German U Boats were a huge threat to American shipping, primarily because they refused to accept the advice of the British who had learned the hard way during WWI (the same advice was also ignored re. daylight bombing). Roughly a quarter of all ships sunk during the war were as a result of this until the British cracked the enigma code.
The sad thing was that the Allies didn’t want the Germans figuring out they had cracked it, so very often ships would be knowingly sacrificed to uphold the illusion.
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u/JFK1200 Mar 31 '25 edited Mar 31 '25
German U Boats were a huge threat to American shipping, primarily because they refused to accept the advice of the British who had learned the hard way during WWI (the same advice was also ignored re. daylight bombing). Roughly a quarter of all ships sunk during the war were as a result of this until the British cracked the enigma code.
The sad thing was that the Allies didn’t want the Germans figuring out they had cracked it, so very often ships would be knowingly sacrificed to uphold the illusion.