![]() Austro-Hungarian Navy submarines were also known as U-boats. The term is an anglicised version of the German word U-Boot ( listen), a shortening of Unterseeboot ('under-sea-boat'), though the German term refers to any submarine. German submarines also destroyed Brazilian merchant ships during World War II, causing Brazil to declare war on both Germany and Italy on 22 August 1942. The primary targets of the U-boat campaigns in both wars were the merchant convoys bringing supplies from Canada and other parts of the British Empire, and from the United States, to the United Kingdom and (during the Second World War) to the Soviet Union and the Allied territories in the Mediterranean. Although at times they were efficient fleet weapons against enemy naval warships, they were most effectively used in an economic warfare role ( commerce raiding) and enforcing a naval blockade against enemy shipping. ![]() U-boats were naval submarines operated by Germany, particularly in the First and Second World Wars. But the new convoy tactics, when combined with limited air support near the coasts, and an increase in Allied war vessels, allowed the all-important logistical lifeline to continue across the Atlantic and sustain the Allied war effort.U-995, a typical VIIC/41 U-boat on display at the Laboe Naval Memorial By the end of 1917, 3,170 Allied and neutral ships, totaling nearly six million tons, were sunk. The convoys were harder for U-Boats to find and attack, but the U-Boats still posed a terrifying threat. In response to the U-Boat attacks, Allied merchant ships sailed in groups, called convoys, escorted by warships. With hundreds of ships sunk over the first half of the year, the British Admiralty predicted the possible loss of the war on 20 June unless the U-Boat campaign was stopped. The Germans had gambled that unrestricted submarine warfare would win the war by strangling Britain before the full might of the United States would turn the tide. This new unrestricted submarine warfare campaign was partially responsible for bringing the United States into the war on the Allied side in April 1917. With no end to the war in early 1917, Germany returned to unrestricted submarine warfare on 1 February 1917, where its primary aim was to sink all vessels supplying the Allies, regardless of whether the country in question was at war with Germany. A year of intermittent attacks, combined with confusing, self-imposed rules by the German Admiralty on U-Boats that required them to surface when confronting large liners in order to determine nationality, proved cumbersome and dangerous to the U-Boats. U-Boat attacks intensified, although Germany still feared bringing the United States into the war. The neutral United States almost went to war over the incident, and the German high command ordered that U-Boats desist in attacking merchant ships with no warning, which came into effect in September 1915.īut this new cautious policy did not result in enough ships being sunk. On, the civilian ocean liner Lusitania was sunk, resulting in 1,198 deaths, including many Americans. But the war at sea soon lost its chivalrous nature. German U-Boats typically allowed the crews of the ships to disembark before the vessel was sunk, usually by deck gun fire instead of torpedoes, as U-Boats carried a limited number. In February 1915, German U-Boats began to attack all merchant vessels in British waters. It fell to the U-Boats to harass the Royal Navy, and the easier targets of merchant ships that were forced to cross the Atlantic. Even though the German navy sank more British warships than it lost at the Battle of Jutland (31 May to 1 June 1916), the Germans retreated back to their ports and were effectively bottled up there for the rest of the war. Germany had a powerful navy, but was cautious about losing it in a major naval engagement. Germany, blockaded by Britain’s superior navy, turned to submarines in an attempt to sever Britain’s naval lifeline across the Atlantic. German submarines, or U-Boats, threatened Canadian merchant ships carrying troops and supplies to Britain, whose war effort depended on this support.
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