News Update on the War at Sea
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| The Kriegsmarine battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst as seen from the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper in the Norwegian Sea during Operation Juno, June 7, 1940 (source) |
British Sink Seven Ships of Germans⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Clash in Channel Comes as Admiralty Claims Axis July-August Losses Tripled English⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯By WILLIAM R. DOWNSUnited Press Staff Correspondent
London. — (UP) The Admiralty said today that British naval forces have sunk three German ships including a destroyer supplying troops on the Russian Arctic front and had sunk or damaged four enemy ships in the English Channel.
The British light forces operating in northern waters were credited with sinking another armed trawler and another vessel carrying supplies to troops on the Murmansk front, in addition to the destroyer.
(Berlin admitted loss of the 1,460-ton training ship Bremse in a battle with two British destroyers in northern Norwegian waters.)
Previously, the Admiralty had reported that four enemy ships were blasted by British warships last night during an attack on an Axis convoy in the Channel.
The communiqué said that one enemy supply ship was sunk and another probably was sunk in the fighting.
A German E-boat, or motor torpedo craft, was probably sunk, and an armed trawler was set afire, the statement added.
The communiqué was issued after an official statement had said that the sinkings of British and Allied shipping in July and August totaled only a little more than one-third of German-Italian tonnage sunk by Allied planes and submarines—a vast shift in the toil of the war at sea.
The shift in Britain's favor of sinkings, which include the sinking or damaging of seventeen Axis warships so far this year, was credited in official sources as partly due to United States patrols in the Atlantic.
