By last week Vichy's loud pretense that there are no Nazis at Dakar had been blown higher than an ack-ack barrage. Home from Africa, huge New York Herald Tribune Correspondent Hiram Blauvelt reported that the Nazis, operating from Dakar, had won a smashing victory in the Battle of the Atlantic.
For months the chief West African port of call for British supply ships was the great harbor of Freetown, 570 miles southeast of Dakar. There the ships were gathered into convoys for the rest of the journey to Britain. Nazi submarines slinking out from Dakar sank so much British shipping around...