I am inclined to believe that Britain a.) could not have increased shipping tonnage at expense of anti-sub, or b.) could not have sustained Britain in context of fuel and food through 1943 - absent some amazingly efficient breakthroughs in detection and sub sinking technologies.
Remember that Sonar, Centimetric Radar, Hedgehog, Leigh Light, Huff-Duff {High frequency direction finding} A/S measures were all developed by the British and later given to the USA
drgondog said:
I don't know how important the 50 Lend Lease destroyers were to Britain, but I do know how important our ship building and steady stream of supplies were to marginally overcome the Atlantic threat in 1943 - after 18 months of our own dedication. I still do not know how Britain would have kept supply chain going from Canada or Africa/Middle East
Yes, if they take measures suggested by Glider I, (and initially rejected by Adm. King Air Marshal Harris) namely using protected convoys long range aircraft. Also the reduction of the # of convoy miles would also play a huge part.
drgondog said:
Does US abstinance from U-Boat campaign significantly weaken Britain's ability to keep sea lanes open I know we made no significant difference in 1940-1942 except for replacement of hulls and crews and war material, and introduction of long range patrols and Finally USN support beyond Greenland and Iceland. Canada and GB doing heavy lifting on escort in that time..
The UK and Canada had enough aircraft to protect the sea lanes, the problem was that Bomber command refused to release them.
What about US based training of commonwealth pilots free of interference from Germany, provision of replacement vessels (and cargo) of U-boat sinkings, capacity of British based shipyards and labor force dedication to rebuilding fleet attrition, etc.
The Commonwealth had a large pilot training based in Canada.
The US was not able to supply vessels in a significant amount until mid 1943, they first had to replace their own losses from 1942, and to increase their shipping required for moving troops supplies, especially to the seaborne operations in the Pacific.
I just remain unconvinced that Britain had the manufacturing capacity to replace enough sunk cargo vessels to carry the supplies.
Read below...
But I have been wrong before.
About shipping the U-boat problem.
First, Bill your figure of 1 million tons a day for British imports is not correct, it is a bare minimum of a half million tons per month, or a normal
1 million tons per month for the British population. The average man needs 400 pounds per year of food. Britain needed to import 75% of its food in WWII, and had a total population of about 46 million.
46,000,000 x 300 lb = 13,800,000,000 lb or 6,900,000 tons, or 0.575 million tons per month of food. (the other 0.425 millon tons/month would mostly be gasoline for private use etc.)
The total tonnage of
British controlled shipping in 1939 was 17.7 million tons, in Dec 1941 was 20.8 million tons. It takes 8 - 10 days for a freighter to make the 2,600 mile trip from Liverpool to Montreal. In the 1940's Canada exported an average of 14 million tons of grain per year, plus lesser amounts of meat, fish, vegetables etc, easily more than enough to supply the UK. Prior to the was a large % of our exports went to (now occupied) Europe. In fact oversupply was a huge problem for the Commonwealth in WWII, as cargo ships were diverted to carry war supplies, food stockpiles in Canada Australia overflowed beyond storehouse capacity.
The British had alredy "gained the upper hand" in the Battle of the Atlantic
by the end of 1941, "shipping losses were high, but manegable" In 1941 the British lost 2.2 million tons and built 1.2 million, but were still had 3 million tons more than when they started the war. {quote from "Battle Fleet"}
Battle of Atlantic 1940 1941 WW2
The problems came in 1942, mainly as the result of the policies of Adm. King, refusing to organize convoys or blackouts. In all of 1942 the British lost 4 million tons, the US 2.1 million tons, compromising 1,150 ships. In the first
6 months of 1942
"Almost 500 ships were lost in US waters to just a handful of U-boats" and this was
mostly within sight of the US or Caribbean coast!!!
BBC - History - The Battle of the Atlantic
{Quote from BBC.co.uk}
This area was under the control of the USA, British ships were loading supplies at the Atlantic ports, and the US was responsible for protection from U-boats.
Of all the 1942 British shipping losses,
more than 65% were lost on the US seaboard, or the Murmansk convoys,
which I would eliminate.
(read earlier posts about the Nigeria-Egypt-Russia rail route)
So in conclusion,
in 1942 the UK/Commonwealth built 1.8 million tons of shipping in their yards, without counting a single Liberty ship. At the same time, even with over 240 U-boats operational, {because of the increasing effect of British A/S technology}
the Germans were only able to sink less than 1.3 million tons of UK/Commonwealth shipping in British controlled waters or on British convoy routes {other than in US controlled waters, or on Murmansk convoys}
The Battle of the Atlantic was won by the Allies by the Allies by the summer of 1943, in the space of about two months, but there was no single reason for this, it was a combination of technology tactics. The disastrous convoy battles of October 1940 forced a change in British tactics. The most important of these was the introduction of permanent escort groups to improve the co-ordination and effectiveness of ships and men in battle. British efforts were helped by a gradual increase in the number of escort vessels available as the old ex-American destroyers and the new British- and Canadian-built Flower class corvettes were now coming into service in numbers. Many of these ships became part of the huge expansion of the Royal Canadian Navy.
British Canadian built corvettes formed the bulk of the escorting warships that fought the battle of the atlantic.
{Quote from Uboat.net}
uboat.net - Allied Warships - Flower class Corvettes
The mid-Atlantic gap that had been unreachable by aircraft was closed by long-range aircraft. By spring 1943 the British had developed an effective sea-scanning centimetric radar small enough to be carried on patrol aircraft armed with airborne depth charges. Centimetric radar greatly improved detection and nullified the German Metox radar warning equipment. Further protection was provided by the introduction of escort aircraft carriers, they provided the much needed air cover and patrols all the way across the Atlantic.
The British introduced the first escort Carrier "HMS Audacity" in June of 1941, and proved to be very effective, leading to the building of 100's more.
The continual breaking of the German naval Enigma enabled the Allied convoys to evade the wolf packs while Naval support groups were able to hunt U-boats that approached the convoys or whose positions were revealed by Enigma decrypts.
The British introduced of the Leigh Light in June 1942 which enabled accurate attacks on U-boats re-charging their batteries on the surface at night. Previously U-boats were quite safe from aircraft at night, since the deployment of an illuminating flare gave adequate warning of an attack. The Leigh Light was a powerful searchlight that was automatically aligned with the airborne radar to illuminate targets suddenly while in the final stages of an attack run. This let British aircraft attack U-boats recharging batteries on the surface at night, forcing German submarine skippers to switch to daytime recharges.The U-Boat commanders who survived reported a particular fear of this weapon system since the hum of an aircraft was inaudible at night above the noise of the boat. A drop in Allied shipping losses from 600,000 to 200,000 tonnes per month was partly attributed to this ingenious device.
By late 1942, the British had developed a another new weapon, and warships were being fitted with the ''Hedgehog'' anti-submarine mortar which fired twenty-four contact-fused bombs directly 'ahead' of the attacking ship. Unlike depth charges, which exploded at certain set depths 'behind' the attacking warship disturbing the water and making it hard to keep track of the target, Hedgehog charges only exploded if they hit a U-boat. This meant that a U-boat could be continuously tracked and attacked until it was sunk. The Hedgehog was a particularly effective weapon, raising the percentage of kills from 7% of attacks to nearer 25%. When one of the Hedgehog charges exploded, it set off the others which increased the weapon's effectiveness.