Editing Battle of the Atlantic (section)

=== Surface fleet losses ===
The German surface fleet commissioned 16 capital ships before or during the war: 4 battleships, 6 heavy cruisers and 6 light cruisers. Of these, only the {{lang|de|Admiral Graf Spee}} and {{Lang|de|Bismarck}} were sunk in battle on the Atlantic Ocean. Three cruisers were sunk during the April 1940 invasion of Norway and {{Lang|de|Scharnhorst}} was sunk in the Arctic. Apart from the heavy cruiser {{Lang|de|Prinz Eugen}} and light cruiser {{Lang|de|Nürnberg}} all other ships were destroyed in port by bombers.

The British and Allied fleets fought battles all over the world and lost many ships, but only three ships were lost in battle against German surface ships : the battlecruiser ''Hood'' and the light cruisers [[HMAS Sydney (D48)|Sydney]] and ''Charybdis''.

U-boats sank 175 Allied warships in total,{{Sfn|White|2008|p=2}} in all theatres of operations. Many of these were sunk in the Mediterranean or the Arctic. The adversaries of U-boats were mostly small anti-submarine ships like destroyers, destroyer escorts, frigates and corvettes, but on a few occasions U-boats could sink capital ships in the Atlantic: the battleship ''Royal Oak'' was sunk in harbour, the aircraft carrier ''Courageous'' was sunk while on anti-submarine patrol, the escort carriers ''Audacity'', [[HMS Avenger (D14)|''Avenger'']] and [[USS Block Island (CVE-21)|''Block Island'']] were sunk while escorting convoys, and the light cruiser ''[[HMS Dunedin|Dunedin]]'' was sunk searching for German raiders.