Iceland review - 2019, Side 95

91
Iceland Review
Krauma is a natural geothermal bath & spa at Deildartunguhver, Europe’s most powerful hot
spring. The cold water comes from Ok, Iceland’s smallest glacier.
Krauma oers five relaxing natural geothermal
baths, a cold tub, two steambaths and a relaxation
room where you can rest by the fireplace.
+354 555 6066
www.krauma.is
Deildartunguhver, 320 Reykholt
EXPERIENCE NATURE FROM ITS CORE
Reykjavík
Borgarnes
Þingvellir
At Krauma Restaurant you can enjoy Icelandic cuisine with
emphasis on fresh ingredients from local farms. Relax with
the spectacular view of Europe's most powerful hot spring.
Krauma is located at Deildartunguhver, a
97 km (60 miles) drive from Reykjavík.
Krauma-200x300mm-bleed2.pdf 1 3/27/2018 2:35:55 PM
drawing tens of thousands of ambitious Icelanders
from the countryside for Bretavinna (British work),
which paid much higher wages than Icelanders were
used to. Among the most coveted jobs was work on the
thousands of merchant ships that were vital to keeping
Britain supplied and in the war.
Stealthy subs
Having served on the front in the previous war, Adolf
Hitler was convinced he knew what had gone wrong
for Germany and how to fix it. But long, drawn out
campaigns on multiple fronts put Germany at a
disadvantage. Making use of the numerous techno-
logical advances over the last decades, the German
High Command realised that the best way to defeat
the enemy was to employ blitzkrieg tactics; that is,
to attack with the element of surprise and take out
the enemy quickly and efficiently. Blitzkrieg strategy
depended on having better-trained and -armed troops,
as well as the fastest, strongest warplanes, tanks, and
vehicles available.
Germany’s Kriegsmarine had some of the biggest,
strongest, and most deadly battleships, but was at a
critical numerical disadvantage when compared to
the British Royal Navy. To counter this deficit, German
Kriegsmarine Admiral Karl Dönitz had to devise a
strategy to defang the British and take them out of the
conflict as quickly as possible.
Dönitz had been a successful U-boat commander in
the First World War and was serving as Vice Admiral in
the run up to the second. Nationalistic, single-minded,
and dastardly clever, Dönitz understood that while he
couldn’t defeat the British in straight-forward naval
battles, with enough U-boats Germany could effectively
cut Britain’s access to food and fuel, which was brought
in with a fleet of some 4,000 merchant ships. Without
these vital resources, he determined, Britain’s war
effort would be stopped dead in its tracks and its lead-
ership would be forced to sue for peace. Dönitz calcu-
lated that Germany would need 300 U-boats, and each
would need to sink three merchant ships per month in
order to bring the British to their knees. At the onset
of the war, Germany had but 70 U-boats. Their range
was severely limited by British and French patrols in
the English Channel. While Allied merchant and naval
shipping was suffering attacks, Churchill at the time
saw the losses as unavoidable.
Sinking ships
At the beginning of the war, the Atlantic sea lanes were
controlled by Allied ships and planes fitted with can-
nons, depth charges, sonar, and radar systems which
were thought to have rendered the U-boat obsolete. By
1941, U-boats were organised in groups called “wolf-
packs,” which were used to surround and penetrate
armed convoys of merchant ships. A particularly suc-
cessful wolfpack attack on some 40 ships in a convoy
might sink up to 15 ships, killing hundreds. In this way,
far too many Icelanders met their deaths. The only way
to effectively prevent the U-boats from tearing into
Allied merchant ship convoys in the rough seas of the
North Atlantic was to get attack aircraft from Iceland
to patrol and engage the submersibles, which were eas-
ily spotted, as U-boats’ primary weakness was that they
had to remain on the surface 90% of the time.
Allied fighter planes flying south from Iceland for up
to seven hours would find U-boat wolfpacks tracking
convoys. Attacking without warning to prevent the
U-boats from diving, the Allied pilots aimed their
cannon fire and bombs at the U-boats’ conning towers.
At least 27 U-boats were sunk by Iceland-based Allied
warplanes, which helped to ensure that Britain and
the struggling Soviets would be supplied with enough
war materials to keep fighting the Nazis on two fronts
– precisely what Hitler had sought to avoid. Ultimately,
the strategy proved successful, and the Allies rejoiced,
but the words of Churchill, who actually visited Iceland
to inspect the Allied troops in August 1942, remind
us of just how close the allies were to disaster: “The
threat the U-boats posed in the Atlantic was the only
thing that really frightened me during the War. On their
defeat hung the outcome of World War II.”