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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

RNZAF Servicing Unit engineers

Following the Americans’ experience of pilot fatigue while fighting in the tropics of the Pacific, the RNZAF created distinct aircraft Servicing Units. These were permanently stationed at an airfield, and separate from a squadron’s aircrews who were stationed in the forward combat zones for only six weeks at a time. It was the Servicing Units’ responsibility to check, refuel, rearm and repair the RNZAF’s planes after their sorties. These engineers from the No.10 Servicing Unit are repairing a plane's engines in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea.

Credit:

Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War, 1939-45: Royal New Zealand Air Force, 1955.

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NZ pilots graduating from the Empire Air Training Scheme

Flight Officer R.H. Tonks (front row, eighth from left) was one of the 7002 New Zealand airmen who trained in Canada as part of the Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS) before serving with the Royal Air Force in Europe and the Mediterranean.

Tonks would go on to serve in the 489 New Zealand Torpedo Bomber Squadron, one of the RAF’s seven ‘New Zealand’ squadrons – No. 75 and Nos 485–490 – set up under the EATS to maintain a symbolic link to the Dominion. Only 10% of the New Zealand airmen who graduated from the EATS ended up in one of the 'New Zealand' squadrons; the remainder served alongside pilots from Britain and other Dominions in various Royal Air Force squadrons.

Credit:

Private collection.

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Bristol Beaufighter pilot

Flight Officer R.H. Tonks standing in the cockpit of a Bristol Beaufighter. Tonks was a Royal New Zealand Air Force pilot in the 489 New Zealand Torpedo Bomber Squadron which operated under the Royal Air Force during the Second World War.

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Private collection.

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Ohakea RNZAF Association memorial park

The Royal New Zealand Airforce Association Memorial Park at Base Ohakea. Images show plaques from around the Base.

Included are memorials to:

Flying Officer Graham Thomas Carter (Crater), a Skyhawk pilot who flew with the Kiwi Red acrobatic team and was killed in an accident over Ōhakea on 24 October 1989. Read more (The Press)

Aircraftman Blake Hudson, a 20-year-old Air Security Specialist at Ōhakea who collasped and died following a training session on 14 September 2009. Read more (Air Force)

Squadron Leader Murray Neilson, commander of No. 2 Squadron RNZAF, who was killed when his Skyhawk crashed at Nowra, Australia on 2 February 2001. Read more (A-4 Skyhawk Association)

Flight Lieutenant C. D. 'Stumpy' Hill

Flying Officer Leo Melvin Coley - RNZAF Flying Officer duirng the Second World War. Died 2004.

Flight Sergeant Andrew Bruce Forster, an Armament Technician, who was killed in an explosives accident at Waiouru Training Camp on 19 November 2009. Read more (Air Forces News, pg. 4)

Flight Lieutenant Craig Johathan Wylie Tanner, a member of the Kiwi Red aerobatic team, was killed when his Strikemaster jet crashed near Taupō on 20 November 1991. Read more (Auckland Museum Cenotaph)

Chaplain Squadron Leader Peter Bruce Hornblow ('Padre Pete') - born 6 August 1962 - died 21 August 2000 aged 38 years

Wing Commander Edward Gordon Gedge, first Station Commander RNZAF Ohakea, who died on 17 March 1991, aged 95. Wing Commander Gedge, who won a Military Cross (MC) during the First World War, was a former British Olympian who competed in the modern pentathlon at the 1920 Antwerp Games.

Herbie Stevens and Betty May, Flight Sergeant Herbert Bernard Stevens, an air gunner with No. 70 Squadron RAF, who was killed in air accident in Egypt on 29 June 1942. Betty May Browne, the sister of Herbie Stevens best friend, sent this plaque to Ōhakea as a tribute to his sacrifice. Read more about Herbie Stevens (Auckland Museum Cenotaph) and Betty May Browne (Army News, pg. 7)

Peter James William Strugnell, former RAF pilot and curator of the Ohakea Wing RNZAF Museum (1978-1993).

Credit:

Base Ohakea, 2012

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RNZAF C-130 Hercules in Afghanistan

RNZAF C-130 Hercules over the New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team (NZ PRT) base in Bamyan Province, Afghanistan. Hercules from No. 40 Squadron have flown NZ PRT personnel and supplies into and out of Bamyan since 2003.

Credit:

Air Force Te Tauaarangi O Aotearoa

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WRNZAF recruitment poster

‘A modern career for a modern woman’: Cover of recruitment booklet for the Women’s Royal New Zealand Air Force (WRNZAF), 1955.

In 1977 the WRNZAF was integrated into the RNZAF as part of a broad policy shift by the New Zealand military. Prompted by staff shortages and accelerated by the passing of the Human Rights Commission Act 1977, the change radically reshaped the air force. Women gained equal pay, equal rights to accident compensation and superannuation and access to more trades and training. Some restrictions remained – aircrew positions remained male-only and women were denied combat roles. Further changes in the 1980s allowed women to become non-combatant aircrew, and the first New Zealand woman gained her ‘wings’ as a pilot in 1988. Today women in the RNZAF have access to all ranks and trades and to all overseas postings.

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: Eph-A-AIRFORCE-1955-01-front
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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NZ Fighter Wing scoreboard, 1943

The New Zealand Fighter Wing scoreboard at New Georgia in the Solomon Islands, November 1943. Facing the camera, from left to right: Air Commodore Sidney Wallingford, Wing Commander T.O. Freeman, NZ Governor-General Sir Cyril Newall, Major-General Harold Barrowclough.

RNZAF pilots were credited with destroying 103 Japanese aircraft during the Solomons campaign, 1942–1945. Of these, 99 were shot down by the New Zealand Fighter Wing (Nos 14–18 squadrons) – the most by Allied fighters in the theatre – and four by New Zealand Hudson and Ventura bombers.

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: 1/2-106437-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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