v1.0.5 / chapter 2 of 2 / 01 aug 08 / greg goebel / public domain
* Although the German U-boats dominated submarine warfare in the First World War, the Allied powers did make use of submarines as well, and the British in particular achieved some distinctions with them in the Baltic and the Mediterranean.
The Great War should have demonstrated the usefulness of submarines beyond much doubt, but many navies still had questions about the submarine. However, as the great powers prepared for another conflict, they began to build up their submarine fleets again and think over what could best be done with them.
* Britain started World War I with many more submarines than Germany, though most of the British submarines were small coastal defense vessels. The Royal Navy did possess eight "D-class" submarines, which were the first British submarines to be diesel powered, and a few follow-on "E-class" submarines. The D-class submarines were of questionable reliability, but the E-class vessels were capable of blue-water operations. The Admiralty was uncertain about the value of submarines, though the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, was enthusiastic about them, just as he was enthusiastic about most new and advanced technologies.
In fact, British submarines were never to achieve the prominence in operations of the German U-boat service, mostly for the very simple reason that the blockaded Central Powers, who weren't maritime giants in the first place, just didn't provide enough targets. However, British submarines did achieve distinctions in both the Baltic and against the Turks.
Although the "E-9", under Lieutenant-Commander Max Horton, sank an old German light cruiser, the HELA, and the German destroyer S116 in the North Sea in mid-September 1914, the German Navy quickly moved its fleet to the Baltic for safety. British E-boats were then dispatched to the Baltic, though their primary mission was not to attack the German fleet but to interfere with shipments of iron ore from Sweden to Germany. The E-boats were well armed with five torpedo tubes and a 5.4 kilogram (12 pounder) gun and had good surface speed, but their wireless sets had limited range and so their captains had to rely on carrier pigeons while on remote patrols. The E-boats were also much less reliable than their German equivalents.
At first, the hunting was poor, aggravated by remarkably bad planning at the Admiralty. For example, the British submarines were to operate out of Russian bases, but nobody bothered to inform the Russians, and when the submarines showed up in Russian ports, flying oversized Union Jacks to ensure they were recognized as "friendlies", nobody had been expecting them. However, the presence of the British submarines in the Baltic intimidated the Germans, who quickly took up convoys to protect merchantmen. German propaganda blasted the "British pirate submarines" in the Baltic, and particularly fumed about Max Horton of the E-9, who was played up as a modern buccaneer captain. However, all the sinkings of German vessels in the Baltic were due to mines until well into 1915.
The British E-boats didn't start racking up kills until the summer of 1915. On 19 August, the "E-1", under Lieutenant Commander Noel Laurence, spotted a German fleet approaching Riga. Laurence put one torpedo into a cruiser, the MOLTKE, and though the MOLTKE didn't sink, the Germans abandoned the operation, saving Riga from German occupation.
The British submarine captains began to sink merchantmen, adhering as well as they could to the Prize Rules. The Germans increased the number of escorts, but the British were not intimidated. By September, there were five E-boats in Baltic waters. In October 1915, the "E-8" sank the German cruiser PRINZ ADELBERT, which had been previously damaged in July by the E-9, and the next month, the "E-19" sank the light cruiser UNDINE.
The British submarine campaign in the Baltic gradually fizzled out, however. The Kattegut, the straits between Denmark and Sweden, is very narrow and could be sealed off with no great effort, and though the E-boats managed to get out, they couldn't get in again. Smaller British submarines were sent around Norway and hauled over land to the Baltic, but these submarines were under Russian command, which proved troublesome since the Russians weren't always perceptive of what the submarines could do, or very easy to get along with. When Russia signed a peace treaty with Germany in 1918, eight British submarines steamed out of Helsinki harbor and then were scuttled with their own torpedo warheads.
Max Horton had been a star of the Baltic campaign. Much later he would make further contributions to submarine warfare, though on the defense, not the offense.
* When Turkey allied itself with the Central Powers on 31 October, there were three obsolete British submarines and four equally obsolete French submarines in the area. The commander of one of the British submarines, the "B-11", Lieutenant Norman Holbrooke, was bold enough to take his little gasoline-powered submarine and crew of 15 men up the Dardanelles to the Sea of Marmora, torpedo the Turkish battleship MESSOUDIEH, and then manage with great difficulty to escape back through the straits.
Later, the more formidable "E-14" made the trip to the Sea of Marmora, a passage that had previously cost the Allies several other submarines. The E-14 did much to make up for these losses. During a three-week stint, the submarine's commander, E.C. Boyle, eventually used up all his torpedoes, but stayed on patrol since the presence of the British submarine rightly terrified the Turks. The E-14 was then replaced by the "E-11" under Martin Nasmith, and racked up a score of eight more vessels. The Sea of Marmora was essentially closed to the Turks as long as a British submarine was there.
