Full spectrum anti-submarine warfare – The historical evidence from a British perspective

ABSTRACT

Submarines are pressing their way back to the top of the maritime agenda. To deal with the burgeoning submarine threat, the full spectrum approach to anti-submarine warfare has been developed. Its ten threads hope to defeat – as opposed to destroy – hostile submarines. This paper will explore the historical evidence surrounding the full spectrum approach. It will argue that the historical evidence for many of the threads is weak, but that when the fundamentals of submarine warfare are considered many of the lessons of WW1 and WW2 may still be relevant to today’s practitioners.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-submarine warfare
• full spectrum
• WW1
• WW2
• Royal Navy

Acknowledgments

I should like to thank Dr Martin Robson, Dr David Morgan-Owen, Dr Richard Dunley, Dr Tim Benbow, Capt C. O’Flaherty RN, Capt S. Holt RN, Cdr Andrew Livsey RN, Mr Ed Butcher, Mr Jonathan Downing and the Maritime Warfare Centre’s Chief Scientific Advisor Mr Jonathan Mellows for their very helpful advice and comments on earlier versions of this paper. Thanks must also go to the two anonymous referees whose comments were extremely helpful in refining some of the points I discuss.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ ‘NATO’s Nightmare: Russian Sub Activity Rises to Cold War Levels’, The National Interest, 2 February 2016 http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/natos-nightmare-russian-sub-activity-rises-cold-war-levels-15096; ‘Navy facing heaviest Russian activity since the Cold War says First Sea Lord’, Daily Telegraph, 15 January 2017. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/15/navy-facing-heaviest-russian-activity-since-cold-war-says-first/; ‘Russian naval activity in Europe exceeds Cold War levels: US Admiral’, Reuters, 9 April 2017 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-military/russian-naval-activity-in-europe-exceeds-cold-war-levels-u-s-admiral-idUSKBN17B0O8.

² R. Bitzinger, ‘Modernising China’s Military’, China Perspectives (2011) 11; Y. Lim, ‘The Driving Forces Behind China’s Naval Modernization’, Comparative Strategy 30 (2011), 113–4; S. Upadhyaya, ‘Expansion of Chinese Maritime Power in the Indian Ocean: Implications for India’, Defence Studies 17 (2017) 66, 69; ‘Investigation Result on the Sinking of ROKS “Cheonan”’, BBC News, 20 May 2010 http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/20_05_10jigreport.pdf; M. Chansoia, ‘Chinese Naval Presence in the Indian Ocean Region’, Indian Foreign Affairs Journal 11 (2016), 19–20. See also J. Anderson, ‘The Race to the Bottom: Submarine Proliferation and International Security’, Naval War College Review 68 (2015); M. Glosny, ‘Strangulation from the Sea: A PRC Submarine Blockade of Taiwan’, International Security 28 (2004); J. Hatcher, ‘China’s growing Indian Ocean maritime interests: sowing the seeds of conflict?’, Soundings (2013); C. Schofield, ‘An Arms Race in the South China Sea’, IBRU Boundary and Security Bulletin (July 1994), 39–48.

³ Jane’s World Navies https://janes.ihs.com/WorldNavies/Display/jwna0034-jwna .

⁴ Defending Australia in the Asia Pacific Century: Force 2030 (Australian Government: Department of Defence 2009), 70; Jane’s World Navies https://janes.ihs.com/WorldNavies/Display/jwna0007-jwna .

⁵ Jane’s World Navies https://janes.ihs.com/WorldNavies/Display/jwna0070-jwna; https://janes.ihs.com/WorldNavies/Display/jwna0083-jwna; https://janes.ihs.com/WorldNavies/Display/jwna0071-jwna; https://janes.ihs.com/WorldNavies/Display/jwna0078-jwna; https://janes.ihs.com/WorldNavies/Display/jwna0097-jwna; https://janes.ihs.com/WorldNavies/Display/jwna0134-jwna; https://janes.ihs.com/WorldNavies/Display/jwna0147-jwna.

