The U-Boat War, 1914–1918

Edwyn Gray

• Publisher: Leo Cooper
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780850524055
• eBook ISBN: 9781473820043
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

A history of Germany's usage of submarine warfare during World War I, by the author of Operation Pacific.
In 1914, U-Boats were a new and untried weapon, and when such a weapon can bring a mighty empire to the brink of defeat there is a story worth telling. Edwyn Gray's The U-Boat War is the history of the Kaiser's attempt to destroy the British Empire by a ruthless campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare. It opens with Germany's first tentative experiments with the submarines and climaxes with the naval mutiny that helped bring down the Kaiser.
In between is a detailed account of a campaign of terror which, by April, 1917, had the British Empire on the verge of surrender. The cost in lives and equipment was staggering. On the German side, 4,894 sailors and 515 officers lost their lives in action; 178 German Submarines were destroyed by the allies; 14 were scuttled and 122 surrendered. According to the most reliable sources, 5,708 ships were destroyed by the U-Boats and 13,333 non-combatants perished in British Ships. World figures for civilian casualties were never released.
The U-Boat War is a savage but thrilling account of men fighting for their lives beneath the sea, and of the boats that changed the face of naval warfare.

CONTENTS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
CHAPTER ONE	:	‘The essence of war is violence’
CHAPTER TWO	:	‘We could not get over the wonder of it’
CHAPTER THREE	:	‘A fine day to sink a ship’
CHAPTER FOUR	:	‘We can wound England most seriously’
CHAPTER FIVE	:	‘The most fatal weapon in naval warfare’
CHAPTER SIX	:	‘This campaign of piracy and pillage’
CHAPTER SEVEN	:	‘Proceedings for murder’
CHAPTER EIGHT	:	‘… and a natural born fisherman to boot’
CHAPTER NINE	:	‘No death could be more agonizing’
CHAPTER TEN	:	‘Act with the utmost caution’
CHAPTER ELEVEN	:	‘We were men hardened by war’
CHAPTER TWELVE	:	‘I prayed that I was guessing right’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN	:	‘A battleship is enough for one day’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN	:	‘One of the luckiest decisions I ever made’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN	:	‘We must and we will succeed’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN	:	‘Are you absolutely sure of your crew?’
APPENDIX ONE	:	Equivalent ranks of British and German officers
APPENDIX TWO	:	Germany’s top twenty U-boat aces
APPENDIX THREE	:	Distribution of U-boats 1914–1918
APPENDIX FOUR	:	Main U-boat types
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

Author’s Note

WHEN A NEW and untried weapon of war brings a mighty empire to the brink of defeat there is always a story worth telling. In 1914 the U-boats were such a weapon and this book tells the story of the Kaiser’s attempt to destroy the British Empire by a ruthless campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare. It is a story that begins with Germany’s first tentative experiments with submarines in the nineteenth century and ends in the revolutionary ferment of the naval mutiny which brought about the Kaiser’s final defeat. In between is a detailed account of the terror campaign which, by April, 1917, brought Great Britain within a hairsbreadth of surrender. It is a savage record of men fighting for their lives below the surface of the sea and of atrocity, piracy, and murder. But it is also a testament to the heroism, compassion, and skilled seamanship of the men who were justly proud to wear the insignia of the Deutsche Unterseeboots Flotille.

My interest in this fascinating struggle was first aroused when I chanced upon this passage in William Guy Carr’s book, By Guess and by God: ‘The story of the North Sea operations (was) as much a story of men sealed in unsavoury tin cans, wallowing around the shallow ocean and continually at war with Nature, as it (was) a story of dramatic encounters between craft of opposing navies. In this respect the experiences of German submarine officers and men must have been identical with our own.’ The thought that the submariners on both sides endured the same hardships, triumphs, and defeats, decided me to write this account of the U-boat war as a sequel to my previous book on British submarine operations in the Great War, A Damned Un-English Weapon. And I have endeavoured to maintain a similarly objective and impartial standpoint throughout.

After the war the American author Lowell Thomas visited Germany to interview a large number of former U-boat captains about their experiences and the results of his painstaking labours were published in Raiders of the Deep in 1929. His kind permission to quote extensively from these interviews has enabled me to include many vividly personal comments by the men who actually fought the U-boat war beneath the sea and I hope that these valuable extracts have given my narrative a balance that would have been difficult to obtain in any other way.

