Quote:
Originally Posted by Little.Egret
[B]Charles River Editors
Submarine Warfare in the Pacific: The History of the Fighting Under the Waves between Japan and America during World War II
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If I might put in a plug for this book, based on its subject matter . . . .
People are generally familiar with the "Battle of the Atlantic," the war waged between Nazi Germany and the Allies for control of the North Atlantic. America was trying to get vital supplies to Britain. The U-Boats (submarines) of Nazi Germany were attacking the freighters laden with supplies, sinking enormous amounts of tonnage.
For the Allies to have lost this "battle," would have meant that Great Britain would have been starved into submission to Germany. Churchill once said something to the effect of the only thing that kept him up at night (with worry) during the War was the U-boat situation in the North Atlantic.
Things hung in the balance for three or four years. Eventually, the Allies got the upper hand and by the end of war the U-Boats had been pretty much swept from the sea.
For some reason, however, people generally are unfamiliar with the role that American submarines played in the Pacific in the war against Imperial Japan. They sunk and heavily damaged some ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, and that was very important, but their greatest role was the toll that they took against merchant ships. Japan, having few of the natural resources needed for carrying on a modern war, had to import them, almost entirely by ship. American submarines sunk their own enormous amounts of ship tonnage, crippling the Japanese war industries by the end of the war. I dare say that American submarines were as crucial to the victory of the Allies in the Pacific theater as the defeat of the submarines by the Allies in the Atlantic were to the victory of the Allies in the European theater.
I'm looking forward to reading this book. Thanks for posting it.