U-Boat Trap: Q-Ships of the Great War

this episode of the history guy brought to you by magellan tv and its documentary series the last voices of world war one [Music] the advent of the first widespread use of military submarines during the great war changed the face of naval warfare forced the belligerents to develop new tactics and strategies to deal with this unseen foe while the british actually had more submarines than the germans it was the germans who were most famous for their use mostly as commerce raiders and that battle in the atlantic between the german u-boats and allied merchant ships forced the allies to develop new ways to protect their vital supply lines one new tactic was to develop an entirely new class of vessel which hid their heavy weapons behind the appearance of a defenseless merchant ship it is history that deserves to be remembered those who experience the great war firsthand are gone now or at least no veterans of the war are known to survive but in the 1990s two british documentarians made an effort to videotape first-hand accounts by surviving british veterans of the war the new magellan tv documentary series the last voices of world war one uses those interviews along with original archives personal photographs and high quality dramatization to tell their story if you love the history guide then you'll probably love the documentary series the last voices of world war one and magellan tv which already has more than three thousand documentaries is adding documentaries like that every single week it is a compelling reason to keep subscribing and watching the jelen tv to show their appreciation for history guy viewers magellan tv is offering the last voices of world war one episode one the call to arms for free view for the next seven days that means that if you don't currently have a magellan tv membership you can still stream the last voices of world war one the call to arms from today april 1st through april 7th for free take it from someone who loves history if you have not signed up for magellan tv you are missing out but the good news is is that there is a special offer just for history guy viewers where you get a one month free trial with general tv if you sign up using the link in the description and when you do check out the last voices of world war one while the first world war would see the first large-scale use of these disguised ships the concept did have its antecedents in the 17th century european powers face significant danger in the mediterranean from the barbary coast pirates because of course don't all good stories involve pirates the pirates generally sailed in fast but lightly armed ships full of armed men they were not ships of the line but meant to capture merchant ships or raid lightly defended coastal towns when faced with european warships as small as a frigate the pirates would generally retreat instead of fight to lure the pirates into a fight they couldn't win the english built hms kingfisher launched in 1675. kingfisher was purpose built to deal with the barbary pirates though she was a 46-gun fourth right ship of the line her guns were hidden behind specially designed bulkheads making her look similar to a merchant ship she fought a successful but costly battle with seven barbary pirate ships in 1681 the 20th century demanded a different kind of deception submarines had proliferated after 1900 but hadn't seen large scale use and the doctrine of their use was as yet undefined the british fleet was considerably larger than the german fleet and in fact the uk had three times as many submarines as the germans at the outset of the war the superior service fleet of the royal navy would keep the german navy largely holed up at port for much of the war germany of course hoped to shift the balance at sea and they did that by the use of submarines in 1914 the german navy had only 20 submarines but by 1917 they had a fleet of 140. in august of 1914 the very first u-boat patrol began when german u-boats sailed from helgoland these subs aimed to sink the royal navy's capital ships but the sally was a failure two subs were sunk and the only torpedo fired missed but those attacks became more successful in september 1914 hms pathfinder a scout cruiser became the first ship ever sunk by a self-propelled torpedo more would soon follow the strength of the submarine lies in its ability to submerge in the great power of its torpedoes which were capable of sinking even a large ship in a single hit world war one submarines were vulnerable on the surface however they were quite slow and before the advent of sonar they were almost as blind underwater as they were hidden they also carried only a few torpedoes which were unreliable and difficult to aim this encouraged submarine commanders to surface when they spotted vulnerable merchant ships and sync them with their deck gun so that they could save the torpedoes for other targets despite their later success it was not until october 1914 that u-boats sank a merchant ship before 1915 there was no plan for submarines to engage in significant commerce raiding there was consideration for instance that submarine warfare against shipping would threaten the opinions of neutral nations such as the united states accepted rules of combat for merchant raiders were governed by the colloquially named cruiser rules referring to ships on cruiser missions usually sailing independently the rules originated in the honorable warfare of early centuries but no official agreement came until 1857. in 1909 major european nations the us and japan signed the london declaration concerning the laws of naval war but no nation actually ratified the treaty under cruiser rules raiders were expected not to fire on an unarmed ship until it shot first or attempted to flee after searching for war materials neutral ships were supposed to be released while belligerent nation ships could be seized the crew had to be taken care of usually sent to a neutral port and generally couldn't be left in lifeboats submarines fundamentally changed commerce rating a submarine's best chance at singing a foe relied on surprise which the rules explicitly forbade subs also lacked the ability to carry the crews of another ship meaning enemy crews had to be left in lifeboats still submarines did sometimes follow the rules in the war's earliest phases on october 20th 1914 u-17 stopped the british steam cargo ship ss glittra off the coast of norway laden with coal for delivery in norway the submarine stopped the ship searched it and then ordered her crew to lifeboats before the germans scuttled the ship the crew was then either towed by u-17 to the norwegian coast or possibly there towed by a norwegian sub glittra was the first merchant ship sunk by german submarines 1915 brought a reassessment of the war by all major powers none of them still labored under the hope that the war would be quick or easy any longer and new strategies had to be developed on february 4th the commander of the german high seas fleet declared that the waters around great britain and ireland including the whole of the