Convoy SC 118 was the 118th of the numbered series of

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

slow convoys of merchant ships from

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Cape Breton Island Cape Breton Island (, formerly '; or '; ) is a rugged and irregularly shaped island on the Atlantic coast of North America and part of the province of Nova Scotia, Canada. The island accounts for 18.7% of Nova Scotia's total area. Although ...

, to

Liverpool Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population ...

. The ships departed

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on 24 January 1943Hague 2000 p.135 and were met by Mid-Ocean Escort Force Group B-2 consisting of V-class

destroyer In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, maneuverable, long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy, or carrier battle group and defend them against a wide range of general threats. They were conceived i ...

s and , the cutter , the , s , , and , and the convoy rescue ship ''Toward''.Rohwer & Hummelchen 1992 p. 191

Background

As western Atlantic coastal convoys brought an end to the " second happy time", Admiral

Karl Dönitz Karl Dönitz (; 16 September 1891 – 24 December 1980) was a German grand admiral and convicted war criminal who, following Adolf Hitler's Death of Adolf Hitler, suicide, succeeded him as head of state of Nazi Germany during the Second World ...

, the '' Befehlshaber der U-Boote'' (''BdU'') or commander in chief of

U-boat U-boats are Submarine#Military, naval submarines operated by Germany, including during the World War I, First and Second World Wars. The term is an Anglicization#Loanwords, anglicized form of the German word , a shortening of (), though the G ...

s, shifted focus to the mid-Atlantic to avoid aircraft patrols. Although convoy routing was less predictable in the mid-ocean, Dönitz anticipated that the increased numbers of U-boats being produced would be able to effectively search for convoys with the advantage of intelligence gained through '' B-Dienst'' decryption of British Naval Cypher Number 3. However, only 20 percent of the 180 trans-Atlantic convoys sailing from the end of July 1942 until the end of April 1943 lost ships to U-boat attack.Hague pp. 132, 137–38, 161–62, 164, 181 On 2 February sank three ships from convoy HX 224. A survivor of one of the sunken ships was picked up by and told his rescuers a slower convoy was following behind HX 224.Waters December 1966 p.96

Battle

4 February 1943

A careless merchant seaman of convoy SC 118 fired a pyrotechnic snowflake projector aboard the Norwegian freighter SS ''Vannik'' in the pre-dawn darkness of 4 February. observed the snowflake display, reported sighting the convoy, and was promptly sunk by ''Beverly'' and ''Vimy'' after ''Bibb'' and ''Toward'' triangulated the submarine's location from the sighting report, using high-frequency radio direction-finder (HF/DF or Huff-Duff). The destroyers rescued 44 of the submarine's crew. The Polish freighter ''Zagloba'' was torpedoed on the unprotected side of the convoy by and torpedoed the straggling American freighter ''West Portal''.

5 February 1943

On 5 February the convoy escort was reinforced by the cutter and the s and from

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. The reinforced escort damaged ''U-262'' and .

7 February 1943

In the pre-dawn hours of 7 February, ''Kapitänleutnant'' Siegfried von Forstner's torpedoed the British freighter ''Afrika'', Norwegian tanker ''Daghild'', Greek freighter ''Kalliopi'', American tanker ''Robert E. Hopkins'', American

cargo liner A cargo liner, also known as a passenger-cargo ship or passenger-cargoman, is a type of merchant ship which carries general cargo and often passengers. They became common just after the middle of the 19th century, and eventually gave way to conta ...

, and convoy rescue ship ''Toward''.Hague 2000 p.137 ''Henry R. Mallory'' was capable of but had been straggling well astern of the convoy for several days and was not zig-zagging in that exposed position.Waters December 1966 p.102 ''Mallory'' would normally have been assigned to one of the faster HX convoys, but there had been no Iceland section of the preceding convoy HX 224. No commands came from the

bridge A bridge is a structure built to Span (engineering), span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or railway) without blocking the path underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, whi ...

after ''Mallory'' was torpedoed, no flares were sent up, no radio distress message was sent out, and no orders were given to abandon ship. There were heavy casualties from ''Mallory''s crew of 77, 34 Navy gunners, and the 136 American soldiers, 172 American sailors, and 72 American Marines she was transporting to

.Morison 1975 p. 336 sank the straggling British freighter ''Harmala'' while ''Lobelia'' sank .

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J of No. 220 Squadron RAF sank ''U-614'' on 7 February. ''U-402'' sank British freighter ''Newton Ash'' that night. On 9 February ''Kapitänleutnant'' von Forstner was awarded the

Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross (), or simply the Knight's Cross (), and its variants, were the highest awards in the military and paramilitary forces of Nazi Germany during World War II. While it was order of precedence, lower in preceden ...

for ships sunk by ''U-402'' from this convoy and from Convoy SC 107 on the previous patrol. SC 118 reached

without further loss on 12 February.

Ships in convoy

Notes

References

* * * * * * * {{citation , last=Waters , first=John M. Jr., title=Stay Tough , publisher=United States Naval Institute Proceedings , date=December 1966 SC118 Naval battles of World War II involving Canada C