Order of battle for Convoy SC 7 explained

Convoy SC 7 was the seventh of the SC convoys, bound from Sydney, Nova Scotia across the North Atlantic to British ports, mainly Liverpool.^[1] They were called SC as their departure point was designated Sydney, Cape Breton to avoid confusion with Sydney in Australia. The convoys formed part of the battle of the Atlantic during the Second World War. Large numbers of merchant ships travelled with naval escorts to protect against U-boat attacks. Th convoys were often slow, the merchantmen often only being capable of a speed of around and so were particularly vulnerable to attack. This problem was exacerbated by a shortage of suitable escorts from either the Royal Canadian Navy or the Royal Navy early in the war.^[2]

Convoy SC 7 left Sydney on 5 October 1940, consisting of 36 freighters initially escorted by the Canadian armed yacht and the British sloop .^[3] Having seen the convoy out of Canadian waters, Elk turned back on 7 October, leaving the convoy to spend three-quarters of the crossing escorted by Scarborough.^[3] had developed engine problems and also turned back.^[3] The crossing was uneventful, the only casualty being, which straggled behind the convoy and was torpedoed and sunk near Rockall on 16 October by .^[4]

The main convoy was spotted the following day by, which sank .^[5] Further sporadic attacks continued that day and the following, despite the arrival of the sloop and the corvette . The night of 18/19 October saw the use of the wolf pack tactic by the U-boats. Five U-boats;,,, and attacked together, overwhelming the escorts, despite being reinforced by and .^[6] They sank 16 ships in a six-hours, bringing the total to twenty freighters sunk and a total tonnage lost of 79,592 gross registered tons. The U-boats only broke off their attacks to intercept convoy HX 79, which had arrived in the area. They went on to sink a further 12 ships from this convoy, for a total of 28 ships sunk on 18/19 October, making this the deadliest two days of the battle of the Atlantic.^[6] The surviving merchant ships were gathered up by the remaining escorts and brought into port several days later.

Merchant ships

Name	Flag	Cargo	Fate	Date	Lived	Died	Notes
		Wheat	Sunk, *	17 October	25	4	Straggler
		Grain	Sunk, *	19 October	34	17	Convoy commodore's ship
		Steel, timber, aircraft	Sunk, *	18 October	37	0
		Timber	Damaged, Damaged,	18 October 19 October	34	0	Reached port, repaired
Boekelo		Timber	Damaged, Sunk, *	18 October 19 October	25	0	Straggler
Botusk		Timber	Reached port		42	0
		Timber	Damaged,	18 October	55	0	Towed into port
		Pulpwood	Damaged, Sunk, *	19 October 19 October	35	1
SS Convallaria		Pulpwood	Sunk, *	18 October	22	0
		Steel, scrap metal	Reached port		21	0
		Iron ore	Sunk, *	18 October	0	36
Dioni		Grain	Reached port		82	0
		Timber	Reached port		64	0
		Metals, ores	Sunk, *	19 October	35	6
		Pig iron, steel	Sunk, *	19 October	35	3
		Steel, timber, aircraft	Sunk, *	18 October	1	38	Straggler
		Pulpwood	Reached port		12	0
SS Gunborg		Pulpwood	Sunk, *	18 October	23	0
Havørn^[7]		Pit props	Reached port		53	0
Inger Elisabeth^[8]		Pit props	Reached port		44	0
Karlander^[9]		Timber	Reached port		92	0
		Fuel oil	Sunk, *	17 October	39	0
SS Niritos		Sulphur	Sunk, *	18 October	27	1
		Pit props	Sunk, *	17 October	39	0
SS Sedgepool		Wheat	Sunk, *	19 October	36	3
SS Shekatika		Pit props, steel	Damaged,, Sunk, U-123*	19 October	36	0	Joined from convoy SHX 76. 'Romper' (travelling ahead of the convoy)
^[10]		Timber	Sunk, *	19 October	21	0
Sneland I^[11]		Sulphur	Reached port		94	0
		Pit props	Sunk, *	19 October	19	6
		Flour	Reached port		83	0
SS Thalia		Steel, lead, zinc	Sunk, *	19 October	4	22
^[12]		Fuel oil	Reached port		63	0
SS Trevisa		Timber	Sunk, *	16 October	14	7	Straggler. First sinking.
Trident		Steel, timber	Reached port		43	0
Valparaiso		General cargo	Reached port		14	0
		Timber	Returned to port		34	0

