Although most of the great convoy battles of World War II occurred in the North Atlantic or on the hotly-contested runs to Malta or Murmansk, there were mini-campaigns elsewhere on the shipping lanes where enemy submarines, surface raiders or aircraft made brief, but often bloody inroads.rnOne of these was waged on the route between the UK and West Africa. On no less than six occasions between February and October 1941, Axis forces sank four or more ships from convoys sailing from Freetown to Liverpool. Some of the convoys in the SL series were quite small, and the loss ratio could be very high. SL.64S lost seven of 17 ships and SL.81 lost five of 18. The worst, however, was SL.87, a convoy of only 11 ships - seven of which were sunk by U-boats.
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