The First “World War,” also known as the Great War, took place after the turn of the century from 1914 to 1918, and was named this because it was the first conflict of global proportions. The war resulted in the loss of military lives and the near destruction of Europe. The massive destruction of the war was largely a result of the use of technology in warfare. The use of technology in warfare was a result of the industrial revolution at the end of the nineteenth century which brought mechanization and mass production to society. This brought the use of things never used or heard of into the war and included airplanes, submarines, and tanks, as well as radio communications, machine guns, and poison gas. The use of submarines played a major part in getting the U.S. to join the war.
With the launching of the Dreadnought, the first battle ship to concentrate all artillery power to massive twelve inch guns and break the twenty knot speed barrier, the worlds navies became obsolete overnight. The world powers were rushing to build a new class of war ships to replace the older out dated ones. Germany and England soon became entrapped in a naval arms race, with each trying keep pace with the other’s building program. When the War arrived in 1914, both Germany and England had navies made up of heavily armed capital ships, which were large heavily armed and thickly armored battle ships such as Destroyers. The world waited for the clash of Germany’s high seas fleet and England’s Grand fleet. The Great War ships only had a few encounters such as in the battle at Jutland and Dogger while the underestimated and largely overlooked submarine would play a revolutionary part. In the War’s second month Germany’s tiny U-boat fleet made up of only twenty six submarines and ranking fifth in size among the war’s combatants demonstrated the tremendous offensive potential of the “Underseeboot”. On September 5th, 1914 commanding officer on the U-21 Korvettenkapitan Otto Hersing found the British light cruiser Pathfinder moving toward his position, submerging the U-boat had only to wait till the Pathfinder was within his range. He fired a single torpedo and hit the Pathfinder accurately and the ship went down in under four minutes with heavy loss of life. The true eye opener came merely seventeen days later when the U-9, under the command of Kapitanleutnant otto Weddigen, sank three 10,000 ton British armored cruisers, Aboukir, Houge, and Cressy in the course of only one hour using five torpedoes. Approximately one thousand four hundred British sailors lost their lives in the attack and the loss of three capital ships was embarrassing to the British Navy. Naval establishments around the world sat up and took notice at that point. The sinking of the British cruisers had proven the submarine’s worth to the military as an offensive weapon but its use against merchant shipping brought the weapon its own place in the military world. On February 4, 1915 angered by the British blockade of the North Sea, Germany declared the water around the British Isles a war zone. Germany now would sink all merchant vessels found in those waters without warning. This was the first time the world had seen a form of unrestricted submarine warfare on merchant shipping. As result England was receiving no goods from the outside world which was very nearly starving out England because of the unmerciful nature of the German attacks.
The United States, long a neutral spectator to the war, found herself slowly being drawn into the conflict. Before her entry in 1917 a warning was sent by Germany that American waters would not be immune to the U-boat threat. Germans sent two voyages to the town of Newport, Rhode Island in that same year. After the United states entered the war on April 6, 1917 they waited for a reappearance of the submarines for months before seeing another U-boat. When they finally did it was for the sinking of the American ship S.S. Carolina.
The S.S. Carolina was a five thousand ton passenger liner transporting over 217 passengers from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to New York City. When a message was intercepted by a wireless operator that the Isabel B. Wiley was sunk by a German U-boat, no more that fifteen miles away, the message was instantly sent to the S.S. Carolina. Captain Barbour then put his ship in a defensive zig zag pattern to make the ship a less easy target but it was too late. The U-boat had already fired shells in to the ship’s wake disabling it. The captain fearing for the safety of his passengers then loaded the life boats and as soon as they were clear of the ship witnessed the U-boat fire shell upon shell till the S.S. Carolina rolled over and sank. No lives were lost in the sinking but later life boat number five was overturned and 13 people were drowned. By doing this the Germans not only insured American involvement in the war but they were also taking their own losses.
In 1915 Germany was also losing heavily to British submarines and the most successful of these attacks was the Submarine Massacre of 1915. October 10-11, 1915 the British submarine E19, in the command of Lieutenant-Commander Francis Cromie was patrolling south of the Swedish island Oland when they spotted a German cargo steamer and the crew was made to abandon the steamer so the British crew could sink it, but they were unable to sink it due to rough weather. The following morning E19 hailed the 75m long German steamer S/S Walther Leonhardt loaded with iron ore from Sweden. The crew was ordered to enter the life boat and the ship was detonated with explosive in the hull. Later that morning another ship loaded with ore from Sweden, that had witnessed the previous sinking was spotted but refused to stop being chased by the submarine at surface speed with deck guns firing till it ran aground near the coast. The sub crew then placed dynamite in the hold but failed to sink her. About 1 pm another ship, this time a 100m German ship called the S/S Gutrune, was stopped and after the crew was safely in the life boat was sunk using valves and pumps on the hold.
Submarine warfare played a major part in World War 1 and was just as important as all the trench battles on the Eastern Front. In most cases gained much more victories and losses in a much quicker fashion than the trenches. The battles in the trenches were long and resulted in much more loss of life while the naval battles in most cases helped bring about the end of the war. They played the part of starving out Germany and bringing a halt to the war just by barricading trade. If not for the use of submarines in the war it would have been a much longer war and would probably have resulted in complete destruction of Europe. Also if Germans had not used the submarine when it did America’s entering in the war would have been prolonged and the allies would probably have lost.
The Essay on Submarine War Ship Warfare Supplies
The Ethics of War Unrestricted submarine warfare is often considered a shady practice in a time of war. Unrestricted submarine warfare is when one country sets up an area that is declared a war-zone, any ships that enter this zone, military or civilian, will be fired upon without warning. Is this right? In my essay, I will weigh the pros and cons of this tactic used by the German's in WWI. The ...
The Essay on Submarine Warfare Cressy Submarines German
Submarine Warfare It took World War I to prove the worth of submarines. Prior to that time, submarines played only a small role in the ... September 1914, the German submarine force proved the importance of undersea warfare. On that day, the German submarine U-9 spotted a ... given more thoughtful consideration. Germany entered World War I with but 28 submarines. By its end, she had employed 369. ...
