Journal of Strategic Studies

ISSN: 0140-2390 (Print) 1743-937X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fjss20

Full spectrum anti-submarine warfare – The

historical evidence from a British perspective

Duncan Redford

To cite this article: Duncan Redford (2019): Full spectrum anti-submarine warfare –
The historical evidence from a British perspective, Journal of Strategic Studies, DOI:
10.1080/01402390.2019.1623029

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2019.1623029

Published online: 11 Jun 2019.

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THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2019.1623029

ARTICLE

Full spectrum anti-submarine warfare – The

historical evidence from a British perspective
Duncan Redford
Maritime Warfare Centre

ABSTRACT
Submarines are pressing their way back to the top of the maritime agenda. To
deal with the burgeoning submarine threat, the full spectrum approach to
anti-submarine warfare has been developed. Its ten threads hope to defeat –
as opposed to destroy – hostile submarines. This paper will explore the
historical evidence surrounding the full spectrum approach. It will argue that
the historical evidence for many of the threads is weak, but that when the
fundamentals of submarine warfare are considered many of the lessons of
WW1 and WW2 may still be relevant to today’s practitioners.

KEYWORDS Anti-submarine warfare; full spectrum; WW1; WW2; Royal Navy

Introduction
After a hiatus that stretched from the attempts to find a post-Cold War
‘peace dividend’ in the 1990s to the aftermath of the land campaigns in Iraq
and Afghanistan in the 2000s and early 2010s, anti-submarine warfare (ASW)
is making a comeback within those navies – principally the United States
Navy and Britain’s Royal Navy – that had been so heavily involved in the
prospect of a future submarine campaign if the Cold War had turned hot.
In the Atlantic region, the reason for the recent upsurge in interest in ASW is
due to the return of competition between Russia and NATO (and to a lesser
extent EU). In addition to the heavily reported Russian annexation of the
Ukraine’s Crimean region in early 2014, and the subsequent Russian support
for ‘separatists’ and associated militias in Eastern Ukraine, the levels of Russian
naval activity and especially submarine activity in the North Atlantic have
increased.1 Yet this was not the only area of submarine activity that has been

CONTACT Duncan Redford duncanredford@hotmail.co.uk Maritime Warfare Centre

1
‘NATO’s Nightmare: Russian Sub Activity Rises to Cold War Levels’, The National Interest, 2 February 2016
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/natos-nightmare-russian-sub-activity-rises-cold-war-levels-15096;
‘Navy facing heaviest Russian activity since the Cold War says First Sea Lord’, Daily Telegraph,
15 January 2017. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/15/navy-facing-heaviest-russian-activity-since-
cold-war-says-first/; ‘Russian naval activity in Europe exceeds Cold War levels: US Admiral’, Reuters,
9 April 2017 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-military/russian-naval-activity-in-europe-
exceeds-cold-war-levels-u-s-admiral-idUSKBN17B0O8.
© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 D. REDFORD

. 10
The Ten Threads of Full Spectrum Anti-Submarine Warfare
1. Create conditions where an adversary chooses not to employ submarines.
2. Defeat submarines in port.
3. Defeat submarines’ shore-based command and control (C2) capability.
4. Defeat submarines near port, in denied areas.
5. Defeat submarines in choke points.
6. Defeat submarines in open ocean
7. Draw enemy submarines into ASW “kill boxes”, to a time and place of our choosing.
8. Mask our forces from submarine detection or classification.
9. Defeat the submarine in close battle.
10. Defeat the incoming torpedo.

Figure 1. The ten threads of full spectrum anti-submarine warfare.9

causing concern to navies. Predating a resurgent Russia, levels of submarine

activity in the Indian Ocean and Far East regions had risen, including the torpe-
doing of a Republic of South Korea Navy corvette by a North Korean submarine
in 2010, and the deployment of Chinese submarines into the Indian Ocean after
2014.2 Moreover, China is building up to seven more SSNs and is averaging
a build rate of 2.5 SSKs a year.3 Nor are the Chinese the only navy in the region to
be seeking to modernise or increase their submarine fleets. In 2009, Australia
announced that the Collins class replacement programme was being increased
to 12 vessels – a doubling of the Royal Australian Navy’s submarine force.4 Other
nations, including India, South Korea, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and
Taiwan, enhancing, expanding or establishing submarine forces.5
To deal with the complex problem posed by hostile submarines the concept
of ‘full spectrum ASW’ was developed (see Figure 1). Dating from 2005, this

