Submarine warfare
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Naval warfare is divided into three operational areas: surface warfare, air warfare and submarine warfare. Each area is comprised of specialized platforms and strategies used to exploit tactical advantages unique and inherent to that area.
Modern submarine warfare is comprised primarily of submarines and other underwater devices, technologies, and strategies for their use in cooperation with other operational areas to complete tactical objectives.
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[edit] History
[edit] Early Experiments
For most of history submarine warfare has been restricted to the deployment of mines and other unmanned static devices intended to deny use of naval assets on bodies of water. Ancient examples of this kind of warfare include placement of sharpened sticks in shallow water so that soldiers who waded out into the water, or jumped from boats into the water, would be injured. Modern history provides numerous examples of combatants placing obstacles at harbor mouths or in rivers to impede the passage of shipping.
Explosive mines were developed in the 18th century in naval applications, but their use was limited by the lack of adequate fusing technology.
The first attempted submarine attack in wartime was by Sgt. Ezra Lee of the U.S. Continental Army in David Bushnell's hand-cranked egg-like submersible, Turtle, in New York harbor during the Revolutionary War. The first successful submarine attack in wartime was by Confederate submarine CSS H.L. Hunley (named for her designer, Horace Hunley), which sank frigate USS Housatonic.
[edit] Holland invents workable submarine, 1899
The early experiments went nowhere. The first problem that had to be solved was a weapon. That was the torpedo, powered by compressed air and stabilized by a gyroscope; it was invented in the late 19th century. Second the submarine had to have a propulsion system better than hand cranks. That was solved by the electric motor powered by batteries. Third there had to be a way to recharge the batteries; that was solved by the diesel engine (which could only operate on the surface until the snorkel was invented in the 1930s). The ingredients were pulled together by John Philip Holland in his model A-1 the 1890s. By 1899 the Electric Boat Corporation began building submarines for sale to the world's navies. (The company, based in Connecticut, now makes nuclear submarines.)
Submarines at first were seen as auxiliaries to fleet battle. They proved much too slow to be useful. In 1915 the Germans began to use them to stealthily creep up on merchant ships (then sink them by surface fire.) This was the guerre de course (commerce war), which weaker nations were forced into by stronger naval rivals. During World War II, Germany and the United States relied on guerre de course, which weakened Britain, and ruined Japan's economy by cutting off oil supplies.
[edit] World War I: U Boats
[edit] World War II: Atlantic
[edit] World War II: Pacific
See Pacific War#Submarines strangle Japanese economy
[edit] Submarine warfare since 1945
[edit] References
- John Abbatiello. Anti-Submarine Warfare in World War I: British Naval Aviation and the Defeat of the U-Boats (2005)
- Blair, Clay. Silent Victory: The U. S. Submarine War Against Japan 2 vol (1975)
- Gray, Edwyn A. The U-Boat War, 1914-1918 (1994)
- Roscoe, Theodore. United States Submarine Operations in World War II (US Naval Institute, 1949).
- van der Vat, Dan. The Atlantic Campaign Harper & Row, 1988. Connects submarine and antisubmarine operations between WWI and WWII, and suggests a continuous war.
