at Saint-Maclou-la-Brière, a small village in the Seine-Maritime region of Normandy, in 1964. It was here, on 19 August 1944, that Stellin gave his own life to save the village's inhabitants.

James Stellin was flying an RAF Hawker Typhoon fighter-bomber like this one when he was killed in action on 19 August 1944. Operating mainly as 'tank-busters', the rocket-armed Typhoons played a crucial role in the successful Allied campaign in Normandy. In August 1944 alone, Stellin's 609 Squadron flew 461 operational sorties, mostly over the Falaise pocket, and destroyed at least 42 German tanks and 88 motorised enemy vehicles.

This memorial plaque to James Stellin, originally housed at the Kilbirne RSA, is now held by his old school in Wellington, Scots College. The College has other memorabilia relating to Stellin, including a flying satchel recovered from his crashed Typhoon.

Credit:

Top image: Leigh Parker; middle image: John Bickerton; bottom image: Living Heritage

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British commandos scramble ashore on D-Day

British commandos scramble ashore from their landing craft on Juno Beach on D-Day.

Credit:

Imperial War Museum, B 5218

This image may not be reproduced or used in any way without the permission of the Imperial War Museum. Further information and copies of this image may be obtained from the Imperial War Museum Collections website.

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Sound: 485 Squadron in action on D-Day

Maurice Mayston was a fighter pilot with 485 NZ Spitfire Squadron. On D-Day his squadron shot down the first German bomber over the Normandy battlefield, and quickly followed it with a second. From then until August 1945 Maurice was on continuous active service and was based in France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. Hear him describe the 485 Squadron in action.

Transcript

Our orders were to patrol down the beachhead. Well, there were about a thousand Spitfires up there over the line of beaches that were being attacked and landed on. It was like a feeding frenzy almost, and enemy aircraft would poke its nose out of the cloud, and you'd hear on the radio, 'I've got him. I've got him.' 'No, no, no, I've got him,' and [it was] the first one there to get another score.

So you'd just swarm towards the bomber?

Yeah, that's right, and to Johnnie [Houlton] and the rest of us, this was not on. So he decided that he would patrol back of the beaches, behind in the hinterland more.

So tell me how you came to make the hit that you did make that day.

Johnnie was the leader, and we patrolled behind the beaches at the back, and sure enough, he's got very keen eyes, he spotted a Junkers 88 scooting along flat out.

He just announced 'Duncan Blue, Bandit, 2 o'clock, Angels 4,' I think it was – that was all he'd need to say – and we knew exactly straight away, and he led us down to this aircraft. He chased after it. My job was to cover his back, I'm his number two, that's what I'm there for – I've got to make sure he's able to do his job, which is to shoot down the aircraft.

Can you describe what it was like, what you felt like when you came in and got that aircraft?

We were doing what we'd been training for months for – for years almost. We were just doing what we'd dreamed of. It was all over in seconds, of course. About two minutes later we saw a second aircraft doing exactly the same thing, and that time, again, he attacked it, knocked out the starboard engine, and then he ordered myself number two, and Blue Three and Blue Four to have a go. And so we shared that second aircraft, a quarter each. And that's my score for the war.

New Zealand Spitfire pilot, Flight Lieutenant Maurice Mayston, Royal Air Force, second from the right, returns from a fighter sweep over France in the days before D-Day.

Maurice Mayston, 2004

Images: Maurice Mayston collection

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