blockade runners

blockade runners, part of economic warfare, were merchant ships, submarines, or motor gun boats (MGBs), employed to carry vital materials through the opposing side's naval blockade.

While still neutral Japan supplied essential raw materials such as rubber and tin to Germany via the USSR, and received heavy machinery, vehicles, locomotives, armour plate, and aircraft in return. After Germany invaded the USSR in June 1941 (see BARBAROSSA) this trade had to be sent by blockade runners, called Yanagi transports, which had been operating on a small scale since the beginning of the year. As Japan was very short of merchant ships most of the transports were German, though some were Italian.

During the first phase of these operations, from April 1941 to June 1942, twelve out of the sixteen merchantmen which sailed from the Far East to Europe safely delivered 75,000 tons of raw materials, as did all six which sailed with 32,540 tons of engines, commercial goods, and chemical goods in the opposite direction. But at the end of 1942ULTRA intelligence revealed to the British that blockade runners were being allocated strips of water, lanes 320 km. (200 mi.) wide, west of the French and African coasts, to ensure their safe passage through U-boat infested waters. This breakthrough pinpointed the positions of blockade runners and an additional bonus occurred in August 1943 when Bletchley Park broke the ENIGMA key used for transmissions between the blockade runners themselves.

As a result of these cryptographic successes, and of more efficient air and sea patrols, Axis losses began to mount. Five ships were damaged in the Gironde estuary in western France in December 1942 (see canoeists); of the fifteen ships which sailed from the Far East between August 1942 and May 1943, seven were sunk and four were forced to turn back; and of the seventeen which sailed in the opposite direction four were sunk and three were forced to turn back. These losses discouraged further sailings for some months. Then, between September and December 1943, three blockade runners were bombed and sunk in the Bay of Biscay, and in January 1944 three more were caught by US warships in the South Atlantic. Out of the 33,095 tons of cargo aboard the homeward-bound blockade runners only 6,890 tons were unloaded in France. Hitler then agreed that all further sailings be cancelled and the eight ships which had been waiting to sail to the Far East were eventually scuttled in French ports.

In addition to surface ships, German, Italian, and Japanese submarines were employed carrying cargoes vital to the German armaments industry, and sometimes important personnel, the Indian revolutionary Subhas Chandra Bose being one. But the amount of cargo that could be carried was negligible compared to that which merchant ships could accommodate, and the submarines, too, suffered heavy losses. Out of the 56 which sailed from 1942 onwards, 29 were sunk and one interned.

Though blockade runners were principally used by the Axis, the Allies also had to use them. In 1942 the Americans used submarines to transport urgent supplies to their besieged troops on Bataan and Corregidor (see also Philippines campaigns), but their efforts to use surface ships from Australia failed. The USSR also used submarines to ferry supplies into Sevastopol and the British used them when Malta was besieged.

The British also used merchant ships to transport vital steel products from neutral Sweden. These ships, all Norwegian-owned but subsequently chartered to the British ministry of shipping (later ministry of war transport), had been stranded by the war in Swedish ports. In the first operation (RUBBLE) four freighters and an empty tanker, all crewed by British, Norwegian, and Swedish seamen, slipped unseen through the Skagerrak on the night of 23/24 January 1941. They were bombed the next day but reached the UK safely with their 25,000 tons of ball bearings, steel tubing, and other products which had been purchased under an Anglo-Swedish trade agreement of October 1939, and were desperately needed in the UK.

The success of RUBBLE led to a second operation (PERFORMANCE), also organized by SOE, in which ten Norwegian ships, manned mostly by Norwegians and captained by British volunteers, tried in March 1942 to run the gauntlet of German patrols after being impounded by Sweden. Four were scuttled, two returned to Göteborg, and the rest, after being forced out to sea by Swedish warships, tried to steam through the Skagerrak in daylight. Two were sunk by German aircraft and only two reached Britain.

PERFORMANCE caused a diplomatic furore between Germany and Sweden, another between the UK and Sweden because the ships had been illegally armed, and a third between the UK and the Norwegian government-in-exile which objected to losing so many ships. A third operation, to allow the escape of the two ships still in Göteborg, had to be cancelled. Instead, SOE was requested to obtain the cargo in them and five MGBs were converted to carry 45 tons of cargo each. The Swedes, who were informed of the operation (BRIDFORD), raised no objections apart from insisting that the cargo was loaded from shore, not direct from the ships, and in a series of six voyages between October 1943 and March 1944 the MGBs brought back 347 tons of ball bearings, machine tools, and other vital equipment with the loss of only one of their number. See alsoworld trade and world economy.

Bibliography

Barker, R. , The Blockade Busters (London, 1976).