Why was the U.S. so ill-prepared for Operation Drumbeat?

What caused the U.S. slow response to the introduction of U-boat attacks off the Eastern seaboard, Gulf of Mexico and in the Caribbean Sea in early 1942? The USN had been active in the North Atlantic for months before the American entry into the war conducting the neutrality patrols. Did they not learn anything about anti-submarine warfare? Did they not see the advantages of convoying merchant ships? Did they not learn anything from the experiences of the RN and RCN?

The Royal Navy and Royal Canadian Navy had been fighting the Battle of the Atlantic for 2 years and 4 months by the time of America's entry into WW2. The need for convoying, adequate patrol aircraft and sufficient escorts vessels should have been well demonstrated by that point. As well as the necessity of coastal black outs.

Was the unpreparedness all due to Admiral Ernest King and his mistrust of the British? Weren't there other officers in the U.S. Navy that would have been advocating for the immediate introduction of precautions against U-boat attack? Especially as the losses mounted?

I've been reading about Operation Drumbeat and it's enough to make you shake your head.
It's seem like gross negligence on the part of certain senior U.S. Navy personnel. With the Battle of the Atlantic ongoing for more then 2 years how did Admiral King and others not see this coming? Did they believe that the U-boats did not have the range to cross the Atlantic?

With what forces the U.S. had available in OTL in January 1942 what steps could the Americans have taken to effectively reduce the heavy losses they suffered in 1942?
 
The reasons go far beyond Adm King & his attitude.

Doctrine: From the start USN doctrine was that submarines were for coastal defense, fleet support, and other special missions. The idea of subs as a independant striking force or capable of a blockade on their own was rejected. Unlike later, in the interwar years it was common to regard the German Great War submarine campaign as a failure which proved the point. As of December 1941 a lot of people, including some Brits thought the Battle of the Atlantic had been won, which further proved the point.

Intelligence Miscalculation: It was known the Axis long range submarine fleet was limited. Essentially the Type IX & perhaps the Italian boats. The numbers estimated were seen as too few to prosecute a effective campaign in US waters. In fact OPERATION DRUMBEAT was executed with barely a dozen German subs on patrol in any specific week. The amount of damage per sub was four to five times that estimated possible prewar.

Lack of Escorts: This went far back & derived in part from the first two items here. The ASW shipbuilding program started in 1941 was short of requirements The other half of it was the transfer of the fifty destroyers to the Royal Navy. That cut deeply into the US fleet and the shipbuilding program underway could not replace the shortfall in time.

Coastal Defense was the Armys Mission. While the Navy did not beleive this it had been a War Department policy from many decades. The Army had justified its budget requests on the basis that it would be better at protecting the home waters with coastal artillery and aircraft. The oft missed fact in the DRUMBEAT campaign is the Army failed as well. Its aircraft were supposed to make the coastal waters impossible for any enemy warships.

Those items were at the core. King has some responsibility in this, but others had much more. Adm Stark made some of the critcal decisions in ASW shipbuilding a year or two earlier. In the shorter term...

North Atlantic Convoys: A sizable number of the USN ASW ships were already committed to escorting the convoys from the NE ports to the mid Atlantic handover point. Stripping those off to rush south to search for subs on the US east coast would have left the convoys defenseless halfway across the Atlantic. Those were still under attack by the shorter ranged submarines.

Fleet Operations: Of the remaining destroyers the most capable were committed to escorting the battle fleet. They only way to free up those would have been to cancel all fleet ops and ground the battle fleet in port.

Industrial Supply: Convoys make cargo shipping significantly less efficient. Halting the cargo shipping in January 1942 to prevent losses would have had severe reprecussions across the US in industrial deliveries. Organizing convoys can easily double the time it takes a cargo to be delivered. Klein in his survey of US industrial mobilization 'A Call To Arms' estimates that the disruption and damage to US production in 1942 would have actually been worse, had east coast cargo shipping been halted to organize properly escorted convoys. What the truth is I dont know, but when the US Navy suggested partially delaying cargo shipping to ease the defense problem industry leaders howled and claimed their ability to deliver war contracts would collapse.

The USN doctrine of 'Hunter Killer' teams independant of convoys has been much criticized. But given the circumstances the Hunter Killer technique was a desperate measure the Navy took up as it lacked the ASW ships in January for increasing the number of convoys.

There is some justifiable criticism over reaction to the problem in January - February. Its possible both the US Army and US Navy could have made different decisions & saved some of the cargo ships. I'll leave that debate to others.
 
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Something as simple as a couple of hundred more Lockheed Hudsons patrolling the Eastern seaboard and Caribbean sea would have made a significant difference.
 
The couple of hundred Hudsons, that materialized from where? And the crews to man them? If the USA had these ASW assets and doctrine in place in early 1942 much else would have been available.
 

hipper

Banned
The couple of hundred Hudsons, that materialized from where? And the crews to man them? If the USA had these ASW assets and doctrine in place in early 1942 much else would have been available.

The us had not made a plan to introduce convoys at the beginning of the war, partially this was due to the inneficency in shipping that convoy adoption would have cost. Partially hubris. Once operation drumbeat had started the failure to organise convoys was hubris.
Now the roots of the problem went back to the Vinson act of 1940, the " Two ocean navy act" the largest naval building construction programme in the world failed to build any warships suitable for ASW smaller than a destroyer. This is in spite of selling some of their old destroyers to the Uk.

