It is July 30th, 1943.

Bay of Bisque, just after dawn.

Commander Frederick John Walker stands on the bridge of HMS Starling wearing white shorts, a cricket shirt, and binoculars around his neck.

His ship is one of six British sloops hunting German hubot in waters the creeks marine considers their own.

The second support group has been at sea for weeks.

Walker has barely slept.

He lives on cornered beef sandwiches and cocoa and his crews joke that he can smell a yubot from 20 m.

At 08 10 hours, the radio operator reports three contacts on the surface heading southwest at high speed.

Walker grabs his glasses.

Three submarines.
image
Two of them are the big ones.

Type 14 milk cows, the massive supply submarines that refuel the wolf packs.

If he can sink them, he can starve half the yubot in the Atlantic.

He signals his group, General Chase.

Six sloops open their throttles and charge.

The Ubot see them coming and dive frantically, but Starling’s guns are already firing, damaging U462 before she can get under.

She wallows at the surface, unable to submerge.

Walker’s ships converge.

Depth charges erupt around her.

U462 surfaces one final time.

Her crew scrambling onto the deck.

Starling and Wild Goose hammer her with gunfire until she goes down.

12 mi away, U504 surfaces, also crippled.

Walker’s ships finish her off.

The third submarine U461 limps east, damaged and slow.

An Australian Sunderland flying boat spots her and drops depth charges.

She sinks with all hands.

Three submarines destroyed in a single morning.

The Bay of Bisque runs red.

When Walker’s ships return to Gladstone dock in Liverpool, the docks are lined with cheering crowds.

The first lord of the admiral himself is waiting on the pier.

Walker steps off stling, exhausted, his face lined with salt and sleeplessness.

A staff officer intercepts him before he reaches his wife.

The officer hands him a telegram.

Walker reads it in silence.

His eldest son, Subleutenant Timothy Walker, has been killed.

HMS Paththeon lost in the Mediterranean.

No survivors.

Walker folds the telegram, puts it in his pocket, and reports to the admiral officer.

There are questions about the patrol, technical details, kill confirmations.

He answers everyone.

He does not mention his son.

This is Captain Frederick John Walker.

The Royal Navy once declared him lacking in powers of leadership.

They passed him over for promotion.

They assigned him to dead end postings.

They nearly forced him into early retirement.

And then the war came and he became the deadliest submarine hunter in history.

20 confirmed yubot kills under his direct command, more than any other Allied officer.

He invented the tactics that won the Battle of the Atlantic.

He worked himself literally to death hunting the enemy, but the Navy almost threw him away.

This is the story of how the man they rejected saved Britain.

Frederick John Walker is born on June 3rd, 1896 in Plymouth, England.

His father, Frederick Murray Walker, is a Royal Navy commander.

His mother, Lucy Selena Scriven, comes from a respectable family.

Young Frederick, everyone will call him Johnny after the whiskey, grows up in a naval household where the service is everything and tradition is law.

In 1909, at 13 years old, he enters the Royal Naval College at Osborne on the aisle of white, then transfers to Dartmouth.

He excels.

He finishes fourth in his class in April 1913.

He wins the King’s Medal for academic achievement.

He boxes.

He plays rugby.

His instructors note him as a promising young officer with exceptional ability.

On January 15th, 1914, Midshipman Walker receives his first posting, HMS Ajax, a battleship of the Second Battle Squadron.

He is 17 years old.

8 months later, Britain declares war on Germany.

Walker serves through the First World War on destroyers.

HMS Mermaid in 1916.

HMS Sarpedon in 1917.

He earns his promotion to lieutenant in August 1917 at 21.

He sees convoy duty.

He sees anti-ubmarine patrols.

He sees the futility of trying to protect merchant ships from an enemy you cannot see, cannot track, and cannot kill.

The war ends.

Walker has survived.

He marries Jessica Eileene Ryder Stoart on a date the records do not specify.

Sometime in the early 1920s, they will have three sons and a daughter.

He loves his family.

He writes them letters from sea about domestic matters, about gardens, about his longing for retirement.

But retirement is decades away.

And in 1924, the Royal Navy establishes HMS Osprey, the new anti-ubmarine warfare training school on the aisle of Portland.

Walker volunteers for the course.

This is where his career begins to diverge from his peers.

In the Royal Navy of the 1920s and 1930s, anti-ubmarine warfare is not glamorous.

It is not a path to promotion.

