How effective was submarine warfare during the First and Second World War? Which nations used subs most proficiently? What was the evolution of submarine warfare?
>>>/homework/
>>1269791
Extremely
Germany
Germans perfected it and used it to fuck up merchant fleets
>>1269791
>soldat
>not Matrose
>>1269791
Don't know much about WW1 but subs were pretty effective during WW2.
The most obvious example was Germany with their U-Boats in the Atlantic, terrorizing the merchant fleets trying to cross the Atlantic. Alas though their subs started getting fucked when the UK and US started developing ASW and broke the enigma code.
US submarines were the unsung heroes for the Pacific War. Much like the Germans, their doctrine was to go for shipping and merchant fleets first and they did it to great effect. And funny enough, even though their priorities were on shipping, submarines were largely responsible for a good portion of the sinking of many IJN warships. But just like the Germans, the submarines were the section of the USN that sustained the most losses.
>>1269791
I've often thought it interesting how submarine warfare and ASW is often a "conventional" counterpart to insurgency and counterinsurgency, they share a lot of parallels.
Anyway, I don't know much about WW1, but in WW2, they were reasonably, but not cripplingly effective for any one side. Like the anon above me mentioned, Germany was their most famous and visible usage, but the amount of damage they did, while significant, wasn't nearly enough to even do serious damage to the UK war economy. Honestly, their biggest impact was probably the devotion of resources to combat the u-boats that could have been committed elsewhere otherwise.
Here's a good paper on the subject.
http://jmss.org/jmss/index.php/jmss/article/view/236
As for American submarines in the Pacific, they were undoubtedly effective at strangling the Japanese shipping apparatus, but they did so relatively late in the war, when other options were likely available. How much better they were than alternative options is hard to measure.
Submarines are completely dependent on the development and training of enemy ASW components and the ability of the enemy to have ASW fielded with their merchant shipping.
I don't know a whole lot about Submarines, but British Submarines saw extensive use on Gallipoli during WW1 and while it didn't turn the fate of battle, they helped delay Ottoman reinforcements.
>>1270065
> Germany was their most famous and visible usage, but the amount of damage they did,
> while significant, wasn't nearly enough to even do serious damage to the UK war economy.
The WWII German submarine campaign was did in fact do significant damage to the British,
considering the small size of the German sub forces and how little resources they got.
Had Hitler held off on invading the U.S.S.R. and not declared war on the U.S., while putting
far more effort on strangling the British Isles, he might have gotten the Brits to sign a cease fire.
>>1270677
>The WWII German submarine campaign was did in fact do significant damage to the British,
Forgive me if I was imprecise. It didn't prevent the continual ramping up of British war production, it didn't force material shortages that led to work stoppages, it didn't induce starvation, and it didn't cause British morale to collapse.
You might argue that for the resources invested, it was a good buy, but it wasn't close to succeeding, or causing a crippling blow to the UK.
>Had Hitler held off on invading the U.S.S.R. and not declared war on the U.S., while putting
far more effort on strangling the British Isles, he might have gotten the Brits to sign a cease fire.
No he wouldn't have.
For starters, again he would need to sink far, far more tonnage to put the Brits in a prostrate enough position to force a ceasfire. Like, probably around 2.5 times as much sunk tonnage. Historically, they were barely able to keep ahead of British shipbuilding, let alone cut into what was already extant, and that's before the U.S. came along and made it all irrelevant.
Secondly, you run into problems trying to deal more damage than you did historically. Doenitz never really came up with a way to assault a well guarded convoy without unacceptable losses. He always put his cards into spreading his u-boats further and further in the hopes of catching a soft target. But sooner or later, all the targets hardened, and the reason the second happy time existed at all was because of the U.S. entry to the war and their relatively slack security. By 1941, things had already gotten tough enough that hitting British convoys was damn tough.
Plus, the Brits, not the Germans, control all of those handy airbase atlantic isles. They can afford to give air cover to far more area than you can contest it in, especially over that critical zone in and around the Faeroes gap where a lot of shipping went through.
>>1269791
I recently read a book about war crimes of the Imperial Japanese Navy and a considerable chunk of it was devoted to subs operating in the Indian Ocean. Apparently the British didn't afford much in the way of escorts for ships leaving the Suez Canal for Australia and the South Pacific, because of this they had a fairly easy time picking off merchant shipping and the occasional military vessel.
The war crimes tended to be attributed to specific subs and commanders but all dealt with the treatment of survivors of sunken ships being collected on deck, bound either individually with arms behind backs or together in sequence, the sub would then submerge and they, unable to swim or physically tied to the submarine, would be drowned.
>>1271213
fffffffffffffffuuuuuck. That is brutal!
>>1272032
At least German U-boat crews would throw food/blankets
>>1272032
>>1271213
https://mega.nz/#!cYw22DYD!EiDAy5lhyjDL6fxvuQh4utNuoXvbVSSJMgntybdSxOI
Does anyone have material on the Greek submarine force in WW2?
I was at a lecture about the war in the Med the other day, and the speaker just offhandedly tossed out a comment that the Greek subs did a number on Italian military shipping around Albania, but then went on to other subjects, didn't elaborate, didn't provide sources, didn't even really define parameters. I meant to ask him about it, but there was a long line ahead of me for questions.