As usual I would like to acknowledge my personal debt to the many authors and historians who, since 1918, have unravelled the complex details of the U-boat campaigns and I must also thank Doubleday & Co Inc., New York; Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd., The Estate of the late Sir Henry Newbolt and the Longmans Group Ltd., Hodder & Stoughton Ltd., the Estate of the late Admiral of the Fleet Lord Keyes, B. T. Batsford Ltd., George G. Harrap & Co Ltd., Frederick Muller Ltd., The Hogarth Press Ltd., John Farquharson Ltd., Constable & Co Ltd., The Hutchinson Publishing Group Ltd., Anthony Sheil Associates Ltd., The Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd., and The Times Newspapers Ltd. for permitting me to use their copyright material. I am grateful, too, to the Librarian and Photo Librarian, and their staffs, of the Imperial War Museum for their willing assistance in tracing document and photographs. My apologies to those other copyright holders from whom I have quoted but have been unable to trace.

Finally I must express my appreciation to A. J. Brown of the Naval Records Club for the information he has supplied me on many occasions.

Any man brave enough to go under the surface of the sea in a submarine is, to me, something of a hero. And although some U-boat captains were, as Lloyd George once said, ‘Pirates and murderers’, the majority were decent ordinary men with an unpleasant job to do. It is to the decent ordinary men of both sides that this book is dedicated.

EDWYN GRAY

CHAPTER ONE

‘The essence of war is
violence’

2.20 pm Directly in front of us I sighted four funnels and the masts of a passenger steamer at right angles to our course coming from the SW and going towards Galley Head…¹

IT WAS THE afternoon of 7 May, 1915. As Kapitanleutnant Walther Schwieger entered the sighting report in U-20’s log he had no premonition of what the future held—no warning that within the next hour his actions would make him the most hated man in the world. He scribbled his initials against the margin of the log-book entry, glanced quickly at the chart spread out across the control-room table, and snapped his fingers for the periscope to be raised ready for another hurried glimpse of his intended quarry.

U-20 was on her way home to the Fatherland after a marauding cruise along the coast of Ireland. With the overnight fog persisting well into the morning, fuel tanks running dangerously low, and only two torpedoes left in the tubes, Schwieger had decided to call it a day. Ordering the pilot to work out a course for the return to Wilhelmshaven, the U-boat skipper settled himself comfortably into a battered old leather armchair and began reading a book.

The patrol had been dull and unrewarding. True, he had sunk a sailing-ship and two steamers off Waterford, but these were paltry game compared with the achievements of Hersing, Weddigen, Valentiner, and the other great aces of the U-boat service. And Walther Schwieger was an ambitious man. A thirty-two year old bachelor from an old and respected Berlin family, he had served in submarines since the earliest pioneer days before the war. Tall and broad-shouldered, with blue eyes and blonde hair, he was every inch an officer of the Imperial German Navy—calm, correct, and coldly efficient. As a fellow captain remarked: ‘He knew exactly where he was going—and be damned to anyone who tried to stop him’¹

The morning of the 7th had already brought one disappointment. Running submerged at 60 feet to avoid the danger of being rammed accidentally in the fog, Schwieger’s attentive ears had caught the sound of powerful propellers churning the surface overhead and he took U-20 up to investigate.

‘I rose to 30 feet to take a look through the periscope. It was a big armoured cruiser. She had passed right over us and was now disappearing at high speed.’²

Both ships enjoyed a lucky escape. Had U-20 been running at periscope depth the steel prow of the cruiser would have sliced through the flimsy hull of the submarine and cut her in half. And, if Schwieger had surfaced just a few minutes earlier, he could have slammed a torpedo into the enemy warship and then vanished into the fog. But it was not to be. Fate had a greater prize in store for the unfortunate Walther Schwieger.

The dense fog which had built up during the night had finally dispersed and the sun was now bright against a clear blue sky. Taking advantage of the improved weather conditions Schwieger had brought U-20 to the surface and he was standing in the conning-tower enjoying the crisp freshness of the sea air when the unknown passenger ship was first sighted by the look-outs. For a brief moment he thought the forest of masts and funnels on the horizon must belong to a group of ships and he silently cursed the fact that he only had two torpedoes left. Then suddenly he realized it was only one ship, one very big ship.

‘Dive! Dive! Dive!’

The warning gongs rattled and the men below moved quietly and quickly to their stations. The great diving wheels that controlled the vents to the ballast tanks spun anti-clockwise and disciplined hands pulled the long series of switches and levers that were banked down one side of the cramped control-room. Schwieger slammed the hatch shut, slid down the narrow steel ladder leading from the bridge, and nodded approvingly as the First Officer threw the clutch to disconnect the oil engines.

‘Main motors. Full power!’

The electric motors took over and the needles of the ammeters swung into the red discharge segments as a surge of current was sucked out of the batteries. U-20’s skipper glanced anxiously at the depth gauges. 10—15—20, down she went. And now, clear of the surface, the submarine stopped pitching and rolling and the soft hum of the electric motors replaced the harsh roar of the main engines. Schwieger checked the chronometer on the wall and moved across to a small table so that he could note his sighting report in the log. The U-boat settled in level trim at 60 feet and her bows swung towards the d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents