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JULY 1, 2021 | The Jewish Home OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home
Forgotten Her es
Anti-Submarine Warfare By Avi Heiligman
The German U-505 with an American flag after her capture
O
ver the course of history, world powers needed to have a strong military to keep their influence steady. Naval power is a key component of a powerful nation. Navies have always looked for new and better ships and weapons to add to their arsenal. For centuries, the idea of having an underwater ship was floated around by inventors, and over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, it developed into a major part of navies worldwide. World War I was the first war that submarines were used on a major scale and were a big threat to surface ships. It took a concentrated effort to coordinate the anti-submarine effort. American anti-submarine warfare units saw a lot of action during the two World Wars. Here are some of their operational stories and missions that rarely made the front pages. While American submarines didn’t see a lot of action, anti-submarine units were busy thwarting the German U-boat menace. The U.S. entered World War I in April 1917, and its warships had several encounters with German subs.
The sinking of German submarine U-175 by USCGC Spencer in 1943
Then, early on the morning of November 17, 1917, the coxswain on destroyer USS Fanning sighted the German submarine U-58. The U-boat had been sighted when she surfaced her periscope to line up a torpedo shot on a British merchant ship. The Fanning and her sister ship USS Nicholson were on escort duty, and the Fanning launched three depth charges. These charges caused some damage to the German sub, and the Nicholson joined the Fanning by shooting their deck guns. These shots caused the U-boat to lose steering, and soon her crew surrendered to the American surface ships. This marked the first time in war that American ships had sunk an enemy submarine in battle. Anti-submarine warfare (ASW) at first was very primitive as surface ships had to wait for the submarine to surface. The subs needed to surface to navigate, recharge or resupply, and these provided the best opportunities to attack enemy subs. Later on in the war, depth charges (explosives set to explode and cause damage to ships underneath the water’s surface) became sophisticated enough that they
could be set to explode at a specific depth after being rolled off a rack on a surface ship. Manned balloons and airplanes were used to spot enemy ships but weren’t equipped to destroy submarines. Echo-ranging technology was then developed, and this proved useful in detecting ships underwater. Anti-submarine mines proved the most effective way to sink U-boats, as 58 were sunk using this method during World War I. After World War I, the technology on subs became more sophisticated, and they came up with tactics to avoid ASW. By the onset of World War II in 1939, submarines were able to dive deeper and could go silent so as to not make any sound or signal that could be picked up by any other ship in the area. If they did make noise, sonar (sound navigation and ranging) could pick up the signal and an alert would go out to surface ships that an enemy sub was in the area. Both the Japanese and Germans had large and powerful submarine fleets and had better torpedoes than the American Navy (the story of these faulty torpedoes is one for the military blunders column and had
USS Fanning
devastating results during the first two years of the war for the Americans in the Pacific). The Battle of the Atlantic lasted the entire length of the war and one of the main components of the battle pitted German U-boats against Allied merchant convoys and their escort ships. At first, it was not going well as German U-boats prowled the East Coast and were sinking merchant ships at an alarming rate. This prompted the Americans to have their ships sail in convoys and had warships accompany them on their journey. This tactic didn’t always work, as the warship crews were not very familiar with this type of warfare. As time went on, they gained valuable experience, and as more warships were coming out of the shipyards, the tide began to turn. One of the main tactics in anti-submarine warfare was the use of escort carriers or “baby flattops.” These were smaller than the average aircraft carrier and carried around 30 planes. They were the nucleus of hunter killer groups that included destroyers armed with depth charges and a new type of anti-sub weapon called hedgehogs.
