Last week's compilation of ship sinkings showed that from Jan. 1, 1942 to Oct. 1, 490 Allied ships had been sunk in the western and south Atlantic by Axis submarines; from Oct. 1 to Dec. 20 only 65 more. This notable success in the Battle of the Atlantic was not gained in any single thrilling action. The following account of the labors of a U.S. convoy vessel (given with a fictitious name) tells something of how that success has been won:
The U.S.S. Angry turned her snub, sea-battered nose out into the grey wilderness of wintry Atlantic. Green water pounded the corvette's narrow decks, doused her open bridge where the hooded skipper stood squinting into the mist. Now and then he gave a quiet command for relay to engine room, signalmen and the helmsman below. The Angry was heading back to sea, guarding another convoy of rusty freighters, laden with men and supplies for distant battlefronts.
As the sea grew rougher, Lieut. Commander Noah Adair, the Angry's captain, pulled his weatherproof hood tighter over his red thatch, drew the voluminous coat closer around his tall, lanky frame. The bridge, where he stood swaying with the ship's roll, was open to rain, wind and spray, except for a strip of canvas lashed to the rail and another strip overhead.
Beside the bridge, Signalman 1st Class Ralph Moore, pea jacket buttoned tight, watch cap pulled down over his ears, fiddled with a blinker signal. Beating his spray-flecked gloves together for warmth, Moore reported a destroyer's signal to take up position in the escort.
"Right rudder 20°," ordered the captain for relay to the helmsman. Over a speaking tube came the Iowa-sharp voice of John ("Shanghai") Frajman, Machinist's Mate 2nd Class: "Engines making one-oh-two revolutions, sir."
Captain Adair nodded, ducked to miss a bath of chilling spray.
Since May 14, when the first coastal convoy moved from a U.S. port with the Angry among its escort, the Angry had, helped shepherd 22 convoys to their secret destinations through seas where submarines hid. Two days out of every three, the Angry had been at sea. To bigger ships, to men in situations more readily recognizable as heroic, had gone the headlines and the medals. The Angry's first task was to get each supply-chocked freighter through to safety; its second, to sink U-boats.
Sturdy, well armed, and round-bottomed to wallow over the waves rather than cut through them, the Angry is a queer duck to be flying a U.S. ensign. Her 206-ft. length is shorter than a destroyer's, longer than most cutters'. In the Royal Navy, for which she was built in 1940, she was classed as a corvette. When Britain gave the ship and five others like her to the U.S. last March, the U.S. Navy quickly changed her name and classed her with gunboats, since the U.S. has no corvette class.