I have been researching the attack on Convoy JW51B by Admiral Hipper and Lutzow on December 31, 1942 for the time period of 9:45 am. I knew that U-354 was nearby but did not know the positon of the U-boat. Roland Berr was kind enough to provide me with this information of U-354's position at 9:45 am. It was grid AC 4633 which converts to approx. 73.27 N and 28.50 E. according to the grid converter at [www.u-boat.info] Now I looked up the position of Convoy JW51B for the time period of 9:45 am. I used the second map down on the page at [www.naval-history.net] entitled Main Destroyer Action Against Hipper Group and noticed that the convoy was near position 73.25 N and 30 E. With these two positions plotted on the map, I measured the distance between them. It is almost 200 KILOMETERS. Can a convoy be seen this far from a u-boat??? This seems to be a little far away. So either the position of the convoy given by [www.naval-history.net] is wrong or the grid converter does not work right ( maybe a different grid converter will work better ) or the position of U-354 is wrong. I doubt that the positon of U-354 is wrong as given by Roland Berr because I have also plotted the position of a different convoy and had the same results.

The second convoy I plotted using the above method was Convoy JW55B with repect to the sinking of the Scharnhorst. Again I used the map found at [www.naval-history.net] entitled Phase One Cruiser Actions and Chase. You will notice the convoy is near 74.00 N and 23.00 E plus or minus 10 nautical miles (close enough for the observation). Again, Roland Berr was kind enough to provide me with the positions of the following U-boats. The U-boat positions are all for December 26, 1943 at 8:00 am. U-277 Grid AC 1778 74.20N 20.30E, U-387 Grid AC 4143 74.03N 20.50E, U-354 Grid AC 4157 73.51N 21.10E, U601 Grid AC 4188 73.33N 21.30E, U-716 Grid AC 4453 73.09N 21.50E, U-957 Grid AC 4491 72.51N 22.10E and U-314 Grid AC 4734 72.27N 22.10E. I used the same grid converter. Plotting all these U-boat positions, you will find that the U-boats were strung out in a nice neat line about 30 kilometers from each other except for two gaps between them. This looks right as they seemed to have followed the instructions given by FdU at the time. See the front page of this website about the Eisenbart Wolfpack Group and the sinking of the Scharnhorst. Now I measured the distance between the wolfpack and the convoy. Again it's out by about 250 KILOMETERS. Wow the distance is even further. Hey these guys must be eating a lot of carrots or something to have their vision improve by that much!!!

I used an Appleworks and gridded both convoys ( ship after ship after ship ) in kilometers to accurately position them on the map. This took a little time and worked well until.........I tried to position the U-boats with respect to the convoys. That's when things fell apart. Can anyone explain why the positions are so far apart between the U-boats and the convoys???? Is the grid converter wrong or are the base reference positions wrong on the maps at Naval History.com or does it have something to do with the time differnce between the British and German time zones (BdU and British Naval reports)????? Even if the naval reports are out by 1 hour, a U-boat can't travel 200 to 250 kilometers per hour. Thank you all in advance, Ed.