With Mustang Mk. Is now coming off the production line and flight testinti proceeding, the fighters were being signed off for shipment to Britain and use by the final customer, the Royal Air Force. There were two ways of getting the Mustangs to the East Coast, the crated planes could be placed on cargo ships in Los Angeles Harbor and shipped via the Panama Canal or placed on rail cars for a cross-country trip. Whichever way they would be shipped, the boxed-up fighters would have to face a common hazard besetting all cargo vessels leaving American ports for the United Kingdom - marauding packs of German U-Boats. Getting supplies to Britain was absolutely essential but when France surrendered in June 1940, the fight in the North Atlantic took a dramatic turn. The Low Countries had also fallen and Italy had entered the war on Germany's side. Thus, the British lost the large French naval support at a time when the Royal Navy had been damaged by defeats in Norway and the evacuation from Dunkirk. British planners were worried about long-range Axis airpower in the Mediterranean and this forced British cargo ships to use the very long route around the Cape of Good Hope, which cut total cargo-carrying capacity of the British merchant marine nearly in half. This took place as German victories and acquisition of naval and air bases on the Atlantic coast foreshadowed a massive and destructive attack on shipping in the northern waters.
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