Quote:
Originally Posted by NZtyphoon
Convoys started operating in September 1939; the most important were the HX convoys which sailed from Halifax to (mainly) Liverpool. The first - HX.1 - sailed on 16 September 1939. Referring to http://www.convoyweb.org.uk/hague/index.html
The HX convoys incorporated cargo ships, some of which carried aviation fuel, and tankers: many of the latter had sailed from refineries in the West Indies and America. The BHX series sailed from Bermuda, starting in May 1940 (BHX.41), and joined the main HX convoys in Halifax. Some of the tankers from the HX convoys diverted to French ports, enough to supply the RAF fighters in France.
From the HX series of convoys alone (HX 11, 13, 31, 33-35, 40, 43, 49, 55, 57-59, 64-68, 70, 73, 76) 44 tankers carrying AVGAS arrived in British or French ports; one tanker was destroyed by a mine in the Bristol channel. This contradicts the assertion in Shacklady and Morgan that ... large numbers of tankers were sunk by German submarines... |
Well let's see now the reality.
Tanker losses to all causes, I have gathered
a total of 78(!!) tankers were sunk by mine, U-boot (typically), aircraft and raiders, between September 1939 and November 1940. About 90% of them were British, though there are a couple of Swedish, Dutch, French etc. tankers
I have them by name, date, cause of loss, route, cargo, tonnage and so on. For example indeed one tanker that went through Halifax, Inverdagle (9456 tons) was sunk by mines laid by the submarine U 34, with 12 500 tons of avgas - about a month worth consumption of 100 octane, though I am not sure what grade it actually carried - on the 16 January 1940.
The first one was Regent Tiger, with about 15 000 tons of oil products, five days after Britain declared war on Germany. The worst blow was possibly the sinking of 13 000 ton San Fernando by the fabled U-47 on the 21 June 1940 (U-43 got another one on the same day). This one alone carried 18 000 tons of oil product that never reached Liverpool.
Alltogether
558,260 GRT of tankers went to Davy Jones locker,
by the end of November 1940, along with 385,957 tons of oil product. Half of that, ca. 243 000 GRT worth of tankers were sunk by the end May 1940.
Fuel oil was the greatest loss, 116 000 tons of it went down with tankers (luckily, no green peace back then). Avgas seems quite untypical as a load, but in the end it didn't really matter, because if a tanker sunk with diesel oil, or even empty, the next one had to haul about its cargo again.
Tanker losses were serious, unfortunately.