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Ensuring British supply lines to England should NOT have been seen as a secondary theater and dumping ground for aircraft deemed unsuitable for front line operations.
I agree, but everyone is looking at this with 21st century eyes.
Ensuring the safety of trans Atlantic trade routes, and all the others across the Empire, was primarily perceived as the job of the Royal Navy. It was the raison d'etre of that service. Very few naval officers had any concept of how useful aircraft might be, nor how to use them.
Cheers
Steve
Aircraft flying anti-sub patrols had proven effective during WW I. Not so much in sinking U-boats but in restricting their operations in areas the aircraft could patrol. A submerged sub is nearly blind compared to one running on the surface and it's mobility is reduced to around 1/3-1/4 of what the surfaced sub can do. Submerged subs usually running at around 4 knts to preserve batteries.
just being present restricts enemy operations, like an aircraft over or a tank on a battlefield.
The British ordered 165 Liberator IIs in 1941 and 140 were built, one crashed and the US may have requisitioned up to 75 aircraft from the British (or added to the order?). The British aircraft got British power turrets. 3 Coastal command squadrons and two bomber command squadrons operated them. I don't know if they got full compliments. At least 16 were operated as freighter/transports by BOAC.
Actually they could.In reality the U-boats never stopped more than 10% of the shipping going across the Atlantic. They could not win that way.
Actually they could.
Each ship could make a number of round trips per year. Sink one in January and that is 6 or more round trips across the atlantic that don't get made in one year.
Just like 5-10% losses is the critical number for a sustained bombing campaign. If the germans could sink ships faster than the allies could build them then the flow of supplies to England would slow down while the actual need for increased supplies to stockpile for the planned invasion was going up.
1943 was pivotal year in the U-boat campaign for a lot of reasons. New radar, new aircraft (or at least new to anti sub work (in numbers)) new weapons (homing torpedoes,etc) and the liberty ship construction program was finally kicking in. No one weapon/factor was responsible for the shift in the situation.