The first target of the Wolf Tactic hunt was the British passenger ship Athena. In September 1938, the British passenger ship Athena sailed leisurely on the Atlantic Ocean. The passengers on board are immersed in a calm and comfortable journey. Suddenly, they heard several loud noises and felt a strong concussion. In an instant, the oil smoke on the passenger ship rolled and the sea water rushed into the cabin. A few minutes later, the passenger ship Athena began to sink and eventually died at the bottom of the sea. In the years that followed, the same was repeatedly encountered by large Allied convoys, and the culprit was the German Navy's U-boats
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="1" > U boat hunter</h1>
The Q ship first achieved success six months after it entered combat. On 23 June 1915, the tugboat-converted HMS Taranaki, a british submarine C24, worked together to lure the German submarine U-40 closer to it and float, while the latter— which communicated with the Taranaki via two telephone cables — seized the opportunity to fire a torpedo and sink it. The new U-40, which had only entered service on 14 February 1915, had not yet sunk any Of the Allied merchant ships, and suffered so much that all but the three who were on the command tower at the time were killed, including Captain Gerhard Forblinger.
Although the strike was not carried out directly by the decoy boat, the Q ship played a crucial role in the process of luring the U boat and proved that the concept of the Q ship worked. The real anti-submarine battle results that belonged to the Q ship soon came this summer, and on the afternoon of July 24, the HMS Prince Charles decoy ship successfully fired a cannon to sink the U-36 that was approaching it.
The U-36 was a submarine entering service in November 1914, and unlike the unsuccessful U-40, the U-boat had achieved outstanding results in the first half of 1915, sinking 14 merchant ships by July, the largest of which was a Norwegian freighter with a displacement of nearly 3,900 tons, and three more captured.
From this angle you can see the cabin and rear deck of the Q ship
On the 24th, when the bait ship Prince Charles and U-36, commanded by Captain Mark Wardlow, met, the latter had just intercepted the Danish freighter Luise, and some of the crew began to board the ship for inspection. After the lookout spotted the Prince Charles, U-36 turned to the Prince Charles and ordered it to stop.
As the U-36 approached 600 meters away from the Prince Charles, the latter suddenly raised the British naval flag and opened fire, causing the U-36 to sink in the consternation of its crew. At this time, the "Louis", which had just been threatened by the U-boat, exerted the spirit of international maritime affairs and sailed forward to prepare to rescue the sinkers of the U-36, and it was unexpectedly shelled by the "Prince Charles"! The latter later explained this by thinking that it was the German Navy's submarine supply ship. It was only 45 minutes after the U-36 sank that the Q set about salvaging the German crew, which resulted in the rescue of 16 men, including Captain Greif, and the other 18 men on the U-36 who had sunk with the boat.
This scene in the summer of 1915 was the first time that the Q ship had perfectly fulfilled its mission, which excited the British navy, and the captain of the first record, Wardlow, was awarded the Medal of Merit for service. At the same time, the British Admiralty also fulfilled its promise to issue a £1,000 bonus to the Prince Charles.
The success of the Prince Charles spurred the British to increase the size of the Q-ship force, and by April 1916 there were 16 Q-ships in service, and by the end of that year, that number had increased to 51. The successful experience of the "Prince Charles" also shows that the success of the Q ship depends to a large extent on being able to accurately fire the gun at the first time, so the training of the gunner at this stage has become the focus of the training of the crew of the Q ship, and the selected gunners are often one in a hundred, and the training requirement is "to get at least one hit in the first three shots". According to Major General Bailey, the Q ship's "success depends on the agility of firing quickly and the precision of its firing, and there is no possibility of a second chance."
Although the U-40 and U-36 were plotted again and again, they could not report the attack before sinking, and the German Navy could not grasp the exact cause of its sinking, coupled with the continuous increase in the construction of Q ships in this period, making the entire 1916 a golden period in the history of Q ship combat.
Before the arrival of January 1917, although the number of encounters with U boats by Q ships was not too many, the Germans took the bait in such encounters, which made Q ships gain considerable anti-submarine combat efficiency: in 32 such encounters, as many as 9 U boats were sunk, and the British paid only 2 Q ships.
Behind the seemingly fruitful anti-submarine warfare results, there is a fact that cannot be hidden, that is, the operation of the Q ship is full of hardships. In the absence of clear intelligence support, the process of Q ships searching for U boats in the vast ocean can be described by finding a needle in a haystack. Admiral David Betty, who served as commander of the British Navy's Grand Fleet in the late world war, once made a figurative analogy: "It's like looking for a needle in a bundle of hay, and once you find it, you have to touch it with another needle." ”
A cartoon depicting the capture of a submarine by a Q ship
Because it is impossible to predict the movement of the U boat, the Q ship's attack usually has no specific task, often just assigns a specific area of water to the captain, and then allows the Q ship to go to sea for a long time, hoping for good luck at the tip of the wave. According to one Captain of Ship Q, "Almost every time, I didn't receive any instructions when I set sail, and after I set sail, I just informed headquarters every day about what I had done." ”
For the Q ship, the main means of discovering the U-boat is the eye observation of the crew, and only in very accidental cases will some clues about the movement of the U-boat be obtained, which is often reported from the recent U-boat attack, but even such information, the probability of accurately guiding the discovery of the U-boat is very small.
There is a saying in the British Navy about the deployment of Q ships, "Do not deploy 'mystery ships' in the waters where U boats have appeared, but deploy them to the waters where U boats may appear", which is obviously only an ideal state.
And, things can't always go in one direction. After taking too many losses, german U-boats began to realize that the "merchant ships" that appeared in front of them were not always delicious prey. Experienced U-boat captains became extremely cautious when observing merchant ship targets, sometimes taking direct torpedo attacks, sometimes floating and approaching but remaining vigilant enough to be prepared for the immediate engagement of anti-submarine warfare once the target transformed into an anti-submarine vessel.
In this case, although the probability of Q ships and U-boat encounters began to rise from 1917 - from February 1917 to the end of World War I more than 100 contact records, but the Q ship's anti-submarine combat efficiency plummeted, during this time period only 3 U-boats were sunk by Q ships, compared with as many as 23 Q ships on anti-submarine missions.
The fact that after June 1917, the Q ship never sank a U-boat is a clear indication that the good times of relying on camouflage and deception to achieve miraculous results in anti-submarine warfare are over. However, this in no way means that the Q ship has stopped trying to stop its efforts, on the contrary, the crew of the Q ship has maintained the same courage and calmness as before in the anti-submarine cruise of The Case and, and the encounter with the U boat is as cruel as ever.
A direct confrontation in the Bay of Biscay in August 1917 was a very typical duel between the Q ship and the U boat during the First World War, and even occupied an extremely prominent and dramatic position in the entire history of the naval battle of the First World War.