During the work on my project I have made a research on the U-Boats patrol areas.
Germany had gone to war in September 1939 with 57 U-boats, but only 26 of them were oceangoing boats.
Type II – 31
Type VII – 19
Type IX – 7
Diagrams show that type VII U-Boats most of all were assigned to North Atlantic (65,9%) and Spain (19,5%).
Type II U-Boats due to their short range were to operate in North Sea (66%), and type IX U-Boats were sent to distant areas – Spain, Bay of Biscay and Gibraltar.
In the next posts I’ll publish the information on the Patrol's effectiveness in the beginning of the war (1939) and compare the results with 1940 patrols data.