2
R. Bitzinger, ‘Modernising China’s Military’, China Perspectives (2011) 11; Y. Lim, ‘The Driving Forces
Behind China’s Naval Modernization’, Comparative Strategy 30 (2011), 113–4; S. Upadhyaya,
‘Expansion of Chinese Maritime Power in the Indian Ocean: Implications for India’, Defence Studies
17 (2017) 66, 69; ‘Investigation Result on the Sinking of ROKS “Cheonan”’, BBC News, 20 May 2010
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/20_05_10jigreport.pdf; M. Chansoia, ‘Chinese Naval
Presence in the Indian Ocean Region’, Indian Foreign Affairs Journal 11 (2016), 19–20. See also
J. Anderson, ‘The Race to the Bottom: Submarine Proliferation and International Security’, Naval War
College Review 68 (2015); M. Glosny, ‘Strangulation from the Sea: A PRC Submarine Blockade of
Taiwan’, International Security 28 (2004); J. Hatcher, ‘China’s growing Indian Ocean maritime interests:
sowing the seeds of conflict?’, Soundings (2013); C. Schofield, ‘An Arms Race in the South China Sea’,
IBRU Boundary and Security Bulletin (July 1994), 39–48.
3
Jane’s World Navies https://janes.ihs.com/WorldNavies/Display/jwna0034-jwna .
4
Defending Australia in the Asia Pacific Century: Force 2030 (Australian Government: Department of
Defence 2009), 70; Jane’s World Navies https://janes.ihs.com/WorldNavies/Display/jwna0007-jwna .
5
Jane’s World Navies https://janes.ihs.com/WorldNavies/Display/jwna0070-jwna; https://janes.ihs.com/
WorldNavies/Display/jwna0083-jwna; https://janes.ihs.com/WorldNavies/Display/jwna0071-jwna;
https://janes.ihs.com/WorldNavies/Display/jwna0078-jwna; https://janes.ihs.com/WorldNavies/
Display/jwna0097-jwna; https://janes.ihs.com/WorldNavies/Display/jwna0134-jwna; https://janes.ihs.
com/WorldNavies/Display/jwna0147-jwna.
 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES 3

approach sought to take ‘a more holistic approach to solving the submarine

problem’.6 This ‘problem’ was, at its most basic level, that ‘most of the ASW
activity was focused on detecting, localizing, and “destroying” enemy submar-
ines, many of the detection tactics that consumed nearly all of the friendly
forces’ ASW efforts simply did not work.’7 This analysis, which came out of
a small cell within the United States Navy, postulated that defeating
a submarine was not the same as sinking one, nor was it the same as detecting
a submarine.8 From this and the subsequent briefs to USN Fleet commanders
came the 10 steps that make up the ‘Full spectrum approach’ which seeks to
defeat the submarine on its way to its target by a mix of hard kill (sinking it) and
soft kill (defeating it) measures from before it even had sailed from port.
Yet despite the current naval preoccupation with ASW and the full
spectrum approach, or the historical interest in aspects of ASW and the
defence of seaborne trade,10 there has not been any consideration of the
historical evidence either for or against a full spectrum approach to ASW.
This paper will therefore consider the historical evidence for each of the 10
steps that make up the full spectrum ASW approach. In doing so, this paper
will demonstrate the value of history to maritime practitioners by testing
assumptions as well as highlighting not only what worked in previous
campaigns (as opposed to what was hoped would work in a future conflict
as demonstrated by peacetime exercises), but more importantly why it
worked, together with the underpinning fundamentals – in much the
same way that contemporary doctrine is supposed to guide maritime
thought and action. This in turn will allow practitioners to consider how
such new thinking sits within the fundamentals highlighted by historical
analysis. In an age of resource poor navies not only can historical analysis
point to the most effective use of such assets, it can indicate whether such
activity may actually be counter-productive.