The disastrous Allied Dardanelles campaign ended in January 1916, when the British withdrew their forces. The activities of Allied submarines were a bright spot in a dismal story, though three French and four British submarines were lost in the effort. However, they had sunk seven Turkish warships, 16 transports and supply ships, and 230 steamers and small vessels.
* Although the Americans had obtained a head start in submarine development through the efforts of Holland and Lake, from whom both the British and the Germans had derived much of their inspiration, the Americans did not follow up their advantage. While a young US Navy lieutenant named Chester W. Nimitz had lobbied hard for the Navy to build diesel-powered submarines, resulting in the launch of such a vessel in 1912, by the outbreak of the war the US was lagging behind the great powers of Europe in submarine development. During the war years, the US Navy built the "K", "L", "O", and finally "R-class" submarines, but failed to keep pace with European improvements.
When America declared war on Germany, the US Navy still wanted to get their submarines involved. K-boats were really not meant for blue-water operations and were entirely obsolete, but the Navy decided to tow the submarines "K-1" through "K-8" to the Mediterranean. This proved to be a troublesome effort, and in fact "K-3", "K-4", "K-6", and "K-7" were lost in a storm, with the survivors holing up in the Azores for the rest of the war. The Navy tried to tow a number of the better L-class boats across the Atlantic as well, but as with the K-boats, a storm came up and threatened them. The L-boats were cast off to survive on their own, and remarkably all made it to Ireland, where they conducted uneventful coastal patrols. Eight O-class boats were on their way across the Atlantic when the war ended.
Although the French were pioneers in submarine design and began the war with a fleet of over 60 submarines, by a prewar agreement with the British the French fleet largely operated in the Mediterranean, where French submarines had relatively few opportunities for distinction. The Italians started out with over 20 submarines, but these were mostly obsolete types and also accomplished little. Small numbers of kills were scored in the Adriatic against the Austrians, though the Austrians and their German allies scored kills of their own in return. The real action remained in the Atlantic.
The Russians began the war with a motley assortment of about four dozen submarines, most purchased from the US, Britain, France, and Germany, along with some built locally, most notably the Russian "LEOPARD" class. However, the record makes it clear that these vessels accomplished almost nothing. The Tsar's navy was dominated by the Russian Army, whose abilities on land were poor and talents at sea even poorer.
* Despite the successes of German U-boats during World War I, after the war the naval powers still remained uncertain about what to do with the submarine. The U-boat had nearly brought Great Britain to her knees, but instead of embrace the usefulness of the type, the Royal Navy regarded them simply as a threat to the status quo.
The Treaty of Versailles imposed a harsh peace on the Germans, and banned Germany from building and using U-boats. When the First International Conference on Limitation of Naval Armaments began in Washington in October 1921, the British tried to ban submarines altogether, even though Britain had a large fleet of submarines themselves. The Washington Treaty that resulted from the 1921 conference did manage to impose restrictions on the numbers of surface warships, but not on submarines. Like it or not, submarines were here to stay.
* The Royal Navy in general didn't like it much, and the mindset toward submarines was generally one of a combination of suspicion and a wish to use it like a proper warship, working as an element of fleet operations, not as a far-ranging raider.
The British had built "H-class" and "J-class" submarines during the war, incremental improvements on earlier types, as well as a "too far ahead of its time" "R-class" that had high underwater speed and was designed to hunt other submarines. They weren't the vision that the Admiralty had in mind. Admiral Jellicoe had pushed the development of the "K-class" submarines, which were very large vessels that were powered on the surface by steam turbines, not diesel engines. This gave them the speed to participate in fleet actions, though when underwater and running on battery power the K-class boats were no faster than any other submarine.
They came into service near the end of the war and proved generally useless. They took five minutes to submerge, handled terribly, and were accident-prone. Worse, most of the big ships they were intended to engage were now generally armored well enough to soak up hits from torpedoes and survive. All but one of the K-class boats were scrapped in 1926.
The next class of British submarine, the "M-class", abandoned the clumsy steam propulsion system and reverted to diesel-electric propulsion, but mounted a 305 millimeter (12 inch) battleship gun in front of the conning tower. This weapon was in principle capable of giving the M-class ships firepower and hitting range that torpedoes lacked. The big gun was to be loaded underwater. The submarine would then surface, fire the gun, and sink out of sight again.
