Black May Quotes

“The 103 sightings and 68 attacks in the Bay in May conformed to the numbers crunched in Raushenbush’s “slide rule strategy.”
― Michael Gannon, Black May: The Epic Story of the Allies' Defeat of the German U-Boats in May 1943

“Perhaps, when viewed on the larger stage of World War II, it would not be unreasonable to say that the set-piece Battle for ONS.5 was the Midway of the Atlantic.”
― Michael Gannon, Black May: The Epic Story of the Allies' Defeat of the German U-Boats in May 1943

“convoy duty had been denigrated by the regular Navy, which esteemed big ship-big gun fleet actions and considered the passive tending of seaborne trade as beneath their dignity, with the result that all the best officers went to the Home and Mediterranean fleets, while the failed careers and incompetents ended up in Western Approaches—”
― Michael Gannon, Black May: The Epic Story of the Allies' Defeat of the German U-Boats in May 1943

“Overall, the six-months-long entombment of ships and men constituted one of the greatest maritime calamities in history. In terms of ships, raw resources, and matériel, it was the American nation’s costliest defeat of the war.”
― Michael Gannon, Black May: The Epic Story of the Allies' Defeat of the German U-Boats in May 1943

“Admiral Dönitz, often with movement and diversion information ten to twenty hours in advance, could place his U-boat patrol lines directly athwart convoy courses. Since the same intelligence source conveyed to him the Admiralty’s daily U-boat dispositions signal, Dönitz also knew what (in general) Winn’s Tracking Room knew about his U-boat positions, though he never tumbled to the conclusion that the accurate Admiralty signals on the point were based on cracked Enigma.”
― Michael Gannon, Black May: The Epic Story of the Allies' Defeat of the German U-Boats in May 1943

“No more than thirty-commanders (2 percent of the whole), it was found, accounted for some 30 percent of Allied shipping sunk by U-boats during the war; and, significantly, for what it said later about replacement commanders, all had entered the Kriegsmarine before 1935. Only fourteen commanders accounted for nearly 20 percent of all sinkings. Only 131 boats sank or damaged six or more ships. Meanwhile, 850 boats, which represented three-quarters of all boats commissioned during the war, failed so much as to damage a single merchant vessel.”
― Michael Gannon, Black May: The Epic Story of the Allies' Defeat of the German U-Boats in May 1943

“the VIIC boat was arguably the best-integrated combat system developed by German engineers prior to the Type XXI,”
― Michael Gannon, Black May: The Epic Story of the Allies' Defeat of the German U-Boats in May 1943

“A summary of wartime losses in the British Merchant Navy makes the point: about 185,000 merchant seamen served aboard freighters, tankers, and motor ships, of whom 32,952, or 17 percent, lost their lives. That was a higher casualty rate than the 9.3 percent suffered during the war by the Royal Navy, the 9 percent by the Royal Air Force, and the 6 percent by the British Army.”
― Michael Gannon, Black May: The Epic Story of the Allies' Defeat of the German U-Boats in May 1943

“The Germans never came so near to disrupting communication between the New World and the Old as in the first twenty days of March 1943.”
― Michael Gannon, Black May: The Epic Story of the Allies' Defeat of the German U-Boats in May 1943

“And more to the point, by spring 1943 neither number would have matched the minimum tonnage now required to keep pace with replacement construction from America’s unexpectedly productive ninety-nine shipyards. The bar on the high jump had been raised to 1.3 million GRT.”
― Michael Gannon, Black May: The Epic Story of the Allies' Defeat of the German U-Boats in May 1943