6
Capt W. J. Toti USN, ‘The Hunt for Full-Spectrum ASW’, US Naval Institute Proceedings, June 2014
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2014-06/hunt-full-spectrum-asw.
7
Ibid.
8
‘The Hunt for Full-Spectrum ASW.’ It can be said with a great deal of justification that this insight had
been made absolutely clear by experience to previous generations of ASW practitioners, but this vital
lesson had been forgotten by the latter stages of the Cold War.
9
Ibid.
10
Examples of more recent (post 2006) work includes: J. Abbatiello, Anti-Submarine Warfare in World War
1 (London: Routledge 2006); C. Bell, ‘Air Power and the battle of the Atlantic: Very Long Range Aircraft
and the Delay in Closing the Atlantic “Air Gap”’, Journal of Military History 79 (2015); T. Benbow;
‘Brothers in Arms: The Admiralty, the Air Ministry and the Battle of the Atlantic, 1940–1943ʹ, Global
War Studies 11 (2014); E. Bruton & P. Coleman, ‘Listening in the Dark: Audio Surveillance,
Communication Technologies, and the Submarine Threat During The First World War’, History and
Technology 33 (2016); G. Franklin, Britain’s Anti-Submarine Capability, 1919–1939 (London: Routledge
2003); D. Haslop, Britain, Germany and the Battle of Atlantic: A Comparative Study (London: Bloomsbury
Academic 2013); M. Llewllyn-Jones, The Royal Navy and Anti-Submarine Warfare, 1917–49 (London
2006); D. Redford, ‘Inter and intra Service Rivalries in the Battle of the Atlantic’, Journal of Strategic
Studies 32 (2009); D. Redford, ‘The March 1943 Crisis in the Battle of the Atlantic: Myth and Reality’,
History 92 (2007).
4 D. REDFORD

This paper focuses primarily upon the application of the full spec-
trum approach using wartime historical evidence for three main rea-
sons. First, using evidence from wartime only will mean that the
inherent bias and artificiality of peacetime exercises (or indeed, peace-
time operations11) can be excluded.12 As Michael Howard has pointed
out ‘Past wars provide the only database from which the military learn
to conduct their profession: how to do it and even more important, how
not to do it.’13 Second, concentrating on evidence from wartime will
ensure that sensitive matters relating to more recent and contemporary
ASW will not need to be discussed. Understandably, in an open envir-
onment, the authors of the full spectrum approach are rather coy about
what exactly they mean by each step. This paper will therefore not
consider except in passing and in the most benign manner recent and
current ASW techniques, tactics or procedures as they relate to con-
temporary full spectrum ASW practice. Third, ASW against hostile sub-
marines in peacetime is a very different proposition than war fighting as
it has extremely limited military options for both sides. As result, this
paper will consider the widest range of possible options that have been
tried in the past – primarily during the Second World War, but with
some consideration of First World War experiences – to achieve the
broad aims of each stage of the full spectrum approach. To achieve this,
the focus of this paper will be on the Royal Navy’s various attempts to
deal with a submarine threat as this provides the greatest range of
examples – both in techniques used, chronological range, geographical
spread (from the Arctic to the Indian Ocean), and above all, accessible
records allowing a comprehensive assessment against the stages of the
full spectrum approach. Furthermore, the British (and the Dominion
navies that operated interchangeably with the British) dealt with unrest-
ricted submarine warfare in two different wars, allowing them to put
into practice what they had (or indeed had not) learnt through bitter
combat experience. This is not to diminish the admittedly limited ASW
campaigns fought by the US Navy and Imperial Japanese Navy in the

11
A. Gordon, ‘Military Transformation in Long Periods of Peace: The Victorian Navy’, in W. Murray and
R. Sinnreich (eds.), The Past as Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2006), 150–69.
12
Llewllyn-Jones, Anti-Submarine Warfare, 5. See also AFIT/GLM/LA/94S-10, J. D. Cox, H. G. Stevens, The
Relationship Between Realism in Air Force Exercises and Combat Readiness (Air Force Institute of
Technology 1994), 2–4 http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a285032.pdf. Discussions with
Operational Analysts at the Maritime Warfare Centre demonstrated a widely held belief about the
artificiality of peacetime exercise conditions, with the view taken that the larger and more complex
the exercise the greater the artificiality created by peacetime constraints. Surprisingly, the artificiality
of peacetime exercises and the impact this has on efficiency and capability has not attracted any
meaningful peer reviewed analysis that the Operational Analysts are aware of.
13
M. Howard, ‘Military History and the History of War’, in W. Murray and R. Sinnreich (eds.), The Past as
Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2006), 13.
 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES 5

Pacific between 1941 and 1945,14 or that of the German and Italian
Navies in the European waters during the First and Second World Wars,
but that the weight of attack and the resulting opportunities to evolve
ASW techniques were more limited.