english channel are hereby declared to be a war zone every enemy merchant vessel encountered in this zone will be destroyed u-boats would soon be sinking a hundred thousand gross registered tons a month averaging 1.9 ships every day the idea of creating decoy ships came up early in the war with possibly the first being ss victoria commissioned on november 29th 1914. the ships were kept a strict secret dubbed secret service ships but became known as mystery ships hiding weaponry behind false panels and fake funnels the ships patrolled in areas known to be submarine haunts hoping to trick an unlucky submarine into surfacing the ships usually flew neutral colors which was technically legal by international law as long as they flew up a white incident at the commencement of hostilities some of the first q ships worked in tandem with british subs the british sub c24 was the first to be successful being towed submerged by the trawler taranaki when the trawler was stopped in june 1915 by u40 the trawler contacted the british sub connected by a telephone wire c24 then attempted to disconnect from the trawler but a release mechanism failed leaving a heavy chain attached to the submarine still c-24 was able to maneuver into a position unnoticed and sank u-40 with a single torpedo the following month the small hms prince charles fitted as a mystery ship off the coast of the outer hebrides u-36 had just stopped the ss louise a danish vessel when it spotted what it thought was a collier approaching leaving the louise the u-36 fired at prince charles and ordered her to stop the charles obeyed and waited for the ship to come closer about 600 yards the captain of the q-ship ordered his men to open fire with their small hidden guns almost immediately the germans abandoned their deck gun and a well played shot pierced the sub's conning tower the u-boat attempted submerged while under fire sustaining several more hits the submarine resurfaced and the crew began swimming away from the vessel 15 crew were saved another 18 went down with boat it was the first sinking of a u-boat by a q-ship unassisted the ship's captain received a distinguished service order for the action around 200 ships were eventually converted into queue ships and largely operated out of queenstown now cove ireland it was from queenstown that they would get the name q-ship exactly how many were outfitted differs on the source h jim lefombing says that 58 merchant ships were converted in addition to 40 flower class sloops and 20 patrol craft boats however another source quotes at least 157 merchant decoy ships along with the others unrestricted submarine warfare continued throughout 1915. my seventh u-20 famously sank rms lusitania killing nearly 1200 people including 128 americans unrestricted warfare continued until after the sinking of the arabic several months later in which three americans were killed perhaps the most famous q ship was hms farnborough commanded by gordon campbell in 1916 farnborough met u-68 off ireland's coast farmborough simulated a surrender by launching some of her civilian crew while the submarine closed at about 800 yards the farnborough raised the white incident and opened fire with three 12-pounder guns sub was hit and began to sink the british ship approached and launched a depth charge which blew the u-boat's bow out of the water this was the first successful use of depth charges against submarines farnborough saw no further action until february of 1917. shortly before germany renewed unrestricted submarine warfare and drew the united states into the war campbell decided that luring the now cautious subs into an attack would take more than just looking like a merchant ship on february 17th the farm borough was hit by a torpedo off the coast of ireland campbell had actually deliberately intercepted the torpedo in her hold causing minor injuries to the crew the panic party abandoned ship while the rest of crew lay in wait at their stations u-83 pulled within 10 yards of the farnborough as it began sinking immediately the british opened fire their first shot killing the u-boat commander the boat was quickly reduced to ruin and only two crewmen were pulled from the wreckage farnborough however was sinking he radioed an odd message ashore q5 slowly sinking respectfully wishes you goodbye the ship was towed to shore by a destroyer and the crew was heavily awarded campbell was awarded the victoria cross while two others were given the distinguished service order campbell proceeded to repeat his action with hms pargers successfully seeking uc-29 in june while damaged pargers was successfully towed to port and repaired another attempt made with hms dunraven failed with the crew bravely staying aboard through multiple hits but failing to hit uc-71 one crewman aboard dunraven was killed and the ship was lost despite failing to damage the submarine two sailors were awarded victoria crosses for the action campbell wrote of the encounter it had been a fair and honest fight and i lost it referring to my crew words cannot express what i am feeling no one let me down no one could have done better the q-ship sunk five german submarines in 1915 and over the course of the war accounted for 14 submarine losses as well as dozens more damaged but the axis lost 217 submarines overall to all causes over the course of the war and significantly more at least 40 were sunk by mines the effectiveness of the q-ships is a matter of some dispute while the loss of a q-ship was less damaging than the loss of a submarine an estimated 61 q-ships were sunk by the germans q-ships generally became less effective as german crews became aware of the danger and adjusted their tactics the secret ships also diverted resources and crew from traditional navy ships those measurements don't fully account for the q-ship's contribution to the war effort however their success helped improve british morale provided some measure of uncertainty among u-boat crews who couldn't act with the assumption that they were safe but perhaps their most important success actually lay elsewhere the use of submarines already threatened the existence of cruiser rules but the introduction of q-ships essentially led germany to cease pretending to follow those rules at all and accuse the british of ignoring them as well the only alternative to unrestricted submarine warfare was to follow rules that seriously hindered submarine warfare or to give it up altogether it was the german abandonment of cruiser rules and resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare that brought the united states into the war leading to its eventual resolution and from that perspective the contribution of q-ships to world history is much larger than the number of u-boats that they sank i hope you enjoyed this episode of the history got check out our 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Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 104,775

Keywords: history, history guy, the history guy, wwi

Id: nyvXm4nmkGI

Length: 13min 6sec (786 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 01 2022