Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The U-boat campaign from 1914 to 1918 was the World War I naval campaign fought by German U-boats against the trade routes of the Allies, largely in the seas around the British Isles and in the Mediterranean, as part of a mutual blockade between the German Empire and the United Kingdom.
The U-boat campaign was thus not able to cut off supplies before the US entered the war in 1917 and in later 1918, the U-boat bases were abandoned in the face of the Allied advance. The tactical successes and failures of the Atlantic U-boat Campaign would later be used as a set of available tactics in World War II in a similar U-boat war ...
Throughout the year U-boats were still able to find and sink ships sailing independently. By 1918, however, the U-boats' successes began to drop. In January 1918, German U-boats sank 103,738 long tons (105,403 t) and the Austrians sank a further 20,020 long tons (20,340 t) while two Pola boats were sunk. [7]
The Pola Flotilla had a maximum strength of 33 U-boats. Due to the favourable conditions for commerce raiding in the Mediterranean, they caused a disproportionately large number of Allied losses during the U-boat campaign. 3.6 million tons of the 14 million tons lost by the Allies were sunk in the Mediterranean.
As ship losses to U-boats increased, finding a way to close the ports became urgent and the Admiralty became more willing to consider a raid. An attempt to raid Zeebrugge was made on 2 April 1918 but was cancelled at the last moment, after the wind direction changed and made it impossible to lay a smokescreen to cover the ships.
The beachside of the city of Ostende in 1915. As British forces on the southeast coast of Britain regrouped, remanned and repaired following heavy losses at Zeebrugge, Keyes planned a return to Ostend with the intention of blocking the canal and consequently severing Bruges from the sea, closing the harbour and trapping the 18 U-boats and 25 destroyers present for months to come.
By early 1918, the Admiralty was seeking ever more radical solutions to the problems raised by unrestricted submarine warfare, including instructing the "Allied Naval and Marine Forces" department to plan attacks on U-boat bases in Belgium. [4]
The High Seas Fleet in October 1918 was built around the core of 18 battleships and five battlecruisers, most of which had been completed before the outbreak of war.Since the Battle of Jutland in May 1916, the obsolete pre-dreadnoughts had been de-commissioned, two new battleships with 15-inch guns (Baden and Bayern) and the new battlecruiser Hindenburg had joined the fleet, but one ...