The historic fundamentals of submarine and anti-submarine

warfare and the full spectrum approach
First, consider what a submarine has to do to achieve victory. In order to
prevent a ship reaching its destination in time to carry out its mission –
be that deliver cargo, launch an airstrike or land an amphibious force – it
must sink the surface ship.15 This insight, although rejected when it was
first suggested by Admiral Fisher in 1913,16 was borne out in both the
First and Second World Wars. This also has a cumulative impact for the
friendly ASW force – if an aircraft carrier is sunk from a Task Group, not
just its current mission will be compromised, but all future missions that
would have relied on that carrier for success. Similarly, if a merchant ship
is sunk, not just its actual cargo will be lost, but the carrying capacity of
all future voyages for that ship with an impact on the ability to sustain
intended levels of activity.
Second, the submarine held a range advantage over the ASW forces.
Small in size, it was hard to spot visually (and later by radar) while surface
ships were visible to the submarine operating on the surface at far greater
ranges. When dived, the submarine’s passive sonars – limited though they
were – outranged the active sonars of ASW vessels and ensured that
a submarine could detect the propulsion noises of a surface ship at some
distance. These range advantages meant that a submarine could (and often
still can) refuse battle and avoid the hunting forces if its chosen target
(merchantman, aircraft carrier or other high value target) was not present.
For the ASW force, the fundamental issue is that it has to not just
avoid being sunk, but the vessel(s) it is protecting must achieve the given
mission be that to deliver a cargo, launch an airstrike or land an amphi-
bious force, at the time required. This suggests several important issues.
As stressed by the authors of the Full Spectrum approach, destroying
submarines is not the same as defeating them. Yes, a sunken submarine

14
The IJN made very limited use of its submarines against allied naval and mercantile shipping. See, for
example, D Evans & M Peattie, Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy
1887–1941 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press 1997). Conversely, the very successful USN unrest-
ricted campaign was made against almost no concerted ASW response by the Japanese; E. Graham,
Japan’s Sea Lane Security, 1940–2004 (London: Routledge 2012), 83–8.
15
Or deter from sailing. However, the impact of sailings not made due to the fear of submarine attack is
hard to qualify. That said the early WW1 ‘periscopeits’ throughout the British Grand Fleet has been
well documented.
16
W. S Churchill, The World Crisis, vol. II (London: Macmillan 1938), 720.
6 D. REDFORD

can make no more attacks, but focusing on this the fact can mean that
the idea that preventing a submarine from making an attack is the nub
of the issue can be lost. In turn this means that the measure of success or
failure is not friendly ships sunk against hostile submarines sunk (the
exchange rate – the measure of submarine success),17 but is the number
of vessels that arrive in a safe and timely manner (or the number of
missions achieved) and the resulting loss rate.18 Yet here researchers
come up against the limitations of the historical record; navies – irre-
spective of nationality – have recorded when they think they have
destroyed, not deterred – a submarine, which when combined with
post war analysis of an adversary’s records allow an accurate picture of
one form of ASW success to be measured. It will not, however, show
whether the activities of the ASW force deterred a submarine from
making an attack. Indeed, the only measure that an ASW force has as
to its effectiveness at deterring or preventing a submarine attack is the
loss rate. The lower the loss rate the more effective the ASW measures
irrespective of the weather, the number of escorts, state of training,
technological advantage or indeed the number of hostile submarines.
In short sinking submarines is a bonus not a necessity for an ASW force
but protecting shipping (whatever that shipping is) is its only measure of
effectiveness.
Post conflict analysis may allow a more detailed examination of view from
other end of the periscope by computing the productivity of a hostile sub-
marine force in terms of tonnage sunk per submarine day at sea on patrol (as
seen in Figure 9). This allows the relative effectiveness of a submarine force to
be assessed and accounts for the number of submarines available, but this will
show how good an adversary was at using its submarines, not necessarily how
good an ASW force was a protecting shipping.19 This is because such a ratio
does not consider those crucial ships, be they merchantmen, amphibious
vessels, or other capital warships that were not sunk and went on to success-
fully achieve their given mission. This vital difference between ships arriving
safely and those lost is shown most starkly in Figure 2. Even if statistics on loss
rates are not available, focussing on what the ASW force enabled, or conversely
what the submarine force failed to deter can show a degree of effectiveness,
even at the operational or strategic level where connecting activity to loss rates

