At the outbreak of war, the merchant fleet of the British empire was the largest in the world with over 9,000 ships, crewed by about 100,000 men. Although not members of the armed forces, these seamen and their counter parts in allied and neutral ships were in the front line of the battle of Atlantic from the earliest days of the war. They were trained to fight and defend those ships against an enemy who would almost certainly be better armed and equipped. Their convoy escorts sometimes suffered heavy losses, it was the merchant men who were the U Boats main target. In the north Atlantic and home waters, 3,663 allied and mutual merchants ships were lost to enemy action in the war. More than 15 of the half million tons of shipping, there were 32,000 seamen died, more than a quarter of the number in the merchant navy when the war began.
On the German side, though their propaganda made much of the U Boat successes, the picture was equally grim. From mid 1943 when the allies finally gained the upper hand, losses mounted rapidly and the 41,000 men in the U Boat service, nearly 26,000 were killed or reported missing and 5,000 were made prisoners of war. Of the 830 U Boats which participated in Atlantic operations, 696 were destroyed by allied action, a loss rate of 84%.
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