The officers who rise are gunnery specialists, torpedo experts, men who command cruisers and battleships, not the ones who chase invisible enemies with primitive sonar equipment in rough seas.

Walker does not care.

He becomes obsessed with the problem.

How do you find a submarine? How do you track it? How do you kill it before it kills you? He studies tactics.

He runs exercises.

He develops theories that nobody in the Admiral wants to hear.

In May 1933, he’s promoted to commander, late in the zone, meaning he was passed over multiple times before finally making the rank.

He takes command of HMS Shikari, a First World War destroyer.

In December 1933, he is given HMS Fulmouth, a Shawham class sloop based on the China station.

This is where the wheels come off.

Walker hates Hong Kong.

He hates the ceremonial duties.

He hates being the admiral’s yacht, the ship that fies senior officers around and hosts diplomatic parties.

He makes his feelings abundantly clear.

He requests transfers to smaller ships, to patrol duties, to anything that will let him do real work instead of playing chauffeur.

His fitness reports from this period are scathing.

His superiors note his lack of powers of leadership.

They describe him as difficult, outspoken, unsuited for high command.

These reports follow him for years.

In April 1937, he’s recalled to Britain and appointed experimental commander at HMS Osprey, the anti-ubmarine school.

This is a technical posting, not a command.

It is the kind of job you give an officer whose career has stalled.

Walker is 41 years old.

He has not been promoted since 1933.

He’s falling behind his peers.

And then in September 1939, Germany invades Poland.

Britain declares war on September 3rd, 1939.

The Royal Navy is desperately short of anti-ubmarine specialists.

Walker is one of the few officers in the service who has spent years studying the problem.

He is the experimental commander at the Premier ASW training facility.

He should be invaluable.

Instead, he’s appointed operation staff officer to Vice Admiral Sertram Ramsey.

A desk job, planning, coordination, no command.

Walker watches from Dover as the war unfolds.

In the first 3 months, German submarines sink over 400,000 tons of merchant shipping, losing only nine Ubot.

The ratio is catastrophic.

Britain is being strangled.

In June 1940, the Royal Navy loses ships, lifting the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk.

That same month, Yubot sink almost 600,000 tons more.

At this rate, the merchant fleet will be destroyed.

Within 2 years, Britain will starve.

Walker has ideas.

Aggressive convoy protection, coordinated group tactics, pre-arranged attack codes, hunting yubot instead of just defending ships.

He writes reports.

He submits proposals.

The admiralty nods politely and files them.

He does not get command.

Months pass.

Other officers, younger, less experienced, are given escort groups.

Walker remains at his desk.

His fitness reports still haunt him, lacking in powers of leadership.

The phrase follows him like a curse.

By mid 1941, Britain is losing the Battle of the Atlantic.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill will later write, “The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the Yubot peril.

In October 1941, someone finally takes a chance on Walker.

He is given command of HMS Stalk, a 1,200 ton bittenclass sloop.

More importantly, he is given command of the 36th escort group, two sloops, stalk and deptford, and seven corvettes, small ships, slow ships, but his ships.

Walker is 45 years old.

This is his first combat command, and he has one chance to prove that his ideas work.

If he fails, his career is over.

Walker drills his group relentlessly at shore facilities at sea.

He teaches them his system of pre-arranged codes, simple signals that allow ships to coordinate attacks without long radio transmissions.

He teaches them how to work together, how to keep a yubot in sonar contact while other ships maneuver for the kill.

The official admiral doctrine states, “The job of a convoy escort is to get the convoy from A to B without too much in the way of losses.” Walker’s doctrine states, “The object is to destroy yubot, particularly those which menace our convoys.

The difference matters.” In November 1941, Walker takes his group to Jibralta with convoy OG76.

During exercises there, his Corvette HMS Maragolds U433.

It is the 36th escort group’s first kill.

Walker runs more drills.

On December 14th, 1941, convoy HG76 sails from Gibraltar, bound for Liverpool.

32 merchant ships carrying iron ore, ammunition, rock and tomatoes, Spanish onions, everything wartime Britain desperately needs.

The escort is unusually strong.

Walker’s 36th escort group, three destroyers, Blankny Stanley Xmore, two more sloops, Foe Black Swan, four more corvettes, and critically HMS Audacity, the Royal Navy’s first escort carrier.

A converted German cargo ship carrying six Grman Mlet fighters, 17 warships total.

German agents in Spain report the convoys composition and departure time to Yubot command.

Admiral Carl Dunitz assembles group of sir Albera seven yubot reinforced to 10.

