What is submarine warfare

Ships would also optimistically try to damage submarines by towing grappling hooks connected to explosive charges in the hopes of snagging a sub, or throwing charges overboard in the direction of a suspected vessel. The use of smoke screens to obscure ships was also widely used. In general, forcing a sub to surface and a ttacking the periscope was the objective of most offensive tactics. Another involved training birds or sea creatures to identify or hinder subs.

Yet another proposed tactic was to send multiple small rowboats searching for surfaced subs, so men waiting in the boats with sledgehammers could then smash the exposed periscopes. At the start of WWI, about the only offensive tactic to combat subs was to simply wait for them to surface and then attack them as you would a ship. For a while anti-submarine warfare was simply an extension of existing ship-to-ship combat tactics.

Subs needed to surface often to navigate, confirm targets, or to resupply, and surface ships would then attack using cannon fire or ramming as they would against any vessel.

In one of the first successful anti-submarine attacks was the ramming of the German sub SM U , while it was surfaced with engine troubles. The use of decoy " Q-Ships " also had some success against submarines.

The Q-Ships were heavily armed anti-sub ships, disguised as vulnerable targets, and designed to lure submarines into making surface attacks. Once a U-Boat surfaced and got close enough, the Q-Ship would open fire and often surprise and overwhelm them. An effective defensive tactic was the use of shipping convoys, where if one ship was attacked, all the others in the convoy would respond.

The main offensive weapon became the use of Depth Charges. These heavy Depth Charges were set up on racks and rolled off the back of ships. Simply waiting for a sub to show itself above water and behave like a surface ship was just not practical however. A solution was needed to the problem of finding subs before they attacked. Seaplanes and balloon airships blimps were used to spot surfaced subs from afar, but could not destroy subs and could not detect subs below the surface.

When the USA entered the war in , the US Navy began work on an innovative echo-ranging technology then called "supersonics" , which would finally provide a means for underwater submarine detection.

As a sub was detected by the loop, mines close to the loop would detonate and sink it. The loop proved effective, and was used to sink the German sub UB as it attempted to enter a UK harbor. The anti-submarine indicator loop was used through the end of the war and into the start of WWII, as part of the first modern anti-submarine harbor defense system. After WWI anti-submarine warfare continued to develop. The Navy kept up its efforts to improve Depth Charges, and developed forward-throwing anti-submarine weapons.

As submarines became able to dive to greater depths, larger charges were used which could detonate even deeper. The order, however, was temporary. Germany built new and larger U-boats to punch holes in the British blockade, which was threatening to starve Germany out of the war. In , Germany had just 20 U-boats. By , it had and the U-boats had destroyed about 30 percent of the world's merchant ships.

At the dawn of , the German high command forced a return to the policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, engineering the dismissal of opponents of the policy that aimed to sink more than , tons of shipping a month. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! By , Netflix had already fundamentally changed the way Americans consumed movies and television.

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