Battle of the Atlantic Statistics

Statistics re Allied losses of men and ships in the Battle of the Atlantic vary widely. We include data from various sources below.



Hughes, Terry and Costello, John. The Battle of the Atlantic, New York: Dial Press,1977

The Atlantic war was over. It had been costly to the Allies. No fewer than 2,603 merchant ships had been sunk, totalling over 13. 5 million tons, as well as 175 Allied Naval vessels. . . . On the Allied side 30,248 merchant seamen died, as were as thousands of men from the Royal Navy and RAF.

It was the one campaign of the Second World War that lasted from the first day to the last.

Casualties to Personnel of British merchant Ships 1939-1945

*Crew includes D. E. M. S. -- British gunners equivalent of U. S. Naval Armed Guard

 Year Ships lost
by U-boat
 Ships lost all enemy causes  No. of Crew*
Lost by u-boat
  No. of Crew*
Lost all causes
 1939 50  95 260  495
 1940 225 511 3,375 5,622
 1941 288 568 5,632 7,838
 1942 452 590 8,413 9,736
 1943 203 266 3,826 4,606
 1944 67 102 1,163 1,512
 1945 30 45 229 323
 Total 1,315  2,177 22,898 30,132

 


Albion, Robert Greenhalgh and Pope, Jennie Barnes. Sea Lanes in Wartime - The American Experience 1775-1945, 2nd edition, Archon Books, 1968

 Year  Total Allied Sinkings North Atlantic Sinkings
 1939 221 212
 1940 1,059 999
 1941 1,299 846
 1942 1,664 1,097
 1943  597 309
 1944 205 108
 1945 105 92
 Total  5,150 3,663

Terraine, John. Business in Great Waters: The U-Boat Wars, 1916-1945, London: Leo Cooper, 1989

 Year  Total Allied Sinkings North Atlantic Sinkings
 1939 221 19
 1940 1,059 349
 1941 1,299 496
 1942 1,662 1,066
 1943  597 285
 1944 205 31
 1945 97 19
 Total  5,140 2,265

Miller, Nathan. War at Sea - A Naval History of World War II, New York: Scribner, 1995

 Year
 Battle of Atlantic Total Allied Sinkings
Battle of Atlantic Allied Sinkings By Submarine
 1939 222 114 
 1940 1,059 471 
 1941 1,299 432 
 1942 1,664 1,160 
 1943  597 377 
 1944 205 132 
 1945 105 56 
 Total  5,151 2,742 

 


 

Hitler's U-Boat War: The Hunters, 1939-1942, Clay Blair, New York: Random House, 1996

Hitler's U-Boat War: The Hunted. 1942-1945, Clay Blair, New York: Random House, 1998

 

 Year  Allied and neutral sunk by German and Italian Submarine
 1939 Sept-Dec 147 
 1940 520 
 1941 457 
 1942 1,155 
 1943 452 
 1944 125 
 1945 63 
 Total
2,919

British Merchant Navy at War 1939-1945

http://www.british-merchant-navy.co.uk/

Often sailing on out dated and sometimes barely seaworthy ships, these men although civilians were at the forefront of the biggest survival battle Britain has ever seen. Men who if lucky enough to survive a sinking had their pay stopped before their ship settled to it's final resting place. Men who after enduring the reality and fear of the U-boats, mines, air attacks, E-boats, and the might of the German naval fleet, not to mention the the perils of the sea itself, were looked upon with distaste by people at home, simply because they wore no official uniform which would identify them with any of the armed services.

Over 30,000 men of the British Merchant Navy were lost between 1939-1945. To the Merchant sailors there was no phony war the people of Britain lived through in the early days of WWII. On September 3rd 1939, a few hours after war had been declared against Germany the first shipping casualty occurred in the sinking of the Donaldson Line passenger ship Athenia with the loss of 112 passengers and crew. For almost six years there was barely a day went by without the loss of merchant ships and their crews.


Keegan, John. The Second World War, New York: Penguin Books, 1989

The 30,000 men of the British Merchant Navy (one-fifth of its pre-war strength) who fell victim to the U-boats between 1939 and 1945, the majority drowned or killed by exposure on the cruel North Atlantic sea, were quite as certainly front-line warriors as the guardsmen and fighter pilots to whom they ferried the necessities of combat. Neither they nor their American, Dutch, Norwegian or Greek fellow mariners wore uniform and few have any memorial. They stood nevertheless between the Wehrmacht and the domination of the world.

Allied Merchant Ship Losses 1939 to 1943 Press Release, Office of War Information, Nov. 28, 1944

Merchant Marine in World War II
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6/14/03 revised 1/20/05

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