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    1. Home
    2. The Battle of the Atlantic

    The Battle of the Atlantic

    In March 1941 Winston Churchill coined the phrase ‘Battle of the Atlantic’ to describe a campaign that had opened on 3 September 1939. That battle would not conclude until the last day of the war. It was the longest, and perhaps strangest, clash of the Second World War – one that would see British merchant seamen using kites and wire-carrying rockets in defence of their ships...

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    Welcome home: the cruiser 'Exeter' arrives back at Plymouth, c15 February 1940, after taking part in the battle of the River Plate. The action resulted in the scuttling of the German pocket battleship 'Admiral Graf Spee', which had sent several British merchant ships to the bottom of the Atlantic. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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    Captain Walker (fourth from the left), clutching a hastily grabbed sandwich in his right hand, plots his next move during a patrol that saw his group notch up a record six kills, February 1944. (Photo by Past Pix/SSPL/Getty Images)
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