Convoy HG-76
Taking the fight to Hitler’s U-boats during the Battle of the Atlantic had few better practitioners than one Royal Navy officer. By Angus Konstam.
At 4pm on Sunday 14 December 1941, the homeward-bound Convoy HG-76 began leaving Gibraltar Bay. By 5.30pm it was heading west into the Atlantic at 7 ½ knots, at the start of its 2,000 mile voyage to Liverpool. Its 32 merchant ships were formed up into a neat rectangle of ships, some four miles across and a mile deep. It would stay in this formation until it reached port. Carried in the holds of these merchantmen were all the things that Britain needed to stay in the fight, everything from iron ore to Spanish onions. It was just one of hundreds of similar wartime convoys. However, three things made HG-76 a little special.
