Convoy SC 42

9–16 September 1941, North Atlantic, off Cape Farewell, Greenland

German victory; 16 merchant ships sunk for two U-boats

Slow convoy SC 42, 65 merchant ships from Sydney, Nova Scotia, had only four Canadian escorts, the destroyer Skeena and three corvettes, when a pack of fourteen U-boats found it off Greenland on 9 September 1941. Over three nights of moonlight the U-boats attacked on the surface from inside the convoy, and the escorts, without radar, could do little more than pick up survivors. The corvettes Chambly and Moose Jaw, out on a training cruise, were sent to help, and on the night of 10 September, coming up from astern, they caught U-501 and forced her to the surface; Moose Jaw rammed her, her captain jumped across onto the corvette's deck, and a boarding party from Chambly was aboard when she sank, the first U-boat sunk by the Royal Canadian Navy. British escort groups arrived on 11 September and sank U-207, but by then sixteen ships had gone.

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