The Campaign Moves to North American Waters

The Campaign Moves to North American Waters Although officially neutral, the United States had become increasingly involved in the war at sea. In September 1941 Canadian naval forces came under American "co-ordinating supervision." This arrangement replaced control by the British commander-in-chief, based in England, with an American commander who was much closer to the situation in the western Atlantic. However, when the United States officially entered the war in December 1941 following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, many of the American ships were withdrawn from the North Atlantic to meet burgeoning U.S. commitments elsewhere. This, unfortunately, weakened the Atlantic anti-submarine defences.

As winter storms began to batter the convoys, marine casualties from causes other than enemy action also rose steadily.

Survivors of torpedoed merchant ship aboard HMCS Arvida, St. John’s, Nfld., September 1942. (LAC PA136285)

In January 1942, the Battle of the Atlantic shifted to the Canadian and American seaboards where Admiral Karl Dönitz, head of German U-boat forces, suspected shipping would be poorly protected. The Canadian navy, however, now with more than two years experience in organizing convoys, immediately began to sail shipping in defended groups. Often the only protection available was a single armed yacht. It worked. The U-boats soon shifted their main offensive to the US coast and the Caribbean where ships were still sailing alone.

Anti-submarine grenade launched into the air by the corvette HMCS Pictou during submarine attack, March 1942. (LAC PA-116838)

While the RCN and RCAF had been able to limit losses off Nova Scotia and Newfoundland during the first half of 1942, there was still a very large vulnerable area: the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The huge commitments on the ocean shipping routes, moreover, left very few aircraft and almost no warships to defend this inland sea. On the night of May 11, the freighters SS Nicoya and SS Leto were torpedoed off the Gaspé Peninsula. The war was suddenly right at home and in sight of shore.

A Consolidated VLR Liberator provides air-cover for a transatlantic convoy. (LAC PA107907)

Once again, the navy organized convoys and the air force kept as many aircraft overhead as they could. These efforts made the great strain on the forces nearly unbearable but the U-boats continued to take a toll. The constricted shipping routes, the many deep-water hiding places, and the virtual blindness of underwater detection equipment in the complex waters of the Gulf and river seemed to make tested defence methods ineffective. By early October, seven U-boats had sunk two naval escorts and 19 merchant vessels in the gulf and river. Then, on October 14, the ferry Caribou was sunk just 64 kilometres short of her Newfoundland destination. Of 237 passengers, 136 men, women and children perished.

The disaster seemed to confirm the wisdom of the navy in its decision a few weeks before to close the Gulf to overseas shipping. The immediate cause for this development had been yet another plea from Britain for more Canadian escorts for yet another new commitment — to support the Allied invasion of North Africa. These ships could only be provided by reducing the force in Canadian waters, and the naval presence in the Gulf was scaled back because of the problems encountered in defending against the U-boats. Paradoxically, the German records now available show that the Canadian air force and navy operations had by October almost completely discouraged the U-boats. The hit on Caribou had been a tragic piece of good luck for a U-boat that had almost given up the hunt in the Gulf.