Instead of convoy a series of methods that had been proven to fail were used. The few ships available were used as patroll vessels and ended up as rescue ships reacting to sinkings. I wonder if the division of the coast into sea frontiers, rather than having a single authority was responsible. In answer to your question organising ships into convoys with minimal escort, routing the convoys away from the coast, and having whatever air assets available civil air patrol) circle the convoys would have stopped drumbeat in its tracks, granted the convoy system would have to be extended to the carribean and the gulf. But that was just planning.

Instead Drumbeat was one of the clear german strategic victories. As such it prevented any possibility of cross channel invasion untill 1944 and drove the allies to a mediterainian strategy. It was one of the drivers for the Bengall famine and the inability of the US to deploy major assets to the South west Pacific in 1942.
 
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The couple of hundred Hudsons, that materialized from where? And the crews to man them? If the USA had these ASW assets and doctrine in place in early 1942 much else would have been available.

The Army aircraft available for ASW missions were deployed for the prewar Nuetrality Patrols or to cover the convoys heading NE across the Atlantic. Not recognizing the threat after 7 Dec meant far to few were in position to patrol over the east coast sealanes.
 
Lack of Escorts: This went far back & derived in part from the first two items here. The ASW shipbuilding program started in 1941 was short of requirements The other half of it was the transfer of the fifty destroyers to the Royal Navy. That cut deeply into the US fleet and the shipbuilding program underway could not replace the shortfall in time.

Simply not true, in many ways :eek:

  • The USN already had enough escorts on the Eastern Seaboard to implement convoys
  • America did not have an ASW ship building program until after Drumbeat
  • the "Destroyers for Bases" Deal did not cut into the fleet ASW capability at all

First, and conclusively, once it decided to institute convoys on the Eastern Seaboard the USN did so successfully with hardly any extra escorts (surface or air)


Secondly, in 1941 while the USN certainly had a large building program
it was NOT yet building many dedicated ASW escorts for it own use, not even planning them.

For example the Destroyer Escorts began as design created by the US for the British after the destroyer for bases finished in mid 41.
The first order was for the RN not the USN but none were even laid down till February 1942 so they too did not affect the USN TOE vs Drumbeat.

BTW: IIRC the first DEs the USN had were part of that order for 50 placed by the RN.
The USN took over more than 40 , commissioning then from Jan 43
(Of course many DEs were delivered to the RN later to supplement its own frigate program.)

Thirdly, all of the transferred 50 destroyers for bases were to be taken from the inactive fleet
and therefore as planned there was to be NO cut into the USN fleet at all.

In addition There were still stacks more "four pipers" available for the USN to use
... had they felt they needed them ;) ... and bothered to take them out of mothballs. :coldsweat:

In fact a few had been adapted to other use before 1939 but significantly none for ASW.
Others were revived after '40 as supplementary destroyers e.g. USS Ward of Pearl Harbor fame.
AIUI in late 41 few were being woken for any role, and none with extra ASW, to be in time for Drumbeat.
Of course large numbers were awoken after Pearl Harbor, most for duties like fast transports.


Caveat: the intention to use only inactive DD hulls could not quite be kept up.

The deal was signed in Sep 40 but by May 41 only 30 "Towns" were in service with the RN.
When the RN complained , Washington did transfer 10 coastguard cutters from the US active Fleet.
However these had no direct ASW capability until alterations in the British yards
so would have been of limited use at the time of Drumbeat if kept unmodified by the USCG
(though the USN could and did upgrade many cutters to ASW capability after PH)

BTW the reason for the delay to the Towns was that most of these "four pipers" had deteriorated in badly applied mothballs.

The ships could still be revived by the USN in its own yards quite quickly, then reflagged to the RN in days,
but took more time than promised during the full refit and an increase in ASW kit in British yards.
Even then these ships proved very unreliable needing frequent repairs.
The RN technical staff considered then inferior to Frigates or DEs even after further alterations for ASW when better weapons came available.


When signed in 1940 many people knew the Destroyers for Bases Deal had more political than military impact
IMHO (admittedly with the use of hindsight) it had virtually no military impact on the USN
and far less than hoped for on the RN.

Aside: apologies for the multiple edits to this and my other posts.
I'm suffering from a minor medical issue that's messing up both my vision and coordination.
I need time and reviews to get even a roughly coherent version out.
 
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There was a wonderful, by which I mean terrible, thread on Warships1 on this last month. Basically, the US ignored everything that had been learnt about convoys and ASW in two world wars and thought it knew best.

There's a discussion about whether unescorted convoys are better than independent shipping even in coastal waters with their associated chokepoints. However, the argument appears to be of little relevance, given that escorts were available, for at least some of the convoys.
 
There was a wonderful, by which I mean terrible, thread on Warships1 on this last month. Basically, the US ignored everything that had been learnt about convoys and ASW in two world wars and thought it knew best.

There's a discussion about whether unescorted convoys are better than independent shipping even in coastal waters with their associated chokepoints. However, the argument appears to be of little relevance, given that escorts were available, for at least some of the convoys.

If we are talking about the Eastern Seaboard in early 42,
there were more escorts available than most American contributors care to acknowledge.

However not all of them were American.

By February, the RN was so worried about the situation that they scraped together 30+ light escorts and sent them there to be placed under US Command.

IIRC nothing large only ~10 corvettes + ~ 20 Trawlers but all with Asdic and most with experienced crews.

Of course the USN insisted on deploying them only in area patrols until early summer.

For an interesting account look at the middle section of "Really Not Required" by Colin Warwick

Aside:
Although seemingly appropriate to our thread, the title of these WW2 memoirs does not relate to this issue.
Warwick was a Royal Naval Reserve officer and chose the nickname of that service as a wider joke.
In 1939 RNR was formed mostly of men who had been "riffed" in the 20's and 30's.
 
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