The convoy HG-76 sailed from Gibraltar to Britain in December 1941. The Royal Navy commander in charge was 'Johnnie' Walker, an anti-submarine expert who had developed new, aggressive U-boat hunting tactics. Accompanying the escorts was HMS Audacity, the Royal Navy's first escort carrier - a new type of warship purpose-built to defend convoys from enemy aircraft and U-boats.
Aware of the departure of HG-76, a wolfpack of U-boats was sent against it, and the Luftwaffe was heavily committed to, in a rare example of German inter-service cooperation. German intelligence agents in Gibraltar and Spain also knew every detail of HG-76 before it sailed, seemingly stacking the odds in favour of the Kriegsmarine.
Joining me on this episode is Angus Konstam.
Angus is a naval historian and author of The Convoy: HG-76: Taking the Fight to Hitler's U-boats
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124 - Kais: Downed airmen in New Guinea
123 - Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay
122 - Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up
121 - To Defeat The Few: The Luftwaffe's Battle of Britain
120 - The People's Army in the Spanish Civil War
119 - The British Army and the Anti-Locust Campaign
118 - The Codebreakers of Bletchley Park
117 - Information Hunters
116 - Clementine Churchill
115 - To VE Day Through German Eyes
114 - Airborne Chaplains in the Second World War
113 - Sighted Sub, Sank Same
112 - Four Hours of Fury: Operation Varsity
111 - An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge
110 - The P-47 Thunderbolt and 362nd Fighter Group
109 - The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan
108 - The Battle for Hong Kong, 1941
107 - The Battle of the Peaks and Long Stop Hill
106 - Operation Swallow
105 - Case White: The Invasion of Poland, 1939
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