In a stretch of the North Atlantic known as the Black Pit, far from land-based air cover, escorted convoys travelling the main trade routes between Newfoundland and Ireland were regularly besieged by marauding U-boats in classical naval confrontations.
The Royal Canadian Navy's escort operations proved to be one of Canada's most important contributions to Allied victory in the Second World War. They were also one of the most controversial. The story of those operations and of Canada's wartime navy is now told in full detail for the first time.
Milner focuses primarily on the series of bitter and tragic battles fought by the RCN in the mid-Atlantic during the latter half of 1942. Events of those six months constituted the crisis of Canada's naval war. The fall-out from this crisis, its impact on the operational deployment of the fleet, and the violent upheaval it caused it Ottawa are key parts of the story. The drama at sea was played out against a backgroup of bitter controversy at home, as the navy struggled to balance its operational commitments with the urgent need to confront and defeat a deadly enemy.
North Atlantic Run fills an important gap in the historiography of wartime Canada and the war at sea, and finally portrays both Canada and the RCN, for better or worse, as dynamic elements in the struggle for the convoys.

Marc Milner is Director of the Brigadier Milton F. Gregg, V.C., Centre for the Study of War and Society at the University of New Brunswick. A native of Sackville, N.B., Dr. Milner earned his doctorate at the University of New Brunswick in 1983. From 1983 to 1986, Dr. Milner was a historian with the Directorate of History, Department of National Defence, Ottawa, where he wrote portions of the R.C.A.F.'s official history and the first narrative of the recent official history of the Royal Canadian Navy. He joined the History Department at U.N.B. in 1986. Since then, he has served as director of U.N.B.'s Military and Strategic Studies Programme and chair of its History Department for six years. Dr. Milner is best known for his work on naval history, including North Atlantic Run: The Royal Canadian Navy and the Battle for the Convoys (1985); The U-Boat Hunters: The Royal Canadian Navy and the Offensive against Germany's Submarines (1995); Corvettes of the Royal Canadian Navy (co-authored with Ken Macpherson, 1993); a novel, Incident at North Point (1998); a popular history, HMCS Sackville 1940-1985 (1998, for the Canadian Naval Memorial Trust); Battle of the Atlantic (2003), which won the Charles P. Stacey Prize for the best book on military history in Canada for 2003-04; and Canada's Navy: The First Century (1999). Dr. Milner writes a regular column on Canadian naval history for Legion Magazine, and the second (updated) edition of Canada's Navy: The First Century was published just in time for the naval centennial.

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