The History Room
Echoes of the Past: Naval Convoys in Great Power Competition
This article is inspired by the new Tom Hanks movie Greyhound about the Battle of the Atlantic. As the trailer says, the only thing as dangerous as the front lines was the fight to get there.
Read the rest of the article at the link.We were captivated this week by the new Tom Hanks film “Greyhound[ii]”, dramatizing the Battle of the Atlantic. The film takes a gritty look at what conflict would look like between a convoy of supply ships trying to cross from America to Europe and German submarines. Since this battle is in the public eye, we wanted to offer some commentary on both the past and future of convoys.
Oceans are big, and individual ships are small. This is a truth known by every mariner. Looking for ships at sea – whether they want to be found or not – is always a difficult undertaking. Doubly so during wartime, where a game of hunter and hunted takes place on and below the surface of the seas. This article focuses on the competition between hunter and hunted, and addresses the issue of the size of the sea – specifically, with advantages in sensing technology and the proliferation of satellites and unmanned systems, are the oceans still 'big,' and is the convoy still a valid approach to make a column of ships 'small,' and how this would impact the protection aspect of naval supply?
The convoy, by which we mean the practice of relatively unarmed supply/merchant ships transiting hostile waters as a geographically tight group with a small number of support vessels, has been the United States' and her allies' logistics delivery strategy since it was first implemented in the First World War, and was a key feature of the Battle of the Atlantic during the Second. At the time, the strategy was effective. The analysis supporting this strategy is outlined briefly below but is well within the grasp of anyone who has the technical background to serve as a Line Officer in the U.S. Navy.
A contemporary description of the convoy from WWII is as follows:
A convoy is the supply train and reinforcement column of the sea… a group of vessels, highly vulnerable to surface and submarine attack when alone, steam in company escorted… the typical convoy consisted of 45-60 merchant ships steaming in 9 to 12 columns…[iii]
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Originally Posted by DGUtley