Work on the M-class began during the war, with the "M-1" and "M-2" completed during the conflict and the "M-3", the last of the type, completed in 1920. The M-1 was lost with all hands in a collision with a surface vessel in 1925, and the Admiralty, having become uncertain of the value of the M-class boats, used the remaining two for experiments. The M-2 was fitted with a watertight seaplane hangar in place of the big gun, as well as a catapult ramp for launching the seaplane. The M-2 sank off Portland, England, in 1932, and was found on the bottom with the hangar doors and the hatch to the hangar flooded. No one really knows what caused the accident. The M-3 was converted to a minelayer, and was the only one of the three to not come to a bad end, being sold off in 1932.
The Royal Navy went even further in their attempts to build a submarine that looked like a surface warship, resulting in the big "X-1", which was launched in 1925. The X-1 had two turrets, fore and aft, each mounting twin 132 millimeter (5.2 inch) guns. The X-1 could travel halfway around the world without refueling. However, in practice the X-1's engines were chronically unreliable, and she was scrapped in 1937.
* The Americans went off on roughly similar tangents after the war. The US Navy launched 51 "S-class" boats between 1919 and 1925, but these were basically just improved O-class boats and not really what the Navy wanted.
The USN obtained six U-boats as war prizes in 1919, with US Navy officers appalled to find the German vessels superior to American submarines in almost every respect. The captured U-boats led the USN to build nine big "V-class" submarines between 1921 and 1933, leading to the huge ARGONAUT, which was 116 meters (382 feet) long. The V-class boats proved to be a bad idea, with the skipper of one saying: "They were too large for easy handling, too slow in submerging, and too easily seen as targets."
Other nations suffered from the "big submarine disease" as well. The French built the huge SARCOUF, with twin 203 millimeter (8 inch) guns and a seaplane hangar. It proved to be a clumsy vessel with an embarrassing history of mishaps. The Japanese would later develop several even larger submarines as seaplane carriers, but that is another strange story.
* Eventually, everyone began to realize that bigger was not necessarily better. The British developed the "O", "P", and "R" class boats, with the first of the lot, the HMS OBERON, launched in 1926. These were boats of more traditional configuration and size, though they incorporated many improvements, such as a longer periscope to allow them to cruise at periscope depth without danger of being rammed. They were much more useful than the big "cruiser submarines", but they did have a nasty tendency to trail an oil slick. They led in turn to the improved "S" and "T" class submarines.
The US Navy also went back in the direction of smaller size, and launched the first of their new "fleet boats" in 1933. The best-known of the series was the "GATO" class. These submarines were about three-quarters of the size of the clumsy V-class boats and used new, lightweight, highly reliable diesel engines. They had a range of 16,000 kilometers (10,000 miles) and by the standards of the time were relatively comfortable for long-range patrols. By the time America went to war in 1941, the USN had 40 fleet boats and they would prove very useful.
* Interesting experiments were performed in the 1930s. A Dutch Navy officer named I.I. Wichers designed a breathing tube, later known as a "snorkel", that would allow a submarine to use its diesel engines while the vessel was submerged at periscope depth. In 1937, the German rocket engine designer Professor Helmuth Walter was also considering a new type of submarine engine that ran on concentrated hydrogen peroxide and fuel oil, and could potentially propel a submarine at high speeds underwater. Neither of these efforts attracted much attention at the outset.
* The Washington Treaty was due to expire in 1936, and so in 1930 a second naval conference was held in London to see what to do next. The British once again tried to ban submarines, but nobody took the suggestion seriously. However, limitations were set on the size of submarines, and some countries agreed to limit the size of their submarine fleets as well. Many naval officers still did not value the submarine.
One of the reasons for this was a feeling in some quarters that a new technology had rendered the submarine vulnerable and obsolete. This technology was "ASDIC", better known by its modern name of "sonar", which used reflected sound pulses to gauge the distance and direction of a submarine cruising underwater.
The idea had been proposed even before the outbreak of World War I, and was picked up by French researchers in 1915, which led to British experiments the next year. Both the French and British researchers investigated using quartz piezoelectric sensors to convert the reflected sound waves into electricity and were able to demonstrate the validity of the concept of underwater sound echolocation. Formal work began on an "Anti-Submarine Detection (ASD)" system in 1917. The "ASD" acronym mutated into "ASDIC", with many sources claiming stood for "ASD Investigating Committee". However, an argument persists that there never was such an organization and the "IC" stood for something else, or maybe didn't stand for anything at all.
ASDIC was not ready by the end of the war, and didn't get to sea until 1920, when one was evaluated on the cruiser HMS ANTRIM. Four patrol vessels were also fitted with ASDIC on an experimental basis, leading to adoption of a production ASDIC system in July 1922. British submarines were fitted with ASDIC beginning in 1926.
