U- boat Campaign (World War I)The U- boat Campaign from 1. World War I naval campaign fought by German U- boats against the trade routes of the Allies. It took place largely in the seas around the British Isles and in the Mediterranean. The German Empire relied on imports for food and domestic food production (especially fertilizer) and the United Kingdom relied heavily on imports to feed its population, and both required raw materials to supply their war industry; the powers aimed, therefore, to blockade one another. The British had the Royal Navy which was superior in numbers and could operate on most of the world's oceans because of the British Empire, whereas the Imperial German Navy surface fleet was mainly restricted to the German Bight, and used commerce raiders and unrestricted submarine warfare to operate elsewhere. The first sortie was not a success. Only one attack was carried out, when U- 1. HMS Monarch. Two of the ten U- boats were lost. Later in the month, the U- boats achieved success, when U- 2. HMS Pathfinder. In September, SM U- 9sank three armored cruisers (Aboukir, Hogue, and Cressy) in a single action. Other successes followed. In October U- 9 sank the cruiser Hawke, and on the last day of the year SM U- 2. Formidable. By the end of the initial campaign, the U- boats had sunk nine warships while losing five of their own number. At the start of hostilities, the Austro- Hungarian Navy had seven U- boats in commission; five operational, two training; all were of the coastal type, with limited range and endurance, suitable for operation in the Adriatic. Nevertheless, they had a number of successes. On 2. 1 December 1. U- 1. 2 torpedoed the French battleship Jean Bart, causing her to retire, and on 2. April 1. 91. 5 U- 5 sank the French cruiser L. But the Austro- Hungarian boats were unable to offer any interference to allied traffic in the Mediterranean beyond the Straits of Otranto. Submarine warfare. Its disadvantages were less obvious, but became apparent during the campaign. While submerged the U- boat was virtually blind and immobile; boats of this era had limited underwater speed and endurance, so needed to be in position before an attack took place, while even on the surface their speed (around 1. Also, in the two main surface actions of this period the U- boat was unable to have any effect; the High Seas Fleet was unable to draw the Grand Fleet into a U- boat trap. Title: Das Boot (1981) 8.4 /10. Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? You must be a registered. U-boat is the anglicised version of the German word U-Boot. The primary targets of the U-boat campaigns in both wars were the merchant convoys bringing supplies.
Whilst warships were travelling at speed and on an erratic zigzag course they were relatively safe, and for the remainder of the war the U- boats were unable to mount a successful attack on a warship travelling in this manner. At that time there was no plan for a concerted U- boat offensive against Allied trade. It was recognized the U- boat had several drawbacks as a commerce raider, and such a campaign risked alienating neutral opinion. In the six months to the opening of the commerce war in February 1. U- boats had sunk 1. GRT. The Germans regarded this as a blatant attempt to starve the German people into submission and wanted to retaliate in kind, and in fact the severity of the British blockade did not go over well in America, either. Germany could not possibly deal with British naval strength on an even basis, and the only possible way Germany could impose a blockade on Britain was through the U- boat. The German Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, felt that such a submarine blockade, based on . However, he was unable to hold back the pressures for taking such a step. In response to the British declaration in November 1. North Sea was now a war zone, on 4 February 1. Admiral Hugo von Pohl, commander of the German High Seas Fleet, published a warning in the Deutscher Reichsanzeiger (Imperial German Gazette): (1) The waters around Great Britain and Ireland, including the whole of the English Channel, are hereby declared to be a War Zone. From February 1. 8 onwards every enemy merchant vessel encountered in this zone will be destroyed, nor will it always be possible to avert the danger thereby threatened to the crew and passengers.(2) Neutral vessels also will run a risk in the War Zone, because in view of the hazards of sea warfare and the British authorization of January 3. The Germans made use of this advantage, sending out about 2. U- boats to begin the naval blockade. In January, before the declaration of . The number of sinkings then steadily increased, with 1. August. Attacking without warning, German U- Boats sank nearly 1. GRT per month, an average of 1. The ship had been en route for America to collect food for starving Belgians, and its sinking outraged American citizens already unhappy at the death of Leon C. Thrasher, drowned when SS Falaba was sunk on 2. March 1. 91. 5 by U- 2. Thrasher incident). Of the 1,9. 