Episode 16 - “Killers and the Killed”

Summary

The Battle of the Atlantic pitted the Allies—especially their supply convoys headed eastward from North America—against Germany's Kriegsmarine and its prowling U-boats. Victory's EP16 follows EP1 and EP3 as the third of Henry Salomon's “Anti-Submarine” episodes. The earlier two were sourced primarily from HUSNO's first-published volume of 1947; EP16 then, like HUSNO's later Vol. X, “The Atlantic Battle Won, May 1943–May 1944,” continued the Anti-Sub coverage. The Allies’ success was due both to increased ship and aircraft production and their technological advancements in competition with Germany. During the war, Henry Salomon had visited the Bahamas and several other Atlantic bases crucial to EP16's story, and he later helped draft many of HUSNO's Vol. X chapters referenced for EP16.

A June 1952 NBC press release announced EP16 as Victory's sixth-completed episode. Salomon later altered his plans, however, and the installment received a major revision that October. These changes prompted substantial rescoring and musical re-shuffling by Bennett, most of which survives in his hand, as does his first-version score.

EP16 resumes the Allies’ Anti-Sub focus—fifteen weeks since EP3's airing—with a few scene-setting minutes of German submarine success seen in Deutsche Wochenschau newsreels. The program opens with a surfacing U-boat, the [A] music incorporating GER: “‘The U-boat will decide the outcome of the war.’ This is what Hitler is telling the Germans as his underwater sailors harvest victory after victory in the Battle of the Atlantic. The realities support him—in mid-1943.” Hitler appears with his naval high command [B] at 1:36, underscored by the SUB-extension tune Bennett had composed for EP1's early U-boat triumphs. Here at 2:08 the celebration continues, and Hitler awards his Kriegsmarine officers medals to a processional march of sorts [C]. Though Bennett composed the melody for this very spot in Victory, his 1952–53 viewers would have already heard it in EP10—earlier in the broadcast sequence, though completed and scored later.

At about 2:27 EP16's coverage turns to Germany's wartime Ministry of Propaganda and its exhortations to U-boat builders: “Every German is told his submarines threaten the entire Allied war effort with collapse.” There's Bennett's SUB-extension at 2:35 and a pair of new settings of Rodgers's SUB at 3:06 [D] and 3:27 [E]: “But as the Nazis turn out newer and more murderous models, the doom of the submarine is being sealed by the Allies.”