ASDIC consisted of a directional sound transducer in a dome that could be generally lowered and raised from the hull of a ship, along with a sonic transmitter and receiver. The transducer could be switched from the transmitter to the receiver. The transmitter could send out a sonic pulse at about 15 kilohertz through the transducer, which was then switched back to the receiver to allow the operator to listen for an echo. The receiver could also remained switched to the transducer, allowing it to be used passively as a hydrophone. The transducer could be rotated to send out a sonic pulse in any direction. ASDIC did not work properly at higher speeds due to the noise of turbulence around the dome, and at top speeds the dome had to be retracted.
ASDIC seemed to be regarded with an odd combination of magical awe and indifference. On one hand, there were those who thought it made the submarine completely obsolete. A submarine's only real virtue was stealth, since it didn't have the firepower for a stand-up fight with a surface warship of any size, and submarines were relatively slow, particularly when submerged. Take away the advantage of stealth and the submarine seemed particularly vulnerable.
At the same time, neither the British, the French, nor the Americans seemed all that interested in developing the technology, and it moved along with low funding and indifferent effort. The British never even performed trials of ASDIC in military exercises. The Americans did use sonar on exercises, and found that it was not quite the miracle that it was claimed to be. Its range was short, and it was easily confounded by underwater obstructions, schools of fish, and even layers of water at different temperatures. It took a very highly tuned operator to make effective use of it.
* Although the Germans had been forbidden to build and operate submarines by the Versailles Treaty, they didn't feel particularly obedient in the matter. Working through a front company in the Netherlands named the "Dutch Submarine Development Bureau", the German Krupp company began designing U-boats in 1922, and quickly moved towards actually building them for other countries to maintain the technical capability of producing them. The first of these "secret" U-boats, the GUER, a large ocean-going submarine, was built for the Turks in 1932. The next year the VESIKKO, a small coastal-patrol submarine, was built for Finland.
Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933. In March 1935, he repudiated the Versailles Treaty. German shipbuilders immediately began to build new submarines, using components they had stockpiled for the purpose, and had 14 completed by the beginning of 1936. Oddly, this did not seem to disturb the British very much, partly due to the complacent comfort provided by ASDIC. When Adolf Hitler signed a naval arms limitation treaty with Britain in 1935, the terms of the treaty allowed him to have 45% of the submarine strength of the British, or even 100% in some circumstances. Since the British did not have many submarines, the possible numbers were not large, but the complacency was still striking.
Karl Doenitz had stayed with the German Navy after the war, with duties that often put him in command of surface vessels. However, his real heart was in submarines, and after the first new U-boats slid down the ways he was promoted to full captain and put in charge of the growing flotilla. Doenitz was imaginative, perfectionistic, concerned with his men, and enthusiastic about Hitler and the Fuehrer's new Germany; he was likely to go far. He promoted aggressive tactics and discounted the importance of ASDIC. He trained his crews in surface night attacks. A submarine on the surface could not be detected by ASDIC, and it was hard to see and much faster than it would be underwater. Submarines could close to point-blank range at night and hit their targets accurately.
In 1936, Doenitz began to experiment with ideas that had been discussed among U-boat officers late in WWI on how to make the submarine a more effective weapon. There had been some reluctance to establish convoys because they collected targets into one place, but the convoys had proven able to defeat lurking U-boats. However, if a group of U-boats, a "wolf pack", concentrated their attacks on one convoy, they would be able to overwhelm the defenders and inflict serious damage.
By the summer of 1939, the German Navy had 57 U-boats. Doenitz felt he needed 300 blue-ocean submarines to ensure that he could strangle Britain if war came, but he was not going to be given such a luxury. The time that his vessels would be put to use against Britain was drawing close much too rapidly.
* Sources include:
This document originally began life as a survey of submarine development up to the beginning of the First World I, released in the spring of 1999. A year later, I added material on submarines in World War I and in the time between the wars.
I planned to add more chapters, but it turned out that the story of the submarine gets much more complicated at the beginning of World War II, and the effort stalled. In the summer of 2002, I decided to continue the work on the "installment plan", building stand-alone documents and then welding them into a single work when I had a complete set, and broke the existing document into "The Invention Of the Submarine", essentially the first-release document, and this document. I retained the original revision number sequence in this document, so the first stand-alone release is actually "v1.0.2".
* Revision history:
v1.0 / 22 apr 99 / gvg / Originally published as chapter 1 only.
v1.1 / 01 apr 00 / gvg / Added chapters 2 & 3, polished chapter 1.
v1.0.2 / 01 sep 02 / gvg / Broke document into installments.
v1.0.3 / 01 sep 04 / gvg / Minor cosmetic update.
v1.0.4 / 01 aug 06 / gvg / Minor cosmetic update.
v1.0.5 / 01 aug 08 / gvg / Minor cosmetic update.
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