59 people aboard, 1,1. US citizens. Following the incident, the German government attempted to justify it with a range of arguments, which are still debated today; nevertheless there was massive outrage in Britain and America, and the British felt that the Americans had to declare war on Germany. However, US President Woodrow Wilson refused to overreact, though some believed the massive loss of life caused by the sinking of Lusitania required a firm response from the US. When Germany began its submarine campaign against Britain, Wilson had warned that the US would hold the German government strictly accountable for any violations of American rights. Backed by State Department second- in- command Robert Lansing, Wilson made his position clear in three notes to the German government issued on 1. May, 9 June, and 2. July. The first note affirmed the right of Americans to travel as passengers on merchant ships and called for the Germans to abandon submarine warfare against commercial vessels, whatever flag they sailed under. In the second note Wilson rejected the German arguments that the British blockade was illegal, and was a cruel and deadly attack on innocent civilians, and their charge that Lusitania had been carrying munitions. William Jennings Bryan considered Wilson's second note too provocative and resigned in protest after failing to have it moderated. The third note, of 2. July, issued an ultimatum, to the effect that the US would regard any subsequent sinkings as . While the American public and leadership were not ready for war, the path to an eventual declaration of war had been set as a result of the sinking of Lusitania. Submarine minelayers. However, on 2 July the small coaster Cottingham accidentally ran down the small coastal U- boat UC- 2 off Great Yarmouth, and when she was salvaged she was found to be a submarine minelayer, fitted with twelve mines in six launching chutes. UC- 5 laid 6 more mines off Boulogne and Folkestone on 7 September, one of which sank the cable layer Monarch. Further mines were laid off the southeast coast by UC- 1, UC- 3, UC- 6, and UC- 7. SS Arabic. He fired a single torpedo which struck the liner aft, and she sank within 1. American. Following speculation that the US would sever relations with Germany, on 2. August the Chancellor issued new orders to submarine commanders and relayed them to Washington. The new orders stated that until further notice, all passenger ships could only be sunk after warning and the saving of passengers and crews. This proved unacceptable to the Naval High Command, and on 1. September the High Seas flotillas were withdrawn from the commerce war. Dardanelles Operations. The first U- boats sent, U- 2. UB- 7 and UB- 8, achieved initial success, U- 2. Royal Navy predreadnought battleships HMS Triumph and HMS Majestic on 2. May respectively on her way to Constantinople, but ran into severe limitations in the Dardanelles, where swarms of small craft and extensive anti- submarine netting and booms restricted their movements. By the end of June 1. Germans had assembled a further three prefabricated Type UB I submarines at Pola, two of which were to be transferred to the Austrian Navy. They were also assembling three Type UC I minelaying submarines, which were ordered converted into transports to carry small quantities of critical supplies to Turkey. Mediterranean operations. Additionally, there were certain choke points through which shipping had to pass, such as the Suez Canal, Malta, Crete, and Gibraltar. Finally, the Mediterranean offered the advantage that fewer neutral ships would be encountered. The campaign got underway in October 1. U- 3. 3 and U- 3. U- 3. 5, were ordered to attack the approaches to Salonika and Kavalla. That month, 1. 8 ships were sunk, for a total of 6. It was decided the same month that further reinforcements were called for, and a further large U- boat, U- 3. Cattaro. Since Germany was not yet at war with Italy, even though Austria was, the German submarines were ordered to refrain from attacking Italian shipping in the eastern Mediterranean where the Italians might expect hostile action only from German submarines. When operating in the west, up to the line of Cape Matapan, the German U- boats flew the Austrian flag, and a sinking without warning policy was adopted, since large merchant ships could be attacked on the suspicion of being transports or auxiliary cruisers. The German Admiralty also decided that the Type UB II submarine would be ideal for Mediterranean service. Since these were too large to be shipped in sections by rail to Pola like the Type UB I, the materials for their construction and German workers to assemble them were sent instead. This meant a shortage of workers to complete U- boats for service in home waters, but it seemed justified by the successes in the Mediterranean in November, when 4. The total in December fell to 1. In November 1. 91. U- 3. 8 caused a diplomatic incident when she sank the Italian steamer SS Ancona while sailing under the Austrian flag, and the loss of 4. American citizens caused the . The following step was to arm and man ships with hidden guns to do so, the so- called Q ship. A variant on the idea was to equip small vessels with a submarine escort.
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