lo6 CHALLENGER 



Commander Jenks as Escort Commander. The trooper was s.s. 

 Anselm, said to be sailing in this special convoy as she had proved 

 too slow to sail with an earlier one which had just left. She 

 carried 1400 troops, the greater proportion of whom were R.A.F. 

 personnel. 



At midnight on Simday, 29th June, this little convoy sailed out 

 of the Clyde, bound for Bathurst in the Gambia River. A Welling- 

 ton bomber joined as air escort off the north coast of Ireland, but 

 this heartening support had soon to leave as they steamed west- 

 ward towards mid- Atlantic. 



Commander Jenks had organised his force as follows : Challenger 

 in the centre with Anselm following astern ; ahead and on either 

 flank a corvette formed an effective screen as the little ships 

 searched with their asdic equipment for any contact with a sub- 

 marine. When well out into the Atlantic the leading corvette 

 signalled that her asdic had broken down and could not be re- 

 paired with the resources available ; this was disastrous news and 

 meant a complete re-disposition of the force as the van was no 

 longer protected from submarine attack. This corvette was 

 ordered to the rear and the remaining two corvettes moved further 

 forward on the flanks to cover each bow. 



The Battle of the Atlantic was now moving rapidly towards its 

 peak. By obtaining radio bearings of U-boat transmissions and by 

 other intelligence methods the Admiralty were able to form quite 

 a good idea of the whereabouts of a number of the U-boats at 

 sea in the Atlantic, and twice daily they issued a coded situation 

 report known as the 'Sitrep', which gave convoys this vital in- 

 formation. Spread out in the surveying chartroom below the 

 bridge was a chart of the Atlantic showing the position of the 

 vulnerable little convoy and the suspected positions of the U- 

 boats as given in the 'Sitreps'. Never was any chart on this table 

 scanned as keenly as it was by the small group of officers as each 

 'Sitrep' was being plotted ; the little swastikas, which represented 

 U-boats, came nearer and nearer to the course of the convoy as 

 it crawled its way southwards across the Atlantic. 



There was no avoiding action to be taken at a speed of i o knots, 

 nor was it certain that the 'Sitreps' could be relied upon as highly 

 accurate. There was nothing for it but to keep going, zig-zagging 

 by day and urging the asdic operators and bridge look-outs to 