⁶ Capt W. J. Toti USN, ‘The Hunt for Full-Spectrum ASW’, US Naval Institute Proceedings, June 2014 https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2014-06/hunt-full-spectrum-asw.

⁷ Ibid.

⁸ ‘The Hunt for Full-Spectrum ASW.’ It can be said with a great deal of justification that this insight had been made absolutely clear by experience to previous generations of ASW practitioners, but this vital lesson had been forgotten by the latter stages of the Cold War.

⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰ Examples of more recent (post 2006) work includes: J. Abbatiello, Anti-Submarine Warfare in World War 1 (London: Routledge 2006); C. Bell, ‘Air Power and the battle of the Atlantic: Very Long Range Aircraft and the Delay in Closing the Atlantic “Air Gap”’, Journal of Military History 79 (2015); T. Benbow; ‘Brothers in Arms: The Admiralty, the Air Ministry and the Battle of the Atlantic, 1940–1943ʹ, Global War Studies 11 (2014); E. Bruton & P. Coleman, ‘Listening in the Dark: Audio Surveillance, Communication Technologies, and the Submarine Threat During The First World War’, History and Technology 33 (2016); G. Franklin, Britain’s Anti-Submarine Capability, 1919–1939 (London: Routledge 2003); D. Haslop, Britain, Germany and the Battle of Atlantic: A Comparative Study (London: Bloomsbury Academic 2013); M. Llewllyn-Jones, The Royal Navy and Anti-Submarine Warfare, 1917–49 (London 2006); D. Redford, ‘Inter and intra Service Rivalries in the Battle of the Atlantic’, Journal of Strategic Studies 32 (2009); D. Redford, ‘The March 1943 Crisis in the Battle of the Atlantic: Myth and Reality’, History 92 (2007).

¹¹ A. Gordon, ‘Military Transformation in Long Periods of Peace: The Victorian Navy’, in W. Murray and R. Sinnreich (eds.), The Past as Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2006), 150–69.

¹² Llewllyn-Jones, Anti-Submarine Warfare, 5. See also AFIT/GLM/LA/94S-10, J. D. Cox, H. G. Stevens, The Relationship Between Realism in Air Force Exercises and Combat Readiness (Air Force Institute of Technology 1994), 2–4 http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a285032.pdf. Discussions with Operational Analysts at the Maritime Warfare Centre demonstrated a widely held belief about the artificiality of peacetime exercise conditions, with the view taken that the larger and more complex the exercise the greater the artificiality created by peacetime constraints. Surprisingly, the artificiality of peacetime exercises and the impact this has on efficiency and capability has not attracted any meaningful peer reviewed analysis that the Operational Analysts are aware of.

¹³ M. Howard, ‘Military History and the History of War’, in W. Murray and R. Sinnreich (eds.), The Past as Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2006), 13.

¹⁴ The IJN made very limited use of its submarines against allied naval and mercantile shipping. See, for example, D Evans & M Peattie, Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy 1887–1941 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press 1997). Conversely, the very successful USN unrestricted campaign was made against almost no concerted ASW response by the Japanese; E. Graham, Japan’s Sea Lane Security, 1940–2004 (London: Routledge 2012), 83–8.

¹⁵ Or deter from sailing. However, the impact of sailings not made due to the fear of submarine attack is hard to qualify. That said the early WW1 ‘periscopeits’ throughout the British Grand Fleet has been well documented.

¹⁶ W. S Churchill, The World Crisis, vol. II (London: Macmillan 1938), 720.

¹⁷ D. W. Waters, ‘Seamen, Scientists, Historians and Strategy’, British Journal for the History of Science 13 (1980), quoted in E. Grove (ed.), The Defeat of the Enemy Attack on Shipping 1939–1945 (Aldershot: Navy Records Society 1997), xli. Waters also derived that the success of hunting/offensive patrols was the exchange rate for unescorted shipping eg unescorted ships lost raiders sunk by hunting patrols.

