The Black Pit And The Bismarck
October 4, 2011 1:43 PM   Subscribe

In the early years of WWII German U-Boats took a heavy toll on Atlantic convoys, and nowhere more so than in The Black Pit, an area southeast of Greenland that Allied patrol aircraft could not reach. The most westerly point in the United Kingdom where flying boats could be based was Lough Erne in Northern Ireland, but planes from here could not overfly the neutral Republic Of Ireland, and so had to make a long detour north to gain access to the north Atlantic. In 1941 a secret meeting between neutral Irish and embattled British governments led to the creation of The Donegal Corridor, a four-mile stretch of land which the planes could use for a much more direct route to the sea. The increased cover this provided saved many lives - the Catalina that spotted the Bismarck escaping from France used this route.
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