Escorts

Name	Class	Navy	With convoy	Notes
			18–21 October
	Armed yacht		5 –7 October
	sloop		18–21 October
	Flower-class corvette		18–21 October	Dispatched with Carsbreck, 18 October
			18–21 October
			5–21 October	Lost contact 17 October, unable to rejoin

U-boats

Name	Commander	Sunk	Damaged	Notes
	Heinrich Liebe	1	1
	Engelbert Endrass	3	0
	Heinrich Bleichrodt	2	0
	Otto Kretschmer	6	1
	Joachim Schepke	0	3
	Fritz Frauenheim	3	1
	Karl-Heinz Moehle	4	0
	Georg-Wilhelm Schulz	1	0

References

• Book: Hague, Arnold . The Allied Convoy System 1939–1945 . 2000 . Chatham . London . 1-86176-147-3.
• Book: Jordan, Roger W. . The World's Merchant Fleets 1939: The Particulars and Wartime Fates of 6,000 Ships . 2006 . 1999 . Chatham/Lionel Leventhal . London . 2nd . 978-1-86176-293-1.
• Book: Woodman, Richard . The Real Cruel Sea: The Merchant Navy in the Battle of the Atlantic 1939–1943 . 2013 . 2004 . John Murray . London . 3rd (repr.) Pen & Sword Maritime, Barnsley . 978-1-84884-415-5.

Further reading

• Book: Lund . Paul . Ludlam . Harry . The Night of the U-Boats . 1973 . New English Library . 0-450-01833-4.
• Book: Rohwer . Jürgen . Jürgen Rohwer . Hümmelchen . Gerhard . Chronology of the War at Sea 1939–1945: The Naval History of World War Two . Naval Institute Press . Annapolis, Maryland . 2005 . 3rd rev. . 1-59114-119-2.
• Book: Roskill, S. W. . History of the Second World War United Kingdom Military Series . The War at Sea 1939–1945: The Defensive . I . Stephen Roskill . Butler . J. R. M. . James Ramsay Montagu Butler . 1957 . 1954 . HMSO . London . 4th impr. . 881709135 . 27 February 2022 . https://web.archive.org/web/20220227021618/http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/UK/UK-RN-I/index.html . live.
• Book: Vat, Dan van der . Dan van der Vat . The Atlantic Campaign: World War II's Great Struggle at Sea . 1988 . Harper & Row . New York . 978-0-06-015967-2.

External links

• A report on the convoy from public records
• Convoy SC-7 at Uboat.net
• SC-7 at Arnold Hague's convoy database

Notes and References

1. http://www.junobeach.org/e/4/can-tac-con-e.htm Canadian convoys
2. http://www.naval-history.net/WW2CampaignsAtlanticDev.htm Battle of the Atlantic
3. http://www.convoyweb.org.uk/sc/index.html Convoy web
4. http://uboat.net/allies/merchants/596.html Sinking of Trevisa
5. http://uboat.net/allies/merchants/ships/599.html Sinking of Aenos
6. http://www.worldwar-2.net/timelines/war-at-sea/atlantic/battle-of-the-atlantic-index-1940.htm Timeline of World War II
7. http://www.warsailors.com/singleships/havorn.html D/S Havørn
8. http://www.warsailors.com/singleships/ingerelisabeth.html D/S Inger Elisabeth
9. http://www.warsailors.com/singleships/karlander.html D/S Karlander
10. http://www.warsailors.com/singleships/snefjeld.html D/S Snefjeld
11. http://www.warsailors.com/singleships/snelandI.html D/S Sneland I
12. http://www.warsailors.com/freefleet/norfleett2.html#thoroy D/T Thorøy