¹⁸ The loss rate = own ships sunk However, own ships sunk should not normally include escorts, only mission critical own ships sailed shipping.

¹⁹ It should be noted that tonnage sunk per submarine day on patrol will include the effectiveness of ASW forces but in a manner that cannot be separated from all other variables affecting submarine performance – including weather, doctrine, training and morale (of enemy and friendly forces).

²⁰ Figures from ADM 199/2544, Trade Division Losses Statistics, 10.

Figure 2. Ships convoyed and losses to enemy action in the Atlantic and home waters 1939–1944.²⁰

²¹ See Redford, ‘The March 1943 Crisis’ for a comprehensive analysis of the impact of the March Crisis on Allied strategic plans and operations.

²² See note 11.

²³ [Kew, United Kingdom, The National Archives], ADM[iralty papers] 1/12141, Minute by D of P, 22 March 1939.

²⁴ Toti, ‘The Hunt for Full-Spectrum ASW’.

²⁵ [London, British Library] BL [Additional Manuscripts]Add Mss 49565 fol. 73, Letter from Sir Charles Wood, First Lord of the Admiralty to Prince Albert, 12 February 1856. See also TNA, ADM 1/7515, Memo by H. O. Arnold Foster, Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Admiralty, 13 March 1901.

²⁶ M. Dash, ‘British Submarine Policy 1853–1918’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of London, 1990, 87.

²⁷ See for example, Lord Goschen, Naval estimates, 17 July 1900, Parliamentary Debates, 4^th series, vol. 86 (1900), 333.

²⁸ Dash, British Submarine Policy, 91.

²⁹ Lord Goschen, House of Commons Questions, 4 April 1900, Parliamentary Debates, 4^th series, vol. 81 (1900), 1402; Lord Sydenham [G. Clarke], ‘The weapon of the weak’, Naval Review, 1933, 47–53; D. Redford, The Submarine: A Cultural History from the Great War to Nuclear Combat (London: I. B Tauris 2010), 70–3.

³⁰ See for example, H. O. Arnold-Foster, Naval estimates, 17 Jul1900, Parliamentary Debates, 4^th series, 86 (1900), 322.

³¹ C. Bell, The Royal Navy, Seapower and Strategy (Basingstoke: Macmillian 2000), 103–6; J. Maiolo, The Royal Navy and Nazi Germany (London: Macmillian 1998), 67–70; Redford, The Submarine, 131–5; see also W. Rahn, ‘German Naval Strategy and Armament 1919–1939ʹ, in P. Payson O’Brien (ed.), Technology and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century and Beyond, (London: Cass 2001), 119, 121–3.

³² ADM 1/8622/54, Objections to the term ‘Pirates’ being applied to submarine personnel as suggested in Mr Root’s resolution III including Senator Pearce’s amendment.

³³ ADM 1/8622/54, Objections to the term ‘Pirates’ being applied to submarine personnel as suggested in Mr Root’s resolution III including Senator Pearce’s amendment.

³⁴ See for example, ‘Germany’s Worst Piracy. The Torpedoing Of The Liner ‘Falaba’, Illustrated London News, 10 April 1915, 477.

³⁵ J. Terraine, Business in Great Waters (London: Leo Cooper 1989), 11.

³⁶ TNA, ADM 1/8622/54, Washington Conference, Root resolutions. See also F. Carroll, ‘The First Shot was the last Straw: The Sinking of the T.S.S. Athenia in September 1939 and British Naval Policy in the Second World War’, Diplomacy & Statecraft 20 (2009), 405.

³⁷ Redford, The Submarine, 142–54.

³⁸ H. Richmond, Statesmen and Seapower (London: Oxford UP 1946), 275–6; A. Lambert, ‘Great Britain and Maritime War from the Declaration of Paris to the era of Total War’, in R. Hobson & T. Kristiansen (eds.), Navies in Northern Waters (London: Cass 2004), 21.