They form a patrol line southwest of Cape St.

Vincent and wait.

The convoy passes through the patrol line undetected on the night of December 15th.

Audacity’s aircraft and RAF Coastal Command Swordfish keep the Yubot submerged, unable to shadow.

But on December 17th, U131 gains contact.

The battle begins.

Walker’s tactics are revolutionary.

Instead of huddling around the convoy, his escorts range out up to 30 m, hunting yubot before they can attack.

The Admiral Ty doctrine says this is dangerous.

It leaves the convoy exposed.

Walker says the best defense is killing the enemy.

December 17th, U131 closes on the convoy.

Audacity’s martlets spot her on the surface.

Walker converges Stalk Pensman and three destroyers.

U131 dives.

The ships coordinate.

They hold her in sonar contact.

They attack in sequence, keeping her pinned.

After hours of depth charging, U131 is forced to the surface.

She fights back, shooting down one of the martlets.

Stalk and Pensman finish her with gunfire.

First kill.

December 18th.

The escorts spot U434 on the surface at dawn.

Destroyer HMES.

Blankney charges and rams her, crushing her hull.

U434 sinks.

Blanknne is damaged and forced to return to Gibraltar.

Second kill.

The Ubot keep coming.

Destroyer HMS Stanley spots U.

574 a stern of the convoy.

On the night of December 18th, she attacks.

U574 fires back, torpedoing Stanley.

The destroyer sinks with heavy loss of life, but Walker’s own ship, HMS Stalk, has heard the explosions and is already closing.

Stalk depth charges U574, then rams her.

The collision rips open the yubot’s pressure hull.

She surfaces.

Crew scrambling onto the deck.

Stalks guns open fire.

U574 goes down.

Third kill.

The Admiral T doctrine would have withdrawn after these losses.

Walker keeps hunting.

December 21st.

The convoy is within 600 m of Britain.

Only three Ubot remain in contact.

U 567 U71 U751.

But one of them is commanded by Engelber Endras, the third highest scoring Yubotase in the Creeks Marine.

Dunit orders the final attack.

That night, U567 torpedoes the merchant ship Anavore.

She sinks.

Moments later, Endras lines up HMS Audacity.

The escort carrier is zigzagging behind the convoy without her destroyers.

U567 fires three torpedoes.

All three hit.

Audacity capsizes and sinks.

Walker’s escorts counterattack.

Corvettes Maragold, Vetch, and Samfire pummel the area with depth charges.

HMS Depford spots a yubot on the surface and attacks.

The yubot dives.

Depford drops a full pattern.

In the chaos, Depford collides with Stalk, damaging both ships.

Postwar analysis reveals that Depford has just sunk U567.

Endrris and his entire crew are dead.

Fourth kill.

On December 23rd, convoy HG76 reaches Liverpool.

30 ships arrived safely.

Two were lost.

The Royal Navy lost Audacity and Stanley, but the Creeks Marine lost five Ubot.

Four confirmed at the time.

U567 confirmed after the war, including one of their top aces.

Is the first time heavy losses have been inflicted on an attacking Yubot pack.

The Admiral T declares it an outstanding victory.

Admiral Donut calls it a grievous blow.

He conceals Indras’s death from his Yubot crews for weeks to avoid damaging morale.

Walker is awarded the Distinguished Service Order on January 6th, 1942.

For daring, skill, and determination while escorting to this country a valuable convoy in the face of relentless attacks from the enemy, during which three of their submarines were sunk and two aircraft destroyed by our forces.

In June 1942, he’s promoted to captain.

His seniority is backdated to June 30th, 1942.

It is not a full vindication.

His lost years are not restored, but it is recognition.

And then, inexplicably, in October 1942, the Navy takes him off the ships.

He’s appointed Captain D.

Liverpool, a shore job coordinating destroyer operations.

After 18 months of the most successful anti-ubmarine command of the war, they put him back at a desk.

Walker nearly breaks.

Walker spends months at Liverpool coordinating operations he’s not allowed to lead.

He watches younger captains take ships to sea.

He writes reports.

He attends meetings.

He is 46 years old and rotting ashore.

But someone at Western Approaches Command is paying attention.

In early 1943, Admiral Sir Max Horton takes command of Western approaches.

Horton is a former submarine commander who understands the Yubot threat better than most.

He reviews Walker’s record, the tactics, the kills, the HG76 victory, and sees what the fitness reports missed.

