GREAT DECLINE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 December 1943, Page 3

GREAT DECLINE

IN LOSSES OF SHIPPING BY U-BOAT ATTACK HEAVY DESTRUCTION OF SUBMARINES. ANOTHER ALLIED STATEMENT NOW DUE. (British Official- Wireless.) (Received This Day, 10.40 a.m.) ' RUGBY, December 9. A British and American statement on U-boat warfare which is now due will cover a period during which aircraft have been able to use air bases in the Azores for’ the protection of convoys and extension of attacks on German submarines.

From the beginning of August to the end of that month, the Allies sank more U-boats than the U-boats sank .ships. Messrs Churchill and Roosevelt, making their first joint statement for June this year, stated that Allied shipping tonnage had shown a large net increase during every month of 1943 and that losses in June from submarine attacks were the lowest since the United States entered the war. By the end of July new ships completed by the Allies in 1943 exceeded all sinkings by more than 3,000,000 tons. The Allies then had been sinking nearly a U-boat daily for three months. A month later the two governments were able to announce that more U-boats were sunk in August than merchant ships. September was even better. Until the third week no Allied cargo ship was sunk by a German U-boat. The average losses from all causes in August and Septemebr together were the lowest record of the war. During August, September and October, about 60 U-boats were sunk, bringing to over 150 the number destroyed in six months. The ratio of U-boat to merchant ship loss in October was more satisfactory than in any previous month. Allied tonnage losses from all causes were the second lowest for any month in the war. Although shipping actually at sea was steadily increasing all the time, the tonnage sunk by Üboats from August to October inclusive. was less than half the tonnage sunk in the previous three months. If improvement continues at this rate, losses may be expected soon to fall to the level' at which they were before the Germans gained French and Norwegian bases.