³⁹ M. Farquharson-Roberts, A History of the Royal Navy: World War 1 (London: I. B. Tauris 2014), 91, 147.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 91–3.

⁴¹ Benbow; ‘Brothers in Arms’; Redford, ‘Inter and Intra Service’.

⁴² [Kew, United Kingdom, The National Archives], AIR[ministry papers] 41/47, The RAF in the Maritime War, 346; AIR 14/481 Joubert to Pierce, 22 June 1941.

⁴³ Churchill Archives Centre, CHAR 23/9, The Battle of the Atlantic – Directive by the Minster of Defence, 6 March 1941.

⁴⁴ Sir C. Webster and N. Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany 1939–1945, vol. 4 (London: HMSO 1961), 133.

⁴⁵ AIR 41/47, The RAF in the Maritime War, 30.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 355.

⁴⁷ E. Grove (ed.), CB 3304 (1A), Naval Staff History, The Defeat of the Enemy Attack on Shipping, 1957, (Aldershot: Navy Records Society 1997), 173–4.

⁴⁸ My thanks to Dr Marcus Faulkner, King’s College London and the staff of the Naval Historical Branch for clarifying this.

⁴⁹ See P. Beesley, Very Special Intelligence (London: Greenhill 2000), 20, 35–6, 56–8.

⁵⁰ ADM 116/3381, Jellicoe, naval manoeuvres 1913.

⁵¹ CB 3304 (1A), 155.

⁵² Ibid.

⁵³ Ibid., 156.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 147.

⁵⁵ CB 3304 (1A), 148; BR 1736 (56) (1), Naval Staff History, British Mining Operations, 1939–1945, vol. 1 (London: MoD 1973), 9.

⁵⁶ CB 3304 (1A), 148.

⁵⁷ CB 3304 (1A), 148; BR 1736 (56) (1), 461–547.

⁵⁸ Terraine, Business in Great Waters, 371.

⁵⁹ Data on flying hours drawn from the CB 4050, Monthly Anti-Submarine Report, July 1942-June 1943 while the U-Boat losses and causes were extracted from CB 3304 (1A), Appendix 2 (iii), 254–61 with amendments listed on xlix-li. See also A Price, Aircraft versus Submarine, rev.edn. (London: Janes 1980), 120.

⁶⁰ Convoyed ships, independently routed ships under 15 knots speed, independently routed ships over 15 knots speed.

⁶¹ CB 3304 (1A), 306.

⁶² CB 3304 (1A), 306.

⁶³ https://www.marineinsight.com/marine-navigation/what-are-maritime-chokepoints/.

⁶⁴ Farquharson-Roberts, World War 1, 180.

⁶⁵ CB 3304 (1A), pp. 335–6; https://uboat.net/wwi/fates/.

⁶⁶ BR 1736 (56) (1), 66–8.

⁶⁷ CB 3304 (1A), 326.

⁶⁸ CB 3304 (1A), 334 and https://uboat.net/wwi/fates/indicates two U-boats; R. Grant, U-boats Destroyed (London: Putnam 1964) quoted in Terraine, Business in Great Waters, 115 suggests six.

⁶⁹ Terraine, Business in Great Waters, 115–6.

⁷⁰ BR 1736 (56) (1), 180–1. Cf subsequent analysis shows U253 was mined NW of Iceland on 23 September 1943, U743 mined Iceland North and Faeroes, U855 mined Iceland/Faeroes unknown day Sept 1944, U925 mined 18 September 1944 Iceland/Faeroes in addition to U702 on 30 September 1944; see CB 3304 (1A), l, li, lii.

⁷¹ Flying hours from CB 4050, Monthly Anti-Submarine Reports, Sept 1943-May 1945; U-boat losses from CB 3304 (1A), Appendix 2 (iii), 262–78 with amendments listed on li-liii.

⁷² Toti, ‘The Hunt for Full-Spectrum ASW’.