17
D. W. Waters, ‘Seamen, Scientists, Historians and Strategy’, British Journal for the History of Science 13
(1980), quoted in E. Grove (ed.), The Defeat of the Enemy Attack on Shipping 1939–1945 (Aldershot:
Navy Records Society 1997), xli. Waters also derived that the success of hunting/offensive patrols was
the exchange rate for unescorted shipping eg unescorted ships lost raiders sunk by hunting patrols.
18
The loss rate = own ships sunk However, own ships sunk should not normally include escorts, only
mission critical own ships sailed shipping.
19
It should be noted that tonnage sunk per submarine day on patrol will include the effectiveness of
ASW forces but in a manner that cannot be separated from all other variables affecting submarine
performance – including weather, doctrine, training and morale (of enemy and friendly forces).
 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES 7

20000

18000

16000

14000

12000 Total number of ships convoyed

Number of ships

Number of ships sunk by enemy

10000 action (not U-Boats)
Number of ships sunk by U-Boat
8000

6000

4000

2000

0
1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944

Figure 2. Ships convoyed and losses to enemy action in the Atlantic and home waters
1939–1944.20

and the ASW tactical battle can be difficult. This has been most clearly demon-
strated in the analysis of the March 1943 crisis in the Battle of the Atlantic where
it has been shown that many of the claims made by historians about the impact
of the U-boat campaign cannot be substantiated.21
Furthermore, if to win its battle the submarine must sink22 the surface
ship. This also dictates where ASW forces can guarantee to find
a submarine – approaching or within weapon range of its target. As
the Admiralty’s Director of Plans pointed out in March 1939: ‘Generally
speaking, it is considered that the most profitable and effective method
for providing this security with limited forces available . . . is by providing
escorts for all movements most likely to be menaced by submarine
attack.’23 Conversely, this also suggests that attempts to find and destroy

20
Figures from ADM 199/2544, Trade Division Losses Statistics, 10.
21
See Redford, ‘The March 1943 Crisis’ for a comprehensive analysis of the impact of the March Crisis
on Allied strategic plans and operations.
22
See note 11.
23
[Kew, United Kingdom, The National Archives], ADM[iralty papers] 1/12141, Minute by D of P,
22 March 1939.
8 D. REDFORD

or ‘defeat’ the submarine in areas away from its target are likely to be
either relatively unsuccessful, or very resource intensive for a given out-
come, or both. Whether such resource intensive approaches for little or
no identifiable or positive outcome are sustainable, even if they are
possible for today’s resource poor navies, is a question for practitioners.

The 10 steps of full spectrum ASW

The first step of the full spectrum approach is to create conditions where
your adversary chooses not to employ submarines.24 This covers a multitude
of approaches, not just preventing the proliferation of submarines, but also
how political pressure to limit the use of submarines has been applied.
Uniquely within the 10 full spectrum approach this step also includes
peacetime activities. Indeed, the implication is that should you reach
a shooting war and an adversary still has submarines within their order of
battle this step has failed. Happily, there are plentiful historical examples for
consideration.
The most significant attempt to create conditions that would deter the use
of submarines was the effort made by the Royal Navy in the late Victorian
period. As the world’s most powerful navy, the British had the most to lose as it
had recognised, well before a submarine was practical, that ‘they [submarines]
are more likely to be used against us than for us.’25 In the late nineteenth
century the basic Admiralty position was to discourage all attempts;26 even as
submarines became practical at the turn of the century the official line was one
of discouragement.27 That said, in the nineteenth century the Royal Navy
recorded details of over 320 submarine projects.28 However, when submarines
were discussed it was often from the perspective that only a defensive navy, the
weaker – including the morally weaker – naval power, would be interested in
using them, with all that this implied about any navy that contemplated
employing submarines.29 As a deterrent, this policy was a failure. Quite simply
its utility as a means of upsetting the maritime balance of power was too strong
and too well understood by contemporary observers.30

