No political leader of the time has ever gone back on the official thesis according to which only chance placed the civilian ships of the convoy on the U-Boat route. Only Winston Churchill’s cryptic phrase could lead one to believe that the convoy’s passage on that date was planned as part of Operation Torch. One might therefore think that the “sacrificial convoy” thesis is merely a bold assertion by authors with little credibility. In the last 70 years, less than a dozen historians have dared to assert that convoy SL-125 was indeed a trap set by the Allies for German submarines. Among them are recognised specialists of the Second World War. Some are even official historians of British or Canadian maritime history. Others are renowned writers who have always drawn on the best sources for their stories.
1- Historian Shawn Cafferky worked for almost 20 years for the Directorate of History and Heritage at the Department of National Defence in Ottawa. This young academic, who died prematurely, was working on the Official History of the Royal Canadian Navy. He also taught at the Royal Military College of Canada and wrote a book that is particularly rich in information on Operation Torch (“A useful lot, these Canadian ships” – The Royal Canadian Navy and Operation Torch, 1942-1943). While he does not take sides, Cafferky explains in detail how convoy SL-125 diverted German forces from the main objective: « The bulk of the British troops in Operation Torch set sail from Loch Ewe on 25 October 1942 for Oran and Algiers. Accompanied by the assault convoys KMS-1 and KMF-1, which left at almost the same time, KMS-2 made its way far out to sea at 26°W longitude. Despite this deceptive course, enemy aircraft and submarines could have seen the convoy many times, but luckily the majority of the Battleaxe submarines were busy attacking convoy SL-125 which was on its way back to Europe. This allowed the Operation Torch convoys to reach the Straits of Gibraltar without damage ». Schawn Cafferky does not say that convoy SL-125 deliberately crossed the path of the German submarines. By referring to the original course of the Operation Torch ships, however, he suggests that it was consciously calculated.
2- Captain Stephen Wentworth Roskill (1 August 1903 – 4 November 1982) was a career Royal Navy officer who served in the Second World War. After his forced retirement for medical reasons, he became the official historian of the Royal Navy from 1949 to 1960. He is now recognised as a prodigious author of books on British maritime history. The War at Sea volume of his History of the Second World War is a landmark work on Operation Torch. The passage about convoy SL 125 corroborates the version of events accepted by most other historians. Roskill writes: « The British maritime forces (of Operation Torch) comprised a total of about 340 ships and each unit was to descend to the latitude of Gibraltar in a set order before crossing the Straits to the east, between 7.30 p.m. on 5 October and 4 a.m. on 7 October. The ocean crossing went smoothly mainly because the only group of submarines in the Gibraltar area had been attracted by chance (fortuitously) by a convoy from Sierra Leone that passed to the east and north of the Allied fleet between 27 and 30 October. While the merchant ships suffered heavy losses, the three groups of the KMS1 and 2 and KMF1 fleet slipped through unharmed. The commander of convoy SL-125 later told the author that this was the first time he had been praised for losing ships ».
3- Other less prestigious authors have taken up the ‘sacrificial convoy’ thesis. Alan Burn, in « The Fighting Commodores », devotes a whole chapter to it entitled « The Bait Convoy ». In « Smithy’s war », the Australian amateur historian Robert Borg recounts the seafaring experiences of a sailor named Leslie George Smith, who was a sailor on the Anglo-Maersk ship that was part of convoy SL 125 and was sunk by the same German submarine as President Doumer, U-604. In the words of his hero, the author also states that « The convoy was sacrificed to enable Operation Torch to be spared the torpedoes of the German submarines ».
4- In an article in the Naval War College Review, Commander John Patch of the US Navy also mentions that the passage of the SL-125 had greatly assisted Operation Torch but that to date no one had been able to prove that it was a deliberate manoeuvre. In « Unexplained mysteries of WWII », the writer William B. Breuer agrees with this theory. The chapter on SL 125 is entitled « A sacrificial ploy ». The author goes so far as to say that the German submarines turned towards the convoy when they had another mission. The author wonders why they had to fight him for days and nights. He also implies that the Allies had led the Germans to believe that this convoy was very important or carrying something important (the interrogation of the sailors of U-604 reveals that the U-boat commanders thought they had stumbled upon “a convoy linking the United States to Africa in preparation for an Allied landing”. They would have taken the convoy of 37 merchant ships for the Anglo-American armada, which numbered 340 and carried more than 100,000 men! This is why they probably attacked the survivors who had thrown themselves into the water in defiance of the Geneva Conventions.
5- In “Les rebelles de la Combattante”, the French author Eddy Florentin, journalist, historian and former Resistance fighter, finally tells of the sinking of several ships of convoy SL-125 and implies very clearly that the latter was a false trail presented to the Germans. On reading this non-exhaustive list, it is surprising to note that only one French author has written on the subject.
