January 2024 Updates

It’s debtable whether or not the Germans ever came close to winning the tonnage war in World War II. I personally don’t think so but more numbers would need to be collected including the construction records of Allied shipyards not in North America as well as a determination of how much shpping tonnage Britain would have needed to stay alive. However, after collecting the merchant shipping tonnage built by Canada and the United States during the Second World War and comparing that to what I have for Allied merchant shipping losses, it doesn’t seem likely. These 2 countries alone accounted for 37.7 million gross registered tons of shipping. What this number does not account for is the amount of shipping that became available to the Allies when the United States entered the war as well as any of the new construction that happened outside of North America. That, obviously, requires a bit more work to include.

In the meantime, the first chart above compares the cumulative gains (new construction) and losses for the Allies for each month of the war. The two North American countries began to build ships faster than they could be sunk in Spetember, 1942 when 713,204 tons of new merchant shipping was delivered while 500,881 tons was lost due to war. With one exception, in every month from then on until the end of the war, Canada and the United States (the latter accounting for 93% of total war time production) easily replaced Allied losses. The German submarine arm’s Black May in which 41 of its boats were lost had yet to happen and was just the final nail in the coffin for the Germans.

Even so, it wasn’t until December 1943 that all Allied shipping losses since the beginning of the war were replaced with new construction (below).

Danish Shipping Losses in World War II

The Danish merchant fleet’s history is varied with ships at one time being laid up, in neutral, Allied and Axis hands. Totaling 868,797 tons when the war began on September 1, 1939, by the end of the war it had been reduced by 44%.

The Sankey diagram explains the demise of the Danish merchant fleet’s in World War II.

Compare Denmark to Belgium.

August 2023 Updates

A slow month for updates.

Updates for this month:

23 records edited (additional links, corrections)
5 records moved to better locations
1 record deleted
3 new additions

The following vessels were added to the database:

Astrid, sunk September 17, 1942
Hans Broge, sunk June 15, 1941
Snark, sunk February 24, 1942 off Nouméa (read about it on Instagram)

*Snark*, when it was stilled named *Olympia*

Belgian Merchant Shipping Losses in World War II

*The Belgian merchant ship Bruxelles, 5,085 tons, sunk on June 9, 1942*

Belgium was a relatively minor player in the Second World War, both on land and on the sea. At the start of the war in September 1939, it boasted a merchant fleet of only 472,182 tons – well behind the UK, the undisputed world leader in shipping at the time with 16.6 million tons. In the period of September 1939 to May 1940 before Belgium was invaded by the Germans and the country joined the Allied cause it had already lost close 30,000 tons of shipping to accidents, mines and German torpedoes (even though it was officially neutral).

When Belgium surrendered to the Germans on May 28, 1940 only a small part of its merchant fleet fell into German hands – about 71,000 tons – while the majority – 358,000 tons – continued to serve the Allies. The Germans steadily whittled away at this disadvantage throughout the war so that by the end of the war, only about 108,000 tons of Belgian shipping in Allied control remained afloat. Of the 71,000 tons the Germans had captured, only 21,000 tons managed to survive the war. In the end, only 27% of the Belgian merchant fleet that existed at the start of the war survived to the end.

The sankey chart below provides a breakdown of the status of the Belgian fleet during the course of the war.

June 2023 Updates

Updates for the month:

82 records edited (additional links, spelling corrections)
150 records moved to better locations
5 records deleted
25 new additions

The following vessels were added to the database:

Carry On, sunk 17 December 1940, in the Thames Estuary
Duolio Cesare, sunk 10 July 1944, at Trieste – see it and read about it on Instagram
V 16 Filuccio, sunk 17 September 1941, west of Tripoli
Frankfurt, sunk 22 March 1945, in the Baltic Sea
Giorgio, sunk 24 Mrch 1943, off the west end of Sicily
Giovanni delle Bande Nore, sunk 5 May 1943, off the west end of Sicily
Giudecca, sunk 13 October 1944, near Venice
Giuseppe e Maria, sunk 9 November 1940, off the southern tip of Sicily
Grethe Mortensen, sunk 7 November 1944, off the Thames Estuary
No 56, Barometr, sunk 28 August 1941, in the Gulf of Finland
No 71 Krab, sunk 28 August 1941, in the Gulf of Finland
Lenin, on 24 June 1941, at Liepaja / Libau
M 1707 Lunenberg, sunk 17 September 1941, off the coast of Latvia
Monte Olivia, 3 April 1945, at Kiel – see it and read about it on Instagram
New York, sunk 3 April 1945, at Kiel – see it and read about it on Instagram
Østbornholm, sunk 8 May 1945, at Bornholm – see it and read about it on Instgram
Sabaudia, sunk 7 July 1944, at Trieste – see it and read about it on Instagram
Schiffbek, sunk 6 November 1944, off the coast of Estonia
VT-512 Tobol, sunk 28 August, 1941, in the Gulf of Finland
Tsiklon, sunk 28 August 1941, in the Gulf of Finland
Umvoti, sunk 29 July 1940, near Folkestone
Yakov Sverdlov, sunk 28 August 1941, in the Gulf of Finland
TN-12, sunk 28 August 1941, in the Gulf of Finland
T-202, sunk 15 August 1941, in the Gulf of Finland
T-203 Patron, sunk 25 October 1941, in the Gulf of Finland

Visit the dashboard to see them all! Or use the Find-A-Ship app.

A Ticking Time Bomb

The Lethal Legacy of Wrecks from World War II

This 52 minute documentary sheds light why it is good to know where the sunken ships of the Second World War are. Though it grossly underestimates the number of sunken vessels as a result of that conflict (8,500 over 400 tons – in reality that number is around 12,800), it is a wonderful blend of mapping, history and environmental science that illuminates the value of my project of mapping the location of every ship sunk in the Second World War.