Praise for War Beneath the Sea "I am truly filled with awe and admiration...fascinating and a great contribution to the entire lore of submarines.... I wish I had written the book." ?Capt. Edward L. Beach, USN (Ret.) author of Run Silent, Run Deep "Peter Padfield is the best British naval historian of his generation now working. [His] book...will now become the standard work on the subject." ?Daily Telegraph (London) "Peter Padfield has produced by far the best and most complete critical history of the submarine operations of all the combatants in the Second World War, at the same time providing vivid narrative accounts of particular actions and events." ?Lloyd?s List (London) "An excellent account of submarine warfare in 1939?45... [it] recreates the tribulations and horrors of that especially brutal form of warfare within a sturdily analytical and often critical framework." ?The Economist "[A] marvelously complete and detailed study of World War II submarine warfare...an interesting, serious, and timely book." ?Houston Chronicle "A brilliant submarine warfare study." ?Military Review

World War I was the crucible of antisubmarine warfare (ASW), and the years of trial and error between 1914 and 1918 gave rise to the weapons and tactics used by today's ASW forces. With this study, military historian Dwight Messimer examines the weapons, tactics, and organization used by all the belligerents during the war and provides some surprising findings. Because he draws heavily from personal accounts as well as from official records, his book will appeal to both serious readers seeking hard facts and to general readers who like stories about war at sea. Messimer tells the story from both sides. German survivors who escaped from sunken U-boats explain what it was like to face the newly developed ASW weapons beneath the surface, and pilots tell what it was like from above. The author describes the German's well-organized and efficient ASW organization in the Baltic and the Helgoland Bight. He also discusses the weapons developed during the war that proved to be largely ineffective or outright failures. While his evaluations of the contributions made by aircraft and Q-ships put them in the category of only marginally effective, his analysis of the effectiveness of politics deems that ASW "weapon" the most effective of all. Solidly grounded in the best primary sources available in England, the United States, and Germany, this book is the first to address the ASW of all World War I belligerents.

Investigating the employment of British aircraft against German submarines during the final years of the First World War, this new book places anti-submarine campaigns from the air in the wider history of the First World War. The Royal Naval Air Service invested heavily in aircraft of all types—aeroplanes, seaplanes, airships, and kite balloons—in order to counter the German U-boats. Under the Royal Air Force, the air campaign against U-boats continued uninterrupted. Aircraft bombed German U-boat bases in Flanders, conducted area and ‘hunting’ patrols around the coasts of Britain, and escorted merchant convoys to safety. Despite the fact that aircraft acting alone destroyed only one U-boat during the war, the overall contribution of naval aviation to foiling U-boat attacks was significant. Only five merchant vessels succumbed to submarine attack when convoyed by a combined air and surface escort during World War I. This book examines aircraft and weapons technology, aircrew training, and the aircraft production issues that shaped this campaign. Then, a close examination of anti-submarine operations—bombing, patrols, and escort—yields a significantly different judgment from existing interpretations of these operations. This study is the first to take an objective look at the writing and publication of the naval and air official histories as they told the story of naval aviation during the Great War. The author also examines the German view of aircraft effectiveness, through German actions, prisoner interrogations, official histories, and memoirs, to provide a comparative judgment. The conclusion closes with a brief narrative of post-war air anti-submarine developments and a summary of findings. Overall, the author concludes that despite the challenges of organization, training, and production the employment of aircraft against U-boats was largely successful during the Great War. This book will be of interest to historians of naval and air power history, as well as students of World War I and military history in general.

The classic problem of when to depend on lessons learned from previous conflicts and when to employ new tactics and technology always confronts military leaders. At the beginning of World War II, for example, Allied naval strategists were prepared to do battle using traditional tactics against surface vessels, but - this study contends - not against submarines; because the strategists failed to appreciate either the damage done by submarines in World War I or the tactics that had worked successfully against them. Consequently, from the beginning of World War II to mid-1943, German U-boats were able to mount a devastating campaign against Allied shipping. In Slide Rules and Submarines, Montgomery Meigs describes how the allies learned to counter the U-boat threat. Using new technology - and new tactics derived from scientific methods - they devised countermeasures to defeat the German submarine menace. Then, continuing to apply those successful measures, they went on to negate the Japanese submarine threat in the Pacific. The author cites the crucial role of civilian scientists - the "outsiders" - who worked with military staffs and operational commanders of the campaign at sea. Their open minds and objective methods were essential for the application of such tactical advances as sonar and radar, acoustic torpedoes, depth finders, and code breaking to the battle. As this study illustrates, the importance of such timely and innovative cooperation among scientists, the research and development community, and military commanders in bringing technological knowledge to bear for operational and strategic advantage cannot be overstated. Meigs study of how such cooperation succeeded in the crucible of wartime crisis is itself an example of how the lessons of the past can serve us well today. J. A. Baldwin Vice Admiral, United States Navy President, National Defense University

This military history explores more than a century of aerial submarine hunting, from WWI through the Cold War and beyond. U. S. Navy veteran Michael Glynn served as a submarine hunting pilot. Now he chronicles the evolution of this unique combat role from the Great War through the Battle of the Atlantic in World War II and on to secret Cold War confrontations. He traces the parallel evolution of both aircraft and submarine as each side tries to gain advantage. Through his expert analysis, Glynn distills complicated oceanography, operations analysis, and technical theory, helping the reader understand how complex weapons and sensors function. He also examines submarine hunts in action, showing how theory and practice work together to help aviators detected their targets.