24
Toti, ‘The Hunt for Full-Spectrum ASW’.
25
[London, British Library] BL [Additional Manuscripts]Add Mss 49565 fol. 73, Letter from Sir Charles
Wood, First Lord of the Admiralty to Prince Albert, 12 February 1856. See also TNA, ADM 1/7515,
Memo by H. O. Arnold Foster, Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Admiralty, 13 March 1901.
26
M. Dash, ‘British Submarine Policy 1853–1918’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of London, 1990, 87.
27
See for example, Lord Goschen, Naval estimates, 17 July 1900, Parliamentary Debates, 4th series, vol.
86 (1900), 333.
28
Dash, British Submarine Policy, 91.
29
Lord Goschen, House of Commons Questions, 4 April 1900, Parliamentary Debates, 4th series, vol. 81
(1900), 1402; Lord Sydenham [G. Clarke], ‘The weapon of the weak’, Naval Review, 1933, 47–53;
D. Redford, The Submarine: A Cultural History from the Great War to Nuclear Combat (London:
I. B Tauris 2010), 70–3.
30
See for example, H. O. Arnold-Foster, Naval estimates, 17 Jul1900, Parliamentary Debates, 4th series,
86 (1900), 322.
 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES 9

The development and widespread adoption of the submarine saw attention

shift to international agreements and legal approaches that limited the use of
submarines. Indeed, the first attempt to regulate maritime warfare predated
the submarine. In 1856 the Declaration of Paris sought to ‘civilise’ maritime
warfare by seeing an end to privateering and limiting maritime belligerent’s
rights. Submarines themselves have been the target of several attempts to have
them banned as a weapon of war. The Versailles Treaty in 1919 banned the
Germans from operating submarines, while at the Washington Naval
Conference the British made several attempts to have submarines banned
but were foiled by the opposition of the French. Attempts were also made to
have submarines banned at the 1930 London Naval Conference and the 1932
Geneva Disarmament Conference, but again French opposition prevented any
international agreement.
It should be borne in mind, however, that for reasons of expediency or wider
national considerations, governments were capable of undermining or ignor-
ing their own efforts to ban modes of submarine warfare or limit numbers.
Having ensured the Germans were banned from using submarines because of
the Versailles Treaty, the British also ensured that in 1935 they were allowed to
operate them as part of the Anglo-German Naval Treaty. However, the
Agreement effectively conned the Germans into giving up any interest in
building a commerce raiding fleet that could sorely try the Royal Navy in
a future war; instead they were going to build a ‘balanced fleet’, the very
type of fleet the Royal Navy would find easiest to counter in the event of
a war.31 It was also clear that in convoy and the development in the 1920s of
active sonar, the Royal Navy felt they had the measure of the submarine threat.
Furthermore, if the actions of others meant banning submarines was not
possible, then the British Admiralty made sure that military options for the
use of submarines were not overly constrained. When US Senator Elihu Root
attempted to proscribe unrestricted submarine warfare as ‘piracy’ the British
reacted strongly against such ideas.32 The British were also anxious to point
out the practical difficulties in determining whether a vessel was a naval
auxiliary (and thus a legitimate target for sinking without warning), or
a private merchant vessel (which was not a lawful target).33
The impact of public opinion should not, however, be over emphasised
as a means of modifying a hostile (or indeed your own) government’s
behaviour. The response of the maritime nations, both belligerent and

31
C. Bell, The Royal Navy, Seapower and Strategy (Basingstoke: Macmillian 2000), 103–6; J. Maiolo, The
Royal Navy and Nazi Germany (London: Macmillian 1998), 67–70; Redford, The Submarine, 131–5; see
also W. Rahn, ‘German Naval Strategy and Armament 1919–1939ʹ, in P. Payson O’Brien (ed.),
Technology and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century and Beyond, (London: Cass 2001), 119, 121–3.
32
ADM 1/8622/54, Objections to the term ‘Pirates’ being applied to submarine personnel as suggested
in Mr Root’s resolution III including Senator Pearce’s amendment.
33
ADM 1/8622/54, Objections to the term ‘Pirates’ being applied to submarine personnel as suggested
in Mr Root’s resolution III including Senator Pearce’s amendment.
10 D. REDFORD

