The other evening I watched an old war movie called Action in the Atlantic.  It was about the merchant marine carrying supplies and weapons to England and Russia during WW2.  I've seen a number of movies and documentaries on the convoys and the German U-Boats torpedoing them.  But in all of those movies the ships are moving west to east.

But didn't all of those ships have to come back to the United states to pick up more cargo for Europe?  Did they come back in convoys or piece meal one at a time?  Were the U-Boats after them?  Would they waste torpedoes on empty ships?  Did they have escorts?

Noel

 

Edited September 16, 20214 yr by birdguy

Can’t answer all your questions, but the ships quite often went on after reloading to the Mediterranean and other places, some returned empty “in ballast” .  Here is a link to all the convoys of WW2:

https://military.wikia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_convoys

Kev

Bringing a ship back empty is a waste of fuel and time.  I expect the empty ships were loaded with something, likely raw materials, to take back the to the U.S. and Canada for manufacturing more war products.

2 hours ago, stans said:

Bringing a ship back empty is a waste of fuel and time.  I expect the empty ships were loaded with something, likely raw materials, to take back the to the U.S. and Canada for manufacturing more war products.

Or if not coming back full what about on to Asia/Middle East/Africa/Oceania carrying more supplies and personnel perhaps? Would that have been feasible?

4 hours ago, stans said:

Bringing a ship back empty is a waste of fuel and time.

In a nutshell, waste is a defining feature of war 🤔

Those Charts are interesting Kev.  I noticed several British Isles to New York so they must have made the return trip empty or something the British could send back to New York?

Noel

42 minutes ago, birdguy said:

Those Charts are interesting Kev.  I noticed several British Isles to New York so they must have made the return trip empty or something the British could send back to New York?

Noel

Yes they are Noel.  Some ships did make the return empty - but with ballast.

Kev

The cruiser HMS Edinburgh was lost on her return journey from Russia when she was struck with 2 torpedoes

she went to the bottom with about 5ton of gold bars onboard

Warships were always prized game anyware any time, not so much merchants

 

1 hour ago, jeansy said:

The cruiser HMS Edinburgh was lost on her return journey from Russia when she was struck with 2 torpedoes

she went to the bottom with about 5ton of gold bars onboard

Warships were always prized game anyware any time, not so much merchants

 

I know I sunk her yesterday, then sent a diver down for the gold 😜 UBOAT is such a great game...............

today she's still the largest salvage pay off when they recovered 550-ish gold bars from her center magazine from the wreck at 800feet

Edited September 16, 20214 yr by jeansy

My father served on corvettes on convoy duty in the Battle of the Atlantic for the Royal Canadian Navy. Wish he was still around to ask. 

To go back to the original question - yes, the majority of the ships that convoyed west-east were also convoyed back east-west.  The convoys used a letter-number system to identify each individual routing - and the reverse.  The famous Murmansk run used "PQ" - but there were "QP" runs back to the UK that you rarely hear about.  Faster ships could be routed individually, and the Queens and other large liners rarely ran in company with anything other than a RN C-class cruiser as an anti-aircraft escort.  High speed effectively kept the U-boats at bay, unless you were exceptionally unlucky.  Wikipedia topic "List of Allied convoys during World War II by region" lists all the code letters and lets you in on the secret of where the mass of shipping was moving.

Travelling east-west in ballast (empty) was quite common - needless to say there wasn't much economic activity taking place that North America needed sent over.   Likewise, the US and Canada were the land of plenty compared to anything on the other side, even with rationing in effect on both sides of the "pond".

It's almost hard to believe today, but in 1945 the Royal Canadian Navy had over 400 ships, and was the 3rd largest navy in the world, behind only the USN and the RN.  That figure starts to give you an idea of just how intense the Atlantic war was.