The Rise of the Empire

Chapter 490: Submarine War One



Actually, in the environment of War I, it is completely possible to use submarine artillery to destroy 3 to 5 merchant ships a day. The most cruel thing is that a certain submarine kills 14 merchant ships in one day! Obviously, this record cannot be achieved by fish. After all, the German submarine in the first battle had the largest number of torpedoes with only 18 torpedoes, so this result can only be achieved by naval guns.

To a certain extent, the standard to measure whether a submarine’s hunting efficiency is high is not whether the torpedo is shot accurately, but whether the naval gun is used well enough that some submarines in the late war were actually equipped. 3 150MM artillery, or 2 150MM artillery and 2 88MM artillery! This firepower is already stronger than many gunboats!

In general, neither the Allies nor the Allies were prepared to fight a submarine battle in World War I. The former did not realize the huge lethality of submarines at first, and the latter was not technically prepared, except that they did not expect it. , It can be attributed to the limitations of history.

Did Germany have submarine tactics before World War 1? Naturally, there were, but in 1910, German submarines were more suitable for defense than for offense or breaking ties. In the first plan involving submarines formulated by the Germans, a total of 12 submarines were arranged for defense. In the Helgoland Bay area, six of them patrolled internally, about 5 nautical miles apart, and the other six patrolled in the North Sea. Because the submarines were relatively small at that time, it was difficult for them to set sail and patrol for more than a day. Therefore, in order to maintain this scale, the Germans must prepare 24 submarines! And in the original plan, there are still 12 submarines ready to be on standby at the base.

If you want to talk about private research on submarine warfare, then the time will be earlier, and the German Navy Vice Admiral von Schleinitz's idea is the most avant-garde and complete. As early as August 1908, the lieutenant admiral claimed in a journal titled submarine that the submarine was a type of submarine that could cut off the import of British daily necessities.

In May 1914, Captain Bloom of the German Kiel Submarine Test Department also presented a report. In this report, he believed that the most important task for German submarines in the war was to break diplomatic relations with Britain at sea. And he also put forward the conclusion that if you want to ensure that the 48 sea areas around the British Isles are always under the blockade of the submarine force, then Germany needs at least 222 submarines! This number obviously exceeded the actual situation in Germany at that time.

Although German submarines made their name in World War I, the number of German submarines is not that large. At the outbreak of World War I, France had the largest number of submarines in the world, with 79 ships, and the United Kingdom had second place in the world, with 73 ships. There are only 28 German submarines that can be used, of which 4 are the oldest and can only perform training tasks. The other 24 ships can play. Russia and Italy each have 22 ships, the United States has 18, Japan has 12, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire has 5...

While the number is scarce, the quality of German submarines is not good at the beginning. Most of the submarines cannot even go to the west coast of the UK to fight, because the surface displacement of this type of submarine is only more than 400 tons, and the range and the weapons carried are far from enough to meet this need. Cruising combat missions. So at the beginning, the German submarines were mainly aimed at the battleships of the Royal Navy, and the most dazzling achievement in this stage was naturally that the U9 submarine cleanly destroyed the record of 3 old British armored cruisers.

It was a little too late for the Germans to realize that the submarine was to decide the outcome of the naval war. After the Battle of Jutland in May 1916, the Germans finally began to discuss the recovery since 1915, despite the desperation of the main fleet. Its unrestricted submarine warfare was suspended in September of 2009. Of course, the blockade of submarine warfare was limited at the beginning, and the target began to be limited to armed ships with weapons.

But at this time the number of German submarines in active service has reached 134! Even with restrictions on the attacking ships, the German submarine still sank 154 ships in December 1916, with a total tonnage of 487,000 tons! Then, in March 1917, the results of submarine operations reached a new height. In this month, German submarines sank 355 merchant ships with a total tonnage of 549,000 tons!

April of 1917 is a month that must be remembered in the history of submarine warfare throughout the world. In this month, German submarines turned the waters around the British Isles into hell! On average, one out of every four ships leaving the British Isles is buried in the sea! This month, 458 merchant ships were sunk, with a total tonnage of 841,000 tons! And this record has never been broken!

The only time in the   2 war that hit this record was November 1942. During this month, Britain and the United States lost the largest number of ships. A merchant ship lost 822,867 tons, of which 729,000 tons were sunk by submarines. At this time, ships from neutral countries no longer dared to sail to Britain.

If the submarines in World War 2 only made the British feel a huge threat but were more difficult to lethal, if there was no United States in World War 1, then the German submarines really had a chance to force the British to withdraw from the war. After all, there was no freewheel in World War I~www.novelhall.com~ The American industry was far less powerful than in World War II. The cost of destruction was much lower than the cost of construction, and the most important thing was that the anti-submarine technology was really not in World War I. How mature.

Even in 1918, from January to November, with full escort, the Allies still lost 1,283 ships of various kinds. The gross tonnage reached 292 million tons. In contrast, 69 German submarines were sunk, two were detained by neutral countries after being wounded, and one sunk. Although this loss seems to be very large in the first battle, it is nothing compared to the second battle!

Even after excluding the massive losses of submarines before Germany was about to collapse from the second half of 44 to 45 years, the losses of German submarines in the middle of the 2nd war were still very staggering. In October 1942, the German submarine set the highest level of 2 wars. Before the attack was recorded, the Germans had sunk 16 submarines in this month, and this loss was a drizzle relative to the subsequent losses. In May 1943, Germany lost 41 in a month. A submarine!

The amount of submarine losses in the   1 battle has never been too high. Except for the amount of submarine losses in individual months exceeding the 20 mark, the amount of submarine losses at other times is generally less than 10. Even after the United States and Britain adopted full escort, the German submarine force still maintained a relatively high level of vitality, and the loss volume still did not increase significantly. This shows that contemporary anti-submarine operations are difficult. But it's different in the second battle!

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