The Battle of the Atlantic.
The entry below is a synopsis of our speakers talk on 15th October 2025 by Malcolm Smith.
He Started by saying "It's misleading in a number of ways, because it suggests a single conclusive encounter, like the Armada Victory, something like that"
The Atlantic Battle was because not only did it last from the first days of the World War II to the last, the Falkland being a single battle, it involved hundreds of encounters across a wide variety of fronts. Some lasted for a few hours, some for days,
So what, we've got massive war ground over five and a half years, and during that time, we saw strategy, we saw tactics change, we saw development resulting from experience of victories and defeats, development of weapons, innovations that will swing one way one time and back the other way.
The Battle of the Atlantic can be seen in three different planes. On the surface, under the surface and in the ether. On the surface, we're talking about the battleships, the aircraft carriers, the cruisers, plus the crafts below the surface, obviously that's the submarine campaign. in the ether, we're talking about the intelligence platform, the codes, the ciphers, the encryption, the decryption, Enigma, Ultra. We were getting 70% of our food imported and those required 20 million tonnes of shipping. 50% of our meat was imported. If you wanted cheese and fats, well, 70% was important, 70% of our sugar, fruit, 80% of fruit was important.
Malcolm went on to how things developed and how the final threat of the U-boats was removed.
Questions followed to conclude another excellent presentation and a very good morning for all our members who thoroughly enjoyed every moment.
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