neutral, to the German use of unrestricted submarine warfare during the

First World War was entirely negative.34 Yet it was neutral (and specifically
US) protests, not belligerent opinion, which led to increasing German con-
trols on the use of unrestricted submarine warfare during 1916.35 Yet even
the threat of bringing the US into the war was not enough to deter Germany
from resuming unrestricted submarine attacks against Allied and neutral
shipping in February 1917. The opposition to unrestricted submarine war-
fare did, however, ensure a resolution forbidding its use by compelling
submarines to act within the Prize Rules was passed at the 1930 London
Naval Conference.36 Yet during the Second World War Germany, Britain and
the USA all chose to ignore this ruling, although admittedly the British shied
away from using the phrase ‘unrestricted submarine warfare’.37 Perhaps the
final word on international agreements to limit weapons and their use
should go to Lord Goschen, the First Lord of the Admiralty, who commented
in 1898 that any law resting on paper sanctions would be broken as soon as
it was worth breaking.38
The second thread of full spectrum ASW is that of defeating the enemy
submarine in port. This too has been tried and again the historic evidence
suggests this is an ineffectual means of attacking the problem. By 1900, the
ability of navies to defeat any adversary in port was extremely limited by the
threat of mines and torpedoes. Yet despite the lack of an effective techno-
logical solution, there were attempts to defeat submarines in port during
the First World War, notably against the German submarines based on the
occupied Belgium coast. Geography and infrastructure limited British
options; the numerous sandbanks and shoals off the Belgium coast made
approaching the U-boat bases difficult, while the presence of an effective
canal network and an inland port at Bruges meant that Germans could base
their submarines at a distance from the coast where they were effectively
safe from naval gunfire. With the failure of air and naval gunfire attacks on
Burges and the dock gates that controlled the exit from the canals into the
North Sea at Ostend and Zeebrugge, attention shifted to blocking the
canals.39 Although the initial 1915 plans were rejected, the German 1917
unrestricted submarine campaign led to new proposals being developed.
On the night of 22/23 April 1918 a naval force sought to block the exits of

34
See for example, ‘Germany’s Worst Piracy. The Torpedoing Of The Liner ‘Falaba’, Illustrated London
News, 10 April 1915, 477.
35
J. Terraine, Business in Great Waters (London: Leo Cooper 1989), 11.
36
TNA, ADM 1/8622/54, Washington Conference, Root resolutions. See also F. Carroll, ‘The First Shot
was the last Straw: The Sinking of the T.S.S. Athenia in September 1939 and British Naval Policy in
the Second World War’, Diplomacy & Statecraft 20 (2009), 405.
37
Redford, The Submarine, 142–54.
38
H. Richmond, Statesmen and Seapower (London: Oxford UP 1946), 275–6; A. Lambert, ‘Great Britain
and Maritime War from the Declaration of Paris to the era of Total War’, in R. Hobson & T. Kristiansen
(eds.), Navies in Northern Waters (London: Cass 2004), 21.
39
M. Farquharson-Roberts, A History of the Royal Navy: World War 1 (London: I. B. Tauris 2014), 91, 147.
 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES 11

the canals at Ostend and Zeebrugge. The attack, ambitious and daring
though it was, was a failure.40
With the rapid improvement in airpower, using aircraft to attack naval
forces, either in harbour or at sea, gained momentum in the interwar period.
However, for the British, this area was blighted by inter and intra-service
rivalries.41 During the Second World War, the Admiralty and Coastal
Command made repeated requests for air attacks on German submarine
bases that had been established along the French Atlantic coast following
the fall of France in June 1940. The requests were refused by the Air Staff.42
Pressure was also applied to ensure that the U-boat construction yards and
bases in Germany were also bombed. Yet despite the Prime Ministerial level
oversight that was provided by the March 1941 Battle of the Atlantic
Directive, which instructed that ‘The U-boat at sea must be hunted, the
U-boat in the building yard or dock must be bombed’43 the effort made was
half hearted.44 When pressed by Coastal Command for more action against
submarine bases, the Air Ministry rejected the proposals.45 Worse still, even
when the RAF’s Bomber Command could be pressured into attacking sub-
marine bases and construction yards the aiming points were built-up areas
and not the dockyard, factory or base even if a specific target was men-
tioned in a mission order.46 Despite this, bombing of component factories
rather than construction yards was assessed post-war to have slowed U-boat
construction late in the War. More importantly, the bombing of the German
transport system in late 1944 and into 1945 – especially the severing of the
Mitteland canal – imposed a very significant delay in the construction of the
new prefabricated fast Type XXI and Type XXIII submarines.47 So while it can
be said that the historical evidence for defeating the submarine in port has
been compromised by intra-service rivalries and a particular view of the
‘proper’ employment of airpower, there is evidence to suggest that the
outcomes could have been more positive if the use of airpower had been
less doctrinaire.
Submarines, even before they have sailed from port, rely to some degree
or another on a shore-based command and control (C2) system. Attacking
this C2 system to defeat a hostile submarine force is the focus of full

