World War 1 War At Sea Questions

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World War 1 War At Sea Questions - 11/10/2002 9:04:41 PM

Trigger1027

Posts: 19
Joined: 3/19/2002
Status: offline

Hey I need some help for a project on the War at Sea...
If you can answer them today that would be great, the latest you can answer them is tomorrow.

Questions
==================================
1. Were the German U-boats faster or bigger than British subs?
2. Did the War at Sea have a big impact on the outcome of the Great War?
3. Who won more naval battles? Germany or Britain?
4. What was the impact of German U-Boats on the War at Sea?
5. How powerful were U-Boats compared to other submarines/ships?
6. How did the Allies defeat U-Boat attacks?
==================================
Thanks for any help

Post #: 1

- 11/10/2002 9:58:39 PM

Voriax

Posts: 1719
Joined: 5/20/2000
From: Finland
Status: offline

Whee...a large order :)

first I'll give you couple url's: http://www.uboat.net/wwi/ and http://www.naval-history.net/NAVAL1914-18.htm

From these sites you can find plenty of info, like the fact that Germany wasn't the only country to have subs. However Germans had almost 400 subs in use during the war..half of them were lost. Other nations had few dozen or just couple subs.

Big impact...well...I think the German subs managed to cause considerable supply problems, they sunk nearly 3000 ships. But my opinion is that naval warfare didn't have a very big impact. As for naval battles, again check those sites. The biggest naval battle was of course the Jutland and it ended in a stalemate. Brits lost more ships but they had more ships to begin with, so they could afford some losses while the Germans couldn't.

How powerful? During the war surface ships had very little means to attack submarines. When you look at the U-boat losses you'll see that ramming and mines were biggest threats. Then gunfire...because the subs were rather primitive they didn't have endurance for long underwater operations..and while on surface a sub with a small deck gun isn't that strong.

Hope this helps

Voriax

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- 11/11/2002 5:31:28 AM

Randy

Posts: 1172
Joined: 8/22/2000
From: Torrance, Calif. USA
Status: offline

I also think that the British naval blockade of Germany helped bring down Germany near the end of the war. Also, didn't the German Navy mutiny near the end of the war (I might be mistaken)?

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Randy

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- 11/11/2002 6:59:58 PM

Marek Tucan

Posts: 758
Joined: 6/1/2000
From: Kladno, Czech Republic
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Who won more battles? Hard to tell, since only a few battles took place... And... For example the Jutland was a german tactical victory (they have sunk few battlecruisers - hence the British continued to build them, look how ended the Hood, generally British lost much more ships and men), but British strategical victory (the blockade wasn`t broken)... I think that the victory`s clear at Coronel (British lost - two obsolete versus two modern cruisers, the germans had more guns with longer range), Falklands (Germans lost - the force from Coronel stood against two battlecruisers and i think four cruisers - only one German ship managed to escape), Dogger Bank (British won, Germans lost one cruiser - British bad cooperation caused they have concentrated fire on this one German ship and let the rest flee), Gallipoli (British and French lost, tried to get to the Istanbul, but suffered heavy loses from mines and they had not enough initiative to send minesweepers under fire support of the battleships)... And few other smaller incidents - the German fleet acted mostly as the Fleet-in-being.
Btw when it seemed that there will occur a battle in the Mediterranean (The French and British prepared a trap for the Austrian navy), but the admirals forgot to tell the MTB commanders - one led by Cpt. Rizzo had attacked and sunk the dreadnought Szent Istvan and the Austrian navy retreated too soon.

How did they defeated the U-boots? With the convoys - if you compare the size of a lone ship and a convoy to the ocean, there is very little difference - that is, if ships from convoy sail all alone on their own, it is more probable the U-boat will find at least one ship - see what happened to PQ17 during WWII.

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jutland - 11/25/2002 2:11:42 AM

Waylander

Posts: 62
Joined: 9/3/2000
From: Pattaya, Chonburi, Thailand
Status: offline

On the battles question, if you also consider the fate of most german raiders, ie Emden,konigsberg etc then the British won more battles. I think dogger bank was more of a stalemate than Jutland for two reasons. 1, dogger could have been a great victory- it wasnt due to bad signalling.
2. At jutland it is true that the British lost more ships but they won a great strategic victoy and if you study the events when the battle-lines actually had a go at each other then the much denigrated british gunnery was actually shown to be **** good, many more German ships in the battle line suffered heavy damage than the british received.
German and British U-boats were fairly comparable is size althought the british K class experiments were a disaster they were very large boats.
The U-boats were defeated by the Convoy system, something that should have gone into effect in september 1939 and didnt until IRRC 1941.
One of the main results of Germanys on again - off again unrestricted U-boat warfare was to turn world opinion against them.

read Paul G Halpern's Excellent "A naval history of World war one", ISBN 1-55750-352-4

regards
Waylander

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Post #: 5