Horton calls Walker to his office and asks a question.

What would you need to really hunt Ubot? Walker’s answer is immediate.

Six modern sloops, the best sonar and radar equipment.

A roving commission.

No responsibility for close convoy escort.

Freedom to hunt submarines wherever intelligence or opportunity takes them.

A support group, not an escort group.

Horton agrees.

In April 1943, Walker is given command of the second escort support group based at Gladstone Dock B.

Six Black Swanclass sloops, HMS Starling, Walker’s flagship, Wild Goose, Signet, Ren, Woodpecker, and Kite.

Fast ships, modern ships.

Walker requests as many of his old stalk crew as possible and gets nearly half of them.

He drills them obsessively.

He perfects his creeping attack tactic.

Two ships working together.

One stays stationary, holding the yubot in sonar contact.

The other creeps forward silently without using its own sonar, guided by radio directions from the first ship.

When positioned directly over the target, the attacking ship drops depth charges.

The yubot never hears the second ship coming.

He develops operation plaster, a barrage attack where three ships in line of breast drop depth charges in a coordinated pattern, blanketing an area so the yubot cannot evade no matter which direction it turns.

He teaches his crews to hunt submarines to exhaustion, staying on contact for hours, days if necessary, until the yubot’s batteries die and it is forced to surface.

And he introduces one eccentric touch.

When the second support group returns to port, Starling’s Tanoi plays a hunting we will go at full volume.

The song echoes across the Liverpool docks.

Other Royal Navy ships start copying it.

It becomes a symbol, the change from defenders to hunters.

In May 1943, the second support group goes to sea.

Their first patrol is uneventful, but on June 2nd, 1943, they intercept a Yubot signal from U202, a veteran submarine returning from dropping German spies on Long Island.

The second group homes in.

U202 dives.

Stalin gains sonar contact.

Walker directs from his specially built platform on the bridge wearing his white shorts and cricket shirt.

His crews drop 86 depth charges in the first attack, driving you 202 down to 800 ft.

British sonar operators can hear the rush of high pressure air as the submarine tries to stabilize.

Walker keeps attacking hour after hour.

The yubot commander GAP poser is one of the most experienced in the creeks marine.

He fights brilliantly, evading, going deep, releasing decoys.

It does not matter.

Walker never loses contact.

After 17 hours, U202 surfaces.

Crew scrambling out.

Starling’s guns finish her.

First kill of the new group.

On June 24th, the second support group encounters U119 in the Bay of Bisque.

Walker orders a creeping attack.

Stalin holds contact while wild goose creeps in.

Depth charges.

U 119 surfaces.

Stling rams her, crushing her bow.

U 119 sinks.

Walker’s ship is damaged and forced to return to port.

Walker refuses to go with her.

He transfers his flag to Wild Goose and stays with the group.

The same day they sink U449 two Yubot in one day.

On July 30th, 1943, the group intercepts three Ubot on the surface.

The action described in the cold open.

They sink U462, U504, and contribute to the destruction of U461 by an Australian Sunderland.

Three submarines destroyed in one morning.

Walker returns to Liverpool in triumph.

Crowds line the docks.

The first lord of the admiral is there to greet him and the staff officer hands him the telegram about his son.

Subie Lieutenant Timothy Walker was serving on HMS Paththeon, a Paththeon class submarine.

She left Malta on July 22nd, 1943 for a patrol in the southern Adriatic.

She was signaled on August 6th to leave her patrol area and proceed to Beirut.

She never acknowledged the signal.

She never arrived.

65 men lost, including Walker’s eldest son.

most likely cause a naval mine near Bryesi.

Walker puts the telegram in his pocket and goes back to work.

In November 1943, the second support group sinks U226 and U842 during operations around convoy HX264.

In January 1944, Walker takes his group to sea for what will become the most devastating anti-ubmarine patrol of the entire war.

The patrol lasts 27 days from January 31st to February 26th, 1944.

During that time, 12 large Atlantic convoys passed safely to their destinations, and Walker’s group sinks six Ubot.

January 31st, 1944.

HMS Wild Goose gains contact on U592 southwest of Ireland.

Walker directs a creeping attack.

Wild Goose and Magpie coordinate.

U592 is destroyed quickly.

February 9th, 1944.

This is the day Walker surpasses himself.

At 0615 hours, Wild Goose detects a yubot 10 m from Homewoodbound Convoy Cell 147.

Walker orders Staling to join her.

They begin a creeping attack on U734 that lasts 3 hours and 25 minutes.

Depth charge after depth charge.

The Yubot commander is skilled and stubborn.

Walker is more stubborn.

At 0940, U734 surfaces.

Gunfire finishes her.

At almost the same time, 0600 hours, HMS Kite sights.

U238 emerging from the mist 800 yd away.

U238 dives immediately.

Kite pursues.

The hunt stretches for hours.

Kite expends almost all her depth charges.

The Ubot is elusive, well-handled.

Then Starling and Wild Goose arrive from their earlier victory.

Walker directs Magpie in a creeping attack.

Hedgehog Salvo depth charges.

U238 is destroyed.

Meanwhile, at 0620 hours, HMS Woodpecker and Ren have detected U762.

They begin their own creeping attack.

Stling finishes with U238 and races to join them.

After hours of coordinated depth charging, U762 is forced to the surface.

Wild Goose rams her.

Gunfire.

U762 sinks.

Three Ubot destroyed in 15 hours.

The group barely pauses.

February 11th, Starling, Wild Goose, and Woodpecker gain contact on U424.

They conduct a prolonged creeping attack.

U424 is destroyed after hours of depth charging.

February 19th.

The second support group detects U264.

They pursue for hours.

Walker’s ships drop pattern after pattern.

10 charges, 26 charges, another 26.

The Ubot’s lights fail.

High-press airlines fracture.

The diesel engines are shaken from their mounts.

Water enters through a damaged propeller shaft.

The crew tries to tighten the gland, which causes overheating and fills the after compartment with smoke.

U264 surfaces.

Stalling and Woodpecker finish her with gunfire.

February 20th.

HMS Woodpecker is torpedoed by an acoustic homing torpedo.

Her stern is blown off.

For seven days, Walker’s ships fight to tow her home through a storm.

On February 27th, she capsizes and sinks.

Every single member of her crew is saved.

Six Ubot destroyed.

One ship lost, but zero casualties.

When the second support group returns to Liverpool, the city erupts.

Crowds pack the docks.

The first Lord of the Admiral T personally greets Walker and his captains.

Walker’s seniority as captain is backdated again, this time to June 30th, 1940, erasing two full years of the delays that plagued his early career.

He’s awarded a second bar to his DSO.

The official citation reads, “For outstanding leadership, skill, and determination in HM ships, stalling Wild Goose, Kite, Woodpecker, and Magpie in the destruction of six Yubot in the course of operations covering the passage of convoys.

Between October 1941 and February 1944, the ships under Captain Frederick John Walker’s command have sunk 15 confirmed Hubot.

No other Allied commander comes close, but the war is not over, and Walker is already burning out.

In March 1944, the second support group escorts Arctic convoy JW58 to Mman.

49 merchant ships.

They sink U961, U360, and U288.

Not a single merchant ship is lost.

In May 1944, Walker receives intelligence that USS Donald, an American destroyer, has been torpedoed by U473 200 m away.

Walker makes an inspired calculation of where the yubot will go and takes his group there.

After a three-day search, they gain contact.

They hunt U473 to exhaustion and destruction.

On June 6th, 1944, D-Day, the Allied invasion of Normandy begins.

Walker’s second support group is assigned to protect the invasion fleet from Yubot attack.

For 2 weeks, Walker’s ships patrol the western approaches.

Yubot are ordered to attack the invasion at all costs.

15 Ubot are destroyed attempting to reach the English Channel.

Eight allied ships are sunk.

Not one Ubot gets past Walker’s group.

He is on the bridge continuously, barely sleeping, surviving on cocoa and corned beef sandwiches.

His crews watch him with growing concern.

He has lost weight.

His face is drawn.

He takes no rest.

In May, Admiral Horton had informed Walker that he was to take a two-month leave starting in August.

After that, he would be trained in aircraft carrier operations, then promoted to flag rank, rear admiral, and given command of a carrier task force for deployment to the Pacific.

Walker is being groomed for the highest levels of command.

The man once declared lacking in powers of leadership is being offered an Admiral stars.

On June 13th, 1944, he is awarded a third bar to his DSO.

The citation specifically notes his outstanding leadership in destroying six yubot in one patrol.

He returns to Liverpool exhausted.

His wife Eileene begs him to rest.

He tells her he will after one more patrol.

On July 7th, 1944, Walker suffers a cerebral thrombosis aboard HMS Starling, a stroke.

He is rushed to the Royal Naval Hospital at Seforth Murzyside.

He dies 2 days later on July 9th, 1944 at 2:00 a.m.

He is 48 years old.

The cause of death is officially listed as cerebral thrombosis.

But everyone who served with him knows the truth.

The medics call it a stroke.

His crews call it exhaustion.

His biographer will call it dedication.

Captain Frederick John Walker worked himself to death hunting Ubot.

The second support group is at sea when the Admiral T signal arrives.

The Admiral T regrets to inform you of the death of your senior officer, Captain FJ Walker, which took place at 2 a.m.

today.

The ships are stunned.

Commander Deegis, Walker’s second in command, takes over the group.

The crews grieve, but they continue the patrol.

Walker would have wanted it that way.

On July 11th, 1944, Walker’s funeral is held at Liverpool Cathedral with full naval honors.

Over 1,000 people attend, including representatives from all the armed forces.

A naval procession escorts his coffin through the streets of Liverpool to the peer head by the river Murzy.

Most of Walker’s own officers and crew cannot attend.

They are still at sea hunting yubot.

The coffin is embarked aboard HMS Hesperis.

Ironically, the same ship that buried him would later become famous as the ship described in Longfellow’s poem about shipwreck and loss.

Walker is buried at sea in Liverpool Bay.

He receives aostumous mention in dispatches on August 1st, 1944 for actions against U473.

The final accounting is staggering.

Captain Frederick John Walker’s ships sank at least 20 confirmed Yubot during his commands.

Some sources count as many as 23 of shared kills, and probable kills are included.

The second support group alone sank 23 Ubot over its entire wartime service, 15 while Walker commanded it.

HMS Starling, Walker’s flagship, participated in 14 Yubot kills, more than any other single ship of any nation in any war.

His creeping attack tactic was adopted throughout the Royal Navy and taught at every anti-ubmarine school.

It remained in use throughout the Battle of the Atlantic.

No Hubot ever survived once Walker’s second support group held it in sonar contact.

He hunted to the death.

After the war, Admiral Sir Max Horton wrote, “Walker was worth a dozen capital ships.” Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery said, “If the army had had a dozen walkers, we would have won the war in half the time.

The Admiral T that once declared him lacking in powers of leadership, backdated his seniority twice to compensate for the years they wasted.

But the recognition came too late.

On October 16th, 1998, a bronze statue of Captain Walker was unveiled at the peer head in Liverpool by Prince Philillip, Duke of Edinburgh.

The sculpture created by Liverpool artist Tom Murphy shows Walker striding forward with binoculars in hand, looking out over the river Murzy toward the Atlantic where he fought.

The statue was funded by the Captain Walker’s old boys association, the veterans who served under him and never forgot.

At Bal Town Hall, a permanent display preserves his legacy.

Battle Enson from his ships.

The General Chase signal flags he used to order the hunt on July 30th, 1943.

The ship’s bell from HMS Starling, which is rung to open council meetings.

Two oil paintings by artist Leslie Humphre show Walker in uniform.

And across the Murzy on the opposite bank sits U534, one of his old enemies, a German type 9C/40 Ubot raised from the seabed and placed on permanent display.

Walker’s statue looks directly at it.

Hunter and prey forever facing each other across the water.

The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest continuous military campaign of World War II, running from September 1939 to May 1945.

Over 3,500 merchant ships were sunk.

Over 36,000 Allied merchant seammen died.

Over 783 yubot were destroyed out of approximately 1,200 built.

Over 30,000 German submariners were killed, a 75% casualty rate, the highest of any branch of any military in the war.

Winston Churchill wrote, “The Battle of the Atlantic was the dominating factor all through the war.

Never for one moment could we forget that everything happening elsewhere, on land, at sea, or in the air, depended ultimately on its outcome.

If the Ubot had won, Britain would have starved.

The Allied invasion of Europe would have been impossible.

The war would have been lost.

Frederick John Walker, the officer once passed over for promotion, once deemed unfit for leadership, destroyed more Yubot than any other commander on either side.

He turned the tide.

His fitness report from the 1930s declared him lacking in powers of leadership.

The men who served under him said he was the finest leader they ever knew.

History sided with the men.

Captain Frederick John Walker died of exhaustion on July 9th, 1944, 11 months before the war in Europe ended.

He never saw the final victory, but he made it possible.

20 yubot sunk.

Tactics that saved thousands of lives.

A legacy that changed naval warfare forever.

The Royal Navy buried him at sea where he belonged.

And Liverpool remembers.

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