⁷³ W. J. Gardner, Decoding History (London: Macmillan, 1999), 61. Gardner makes the point that historic submarine operations can be divided into 4 phases, of which 2–3, depending on how the target’s position is obtained, cover the aspects of thread 6.

⁷⁴ D. Redford, A History of the Royal Navy: World War II (London: I. B. Tauris, 2014), 53–58; Beesley, Very Special Intelligence, 70–2, 94–6; F. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. II (London: HMSO, 1981), 170–9; J. Winton, Ultra at Sea (London: Leo Cooper, 1988), pp. 94–6; Cf Terraine, Business in Great Waters, pp. 325–6 where it is implied that ‘Hydra’ and Heimishce are different codes when they are the same thing. Hydra was the name given to the code after 1943.

⁷⁵ Least it be thought that the defence of mercantile shipping offers no insights for today’s practitioners; it is worth considering that a modern naval Task Group is just a convoy of warships and their auxiliaries.

⁷⁶ [Portsmouth, United Kingdom] N[aval]H[istorical]B[ranch], T87000, Admiralty Foreign Intelligence Committee report no 73, The Protection of Commerce by Convoy and Patrol, May 1885, 13–9; NHB, T79989, Admiralty, Protection of Ocean Trade in Wartime (1903), 10; NHB, T16747, The Attack and Defence of Commerce (1908), 3; B. Ranft, ‘The protection of British seaborne trade and the development of systematic planning for war, 1860–1906ʹ, in B. Ranft (ed.), Technical Change and British Naval Policy, 1860–1939 (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1977), 6; R. Parkinson, The Late Victorian Navy: The Pre-Dreadnought Era and the Origins of the First World War (Woodbridge: Boydell 2008), 24–5, 29–31; J. Winton, Convoy: The Defence of Sea Trade 1890–1990 (London: Michael Joseph 1983), 9–10, 17–31.

⁷⁷ CB 3304 (1A), 304.

⁷⁸ CB 4050/43(12), Monthly Anti-Submarine Report, Dec 1943, 3. See also CB, 4050/43(3), Mar 1943, 3. For a detailed examination of the March 1943 crisis in the Battle of the Atlantic and statistics regarding the safety of convoy see Redford, ‘The March 1943 Crisis’, 64–83.

⁷⁹ CB 3304 (1A), 306.

⁸⁰ TNA, ADM 186/40, Mercantile Convoys: general instructions for Port Officers, ocean destroyer escorts and Commodores of Convoy.

⁸¹ CB 3304 (1A), 304–5.

⁸² A. Hague, The Allied Convoy System 1939–1945 (London: Chatham 2003), 124, 133.

⁸³ Gardner, Decoding History, 70–3.

⁸⁴ https://uboat.net/wwi/fates/losses.html.

⁸⁵ BR 1736 (56) (1), 732.

⁸⁶ Table derived from data in Hague, The Allied Convoy System and CB 4050, Jun 1940 – Dec 1941.

⁸⁷ Toti, ‘The Hunt for Full-Spectrum ASW’.

⁸⁸ Source data derived from analysis of U-Boat patrols https://uboat.net/boats/patrols/with tonnage information from S. W. Roskill, The War at Sea (London, 1954–60) and CB 3304 (1A).

⁸⁹ Beasley, Very Special Intelligence, 180–1; Winton, Ultra at Sea, 136, 145.

⁹⁰ CB 3304 (1A), Table 13.

⁹¹ M. Williams, Captain Gilbert Roberts R.N. and the Anti-U-Boat School (London: Cassell 1979), 133.

⁹² Redford, World War II, 91; D. Syrett, The Defeat of the German U-boats (Columbia: SC, University of SC Press 1994), 181–229.

⁹³ U-boat losses from CB 3304 (1A), Appendix 2 (iii), 251–78 with amendments listed on xlix-liii.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Duncan Redford

A former submariner, Dr Duncan Redford has written widely on aspects of British naval history.  His current research project is examining the relationship between the Royal Navy and British national identity.