Submarine Warfare

Sinking of the Linda Blanche out of Liverpool by SM U-21 - Willy Stöwer

U-572 was running on the surface, her diesels straining to give her captain her top speed of nearly 18 knots. Kapitänleutnant Wilhelm Hofer could barely discern the silhouette of a British tanker out on the horizon through his binoculars. They had been tracking this convoy since before sundown, fortunately they were ahead of the slow moving ships, placed in position as part of a newly formed wolf pack.

As the sun set, they had surfaced and begun to run at speed to put themselves on the convoy's starboard flank. Another boat had already radioed the convoy's position back to Lorient. Wolf Pack "Donau" was moving in for the kill, already the Wolf Pack commander, Kapitän zur See Thomsen had ordered "freie Jagd," free hunting, every U-Boat to drive in and start killing ships.

As the tanker loomed larger, Hofer barked into the voice tube, "Prepare to fire torpedoes!"

The first time a submersible vessel was used in wartime was during the American Revolution. When I was a school boy, Bushnell's Turtle was well known in New England. The attack on HMS Eagle by Sergeant Ezra Lee in the Turtle was unsuccessful, but the attempt went down in history as the first submerged attack on a warship.

The second attempt, by the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley, actually succeeded in sinking the USS Housatonic about five miles offshore of Charleston, South Carolina. Unfortunately the primitive weapon, explosives mounted on a spar attached to the bow of the Hunley not only sank the Housatonic but sank the Hunley as well. Evidence suggests that the explosion probably killed the crew of Hunley at the same time it killed Housatonic*.

I've visited the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in North Charleston (where The Nuke used to live) to see Hunley in the process of being preserved and studied. Such a small boat, the men who crewed her were very brave, not sure how the small vessel managed to stay afloat with all that brass aboard.

World War I saw the first large scale use of the submarine in warfare and the German Imperial Navy were masters of the weapon. At first the German crews were under orders to surface and allow the crew of their intended target, merchant ships of course, no way they would surface near a warship, to take to their lifeboats before sinking the ship with gunfire.

Once the British began arming merchant ships and creating decoy ships loaded with material to make them more buoyant should they take a hit below the waterline and hiding guns behind collapsible bulkheads to open fire on the unsuspecting U-Boats, the Germans ordered unrestricted warfare. No more surfacing and warning the enemy, they would stay submerged and sink the enemy with torpedoes. Which led to the infamous sinking of the RMS Lusitania, which was actually carrying a significant military cargo in addition to its innocent civilian passengers.

The Germans had actually warned passengers away from travel in the war zone they said was in effect around the British Isles in a newspaper ad. Apparently no one took the Germans seriously. Lusitania was thought to be fast enough to get away from any U-Boat wishing to attack her so she was not in convoy.

In the open ocean she could avoid submarines, but a ship always has a destination and as a passenger liner, that destination was no secret.

On 7 May 1915 Lusitania was nearing the end of her 202nd crossing, bound for Liverpool from New York, and was scheduled to dock at the Prince's Landing Stage later that afternoon. Aboard her were 1,266 passengers and a crew of 696, which combined totaled to 1,962 people.[70] She was running parallel to the south coast of Ireland, and was roughly 11 miles off the Old Head of Kinsale when the liner crossed in front of U-20 at 14:10. Due to the liner's great speed, some believe the intersection of the German U-boat and the liner to be coincidence, as U-20 could hardly have caught the fast vessel otherwise. There are discrepancies concerning the speed of Lusitania, as it had been reported travelling not near its full speed. Walther Schwieger, the commanding officer of the U-boat, gave the order to fire one torpedo, which struck Lusitania on the starboard bow, just beneath the wheelhouse. Moments later, a second explosion erupted from within Lusitania's hull where the torpedo had struck, and the ship began to founder much more rapidly, with a prominent list to starboard. (Source)

Now as a kid we were taught that the United States, led by Woodrow (he kept us out of war -not) Wilson entered World War I because of the sinking of Lusitania and the deaths of the 128 American citizens aboard her. Yet, we declared war on Germany on the 6th of April 1917, nearly two years after Lusitania was torpedoed.

Hhmm.

At any rate, the U-Boats in World War I caused great consternation in the British government, they were effective, and deadly. There just weren't enough of them to turn the tide. Especially after the Allies adopted the convoy system, a group of merchant ships escorted by warships.

In World War II, the German U-Boat arm was highly effective once again. Seems the Brits had forgotten the use of escorted convoys and perhaps relied too much on their early versions of ASDIC - what we Americans called (and still call) sonar, an acronym standing for SOund NAvigation Ranging.

In the end the Allies prevailed (again), the German U-Boat arm suffered 75% casualties during the war, losing 793 boats. The U.S. Navy's submarine fleet made a large contribution to victory in the Pacific War, virtually destroying Japan's entire merchant fleet.

The submarine still patrols the oceans of the planet, they are the real capital ships of a modern navy, which is probably why the U.S. Navy names their latest attack boats after states, rather than cities. (American battleships have traditionally been named after states, smaller warships, like cruisers, were named after cities.) Then there are the silent boats of the nuclear triad, quieter than quiet, the Ohio-class ballistic missile nuclear powered submarine has been described as so quiet that it is like a "hole in the ocean."

While the aircraft carrier projects power, it is the submarine that keeps its silent watch, patrolling the seas, escorting the carrier groups, waiting to unleash the nuclear fire, unseen and deadly. And causing politicians and admirals sleepless nights.

A note on that opening painting, it's inaccurate. The artist depicts the Linda Blanche as a rather large merchant ship, she wasn't. You can read more about that here. The same artist did a famous (and inaccurate) painting of the sinking of RMS Titanic.

As to the man who commanded U-21, Kapitänleutnant Otto Hersing, he and his boat had a stellar career in World War I. His boat was the first to sink a ship using a self-propelled torpedo. He had two rather impressive nicknames, Zerstörer von Schlachtschiffe (Destroyer of battleships) and Retter der Dardanellen (Saviour of the Dardanelles) for his feat of sinking two British battleships (HMS Triumph and HMS Majestic during the Gallipoli campaign. You can read more about him here. You can read more about his boat, U-21, here. The captain and his boat both survived the war.

Submariners, they're a breed apart no matter who's navy they serve.

Hofer watched as first one, then a second torpedo exploded against the side of the British tanker. Nearly instantaneously, the German captain was nearly blinded by a bright flash, across the water came a deep "woof" and then a colossal "boom" as the big tanker blew itself to atoms.

"Aviation fuel!" the First Watch Officer, Helmut Franken exclaimed.

Hofer felt sick, he could not imagine what that crew had experienced. First the torpedo impacts, each sailor knowing their cargo, then oblivion. He hoped that there had been no pain for those brave men.

Yes, they were the enemy, but they were fellow sailors as well.

Snapping back to the present, Hofer ordered the bridge crew below, he had seen a low dark shape turning towards their position. Damned destroyer must have seen the wake of their torpedo. Time to run!

* After signaling, Dixon's plan would have been to take his submarine underwater to make a return to Sullivan's Island. Although at one point the finders of Hunley suggested she was unintentionally rammed by USS Canandaigua when that warship was going to rescue the crew of Housatonic, no such damage was found when she was raised from the bottom of the harbor. Instead, all evidence and analysis eventually pointed to the instantaneous death of Hunley's entire crew at the moment of the spar torpedo's contact with the hull of Housatonic from the explosion's shock wave which destroyed their lungs and brain tissue in milliseconds. (Source)