CONVOY BATTLE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 March 1943, Page 3

CONVOY BATTLE

HEAVY LOSSES ON BOTH SIDES TREMENDOUS CONCENTRATION OF U-BOATS. EIGHT SHIPS REPORTED SUNK (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, March 22. There were heavy losses on both sides when a big U-boat concentration attacked for two days a large Allied convoy in the Atlantic, according to seamen whose ship was sunk, and who have now reached Britain. One said: “The torpedoes that hit us came from different U-boats. The first struck tis on the starboard side and the second on the port side as we were preparing to abandon ship.” All but five on that ship got away and were pciked up in 90 minutes by a destroyer, whose crew declared that never before had they encountered such a tremendous concentration of U-boats. The American Navy Department announced the sinking of eight cargo vessels during the past week in the western Atlantic. Twenty-four seamen are dead and 87 missing. More than 200 were rescued. It is the highest weekly toll in those waters in the past two months. Five of the vessels were American and the others British, Norwegian and Honduran.