Outcome
The double battle had involved 90 ships, and 16 escort ships (though not all were present at the same time), 22 merchant ships were sunk (13 from HX229 and 9 from SC122), a loss of 146,000 tons. More than 300 merchant seaman died.
In total, 38 U-boats had taken part (though throughout the battle not all had been in contact); one U-boat had been lost with its entire crew.
This was the largest convoy battle of the Atlantic campaign, and was, for the allies, the crisis point of the whole campaign. A Royal Navy report later concluded “ The Germans never came so near to disrupting communications between the New World and the Old as in the first twenty days of March 1943”; and "It appeared possible that we should not be able to regard convoy as an effective system of defence".
Read more about this topic: Convoys HX 229/SC 122
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