U-Boat's Return

Germany's great U-boat fleet had been defeated, but not demolished, in 1942 and 1943. Last week President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill joined in a warning to the United Nations that Adolf Hitler's raiders had again become more active. As Germany had long since lost most of her Atlantic bases, no one thought that the U-boats could repeat their earlier successes (22,000,000 gross tons of merchant shipping sunk in four and a half years). But some ships would be sunk, and Allied seamen would die because the German submarines would not give up.

The joint statement said "reports that U-boat construction has been abandoned are ... untrue." It added a few details: the latest U-boats have some technical improvements (extensible intake and exhaust ducts) which enable them to stay submerged for longer periods, and thus to "penetrate into areas denied to them for the past three years."

Where the Germans were operating in their new and more limited campaign, the joint statement did not say. But from Canada came word that a corvette had been sunk in North Atlantic waters--evidently downed by a German sub.

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