WAR BENEATH THE SEA

By Peter Padfield

(a book report by little Roy Hill, 6th grade Mrs. Rose's class)



If you can get your hands on this book, it is a great read. First published in the

United States and Canada in 1998, I managed to pick it up as a book in circulation under

the bookcrossing system (check www.bookcrossing.com/ to find out about bookcrossing.)

The book isn't just a series of war stories. It traces the development of all US,

British, German, Japanese and Italian submarines classes between WWI to WWII. It

further outlines the actual use of these boats during wartime. I'll bet you didn't know

Japanese rules of engagement did not allow firing on anything smaller than a Cruiser or that

the Germans opened the war by allowing merchant crews to abandon ship and even gave

them food, water and compass headings to land. It provides insight into the philosophy of

use (or mis-use) of submarines, mini-subs, development of weapons, sensors, propulsion,

tactics and the industries developing them. Believe it or not, the United States Navy gets

the blue ribbon for crew amenities and comfort on their boats over all other major sea

powers. In the conduct of the U-boat war, the eternal "Measures-Counter-measures"

conflict in the field of Radar receives high marks. The book quotes Vice-Admiral Sir Peter

Gretton, one of the most distinguished escort commanders of the wars: "We were criminally

unprepared for the Battle of the Atlantic in 1939. In effect the country was left wide open

to defeat by submarine blockade, a defeat from which it was only saved by science in the

shape of Radar, the folly of its principal enemy, the productive power of its principal ally and

the ingenuity and resolve of unorthodox officers bypassed for promotion."

While I'm sure some of the younger guys in our group think the WLR-1 was the first

countermeasures set, actually a German box called METOX was the first ECM set I can

find described in any reference . The antenna was wire stretched over a wooden frame

clamped to the U-boat's bridge rail. The feedline passed down through the bridge hatch.

This receiver was intended to detect the 1 1/2meter(200MHz) British ASV radar mounted

on British bombers and eventually on surface escort vessels. The ASV radar mounted on

a British patrol aircraft proved very effective in killing U-boats crossing the Bay of Biscay

at night on the surface (remember this was before the addition of the snorkel.)

Later a centimetric (9.7 centimeters wavelength 2990MHz) or ASVIII radar was

installed on several types of bombers and METOX was defeated. Once again the U-boat

became vulnerable on the Bay of Biscay crossings.

As good at electronics as the Japanese are today, during WWII they sucked, to

quote the bard. It surprised me to learn the Japanese were right behind the Americans in

the development of Magnetic Anomaly Detection (MAD) or Jikitanchiki as they called it.

Their device could detect the change in the magnetic field surrounding a submarine at 400

feet. Installed on an airplane it would automatically drop a slick of colored aluminum and

alert the pilot to the detection. The pilot flew on until, passing out of the magnetic

disturbance, the apparatus dropped another slick, after which he flew back to make a

second pass at right angles to his initial course and half way between the two slicks on the

water. During this pass the apparatus dropped two more differently colored slicks at the

perimeter of the magnetic disturbance. The submarine was deemed to be at the center of

the triangle formed by the first two slicks and the last one. Unfortunately for the Japanese

the development of MAD was too late. They didn't have the skilled pilots to fly the aircraft,

the airplanes to spare or the fuel to power those aircraft. Even when they did detect a

submarine, the Japanese communication between aircraft and ships was so bad they could

seldom communicate the contact report to the escorts.

The book does contain a lot of "SEA STORIES" that we have read over and over but

it also contains the truth about U-boats machine gunning merchant survivors in the water.

Only one submarine skipper was tried and executed for doing it after the war. It notes that

at least one U.S. Submarine skipper machine gunned Jap soldiers after their transport

sank.

Peter Padfield is not particularly kind to the Navies of any of the major sea powers

when evaluating their handling of time between WWI and WWII. Neither, is he too kind

to RAF Air Marshall Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris and Reich's Marshall Goerring and his

Luftwaffe regarding the use of air power to protect convoys in the case of the former and

to scout for convoys by the later.

The British COMINT system gets a lot of credit for helping convoy routers

successfully keep convoys away from waiting U-boats. And for the first time, I found a

reference to traffic analysis, not cryptanalysis, being used when the Germans slipped in an

extra rotor and defeated the British Crypto analysts for several months. Of course, the

German ego refused to believe that the Brits had breached their codes so they went

arrogantly on their way ignoring the fact that the Brits knew where they were going to strike.

And as long as I am berating the Germans, I might as well take a cheap shot at the

Brits who in spite of their lessons learned in the U-boat wars in WWI still refused to build

enough escorts for the merchant convoys carrying the lifeblood of fuel, food and raw

materials to that Island nation. Their refusal to divert bombers, who were just making lots

of holes around bombproof U-boat pens, to search for and destroy U-boats in the mid-Atlantic was criminal. They, like the Germans, Japanese and our own Battleship Admirals

planned for a war at sea as a mother-of-all sea battles between the grand fleets of the

antagonists with battleships and cruisers slamming each other while destroyers dashed in

and out of the fight lobbing torpedoes at everything. Even the success of the Japanese

carriers at smashing the American battleship fleet at Pearl Harbor did not change their

minds. The Germans probably changed their plan for destroying the British fleet in one big

sea battle first, only because Hitler, the master micro-manager, decided for Donitz.

All in all this book is a great read and is well worth checking out of the library or even

buying.