40
Ibid., 91–3.
41
Benbow; ‘Brothers in Arms’; Redford, ‘Inter and Intra Service’.
42
[Kew, United Kingdom, The National Archives], AIR[ministry papers] 41/47, The RAF in the Maritime
War, 346; AIR 14/481 Joubert to Pierce, 22 June 1941.
43
Churchill Archives Centre, CHAR 23/9, The Battle of the Atlantic – Directive by the Minster of Defence,
6 March 1941.
44
Sir C. Webster and N. Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany 1939–1945, vol. 4
(London: HMSO 1961), 133.
45
AIR 41/47, The RAF in the Maritime War, 30.
46
Ibid., 355.
47
E. Grove (ed.), CB 3304 (1A), Naval Staff History, The Defeat of the Enemy Attack on Shipping, 1957,
(Aldershot: Navy Records Society 1997), 173–4.
12 D. REDFORD

spectrum ASW’s third thread. This has no historical precedent before 1945.48
On the other hand, the exploitation of shore-based C2 systems – especially
the communications element of the control capability – is something for
which there is precedent. In the First World War the Admiralty’s Room 40
organisation broke German naval codes to useful effect, but it was in
the Second World War that the exploitation of shore-based control systems
became a battle wining ASW tool. During the Battle of the Atlantic, the Allies
not only exploited the content of decrypted German naval messages (Ultra),
but also made use of direction finding and traffic analysis, which was
synthesised by the Admiralty’s Operational Intelligence Centre into what
today might be considered a strategic and operational level ‘recognised
maritime picture’ for the ASW battle.49 Given that the Allies had the cap-
ability to attack the U-boat C2 infrastructure by air or commando raids, the
question must be asked why no such attacks were mooted. The obvious
answer was that the intelligence being gained from the U-Boat shore based
C2 system was far more important to the overall ASW and wider war effort
than any short-term gain achieved by destroying the system.
Once the submarine has sailed, there is the possibility that it might be
located and attacked in the areas close to the port, areas that can often be
denied to traditional surface ASW forces. This fourth thread of the full
spectrum approach has, in the past, been achieved by two main methods:
offensive patrolling by air, submarine or surface forces, and minelaying
again by air, submarine or surface forces. The flaw in this approach was of
course, the emphasis on destruction rather than preventing a submarine
reaching a firing position. The traditional close blockade of a port to prevent
enemy warships from sailing and ensure their destruction if they did, had
been effectively abandoned by the early twentieth century due to the
development of anti-access and area denial weapons such as the mine,
the torpedo boat and the submarine. On the other hand, the submarine
also gave navies a means of attempting to operate effectively within these
denied areas as indicated by the Royal Navy’s 1913 annual manoeuvres.50 In
the First World War British submarines sank seven submarines in what could
be considered denied areas: the Kattegat, off Flanders and on one occasion
in the Ems River itself. This represented 53% of the U-boats sunk by British
submarines in home waters and 47% of the total number of U-boats sunk by
Allied submarines in all areas.51 In the Second World War British and Allied
submarines sank 13 U-boats (including two Italian ones) in home waters, six
of these were sunk in the last two years of the war off the Norwegian

48
My thanks to Dr Marcus Faulkner, King’s College London and the staff of the Naval Historical Branch
for clarifying this.
49
See P. Beesley, Very Special Intelligence (London: Greenhill 2000), 20, 35–6, 56–8.
50
ADM 116/3381, Jellicoe, naval manoeuvres 1913.
51
CB 3304 (1A), 155.
 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES 13

coast.52 In the Mediterranean 17 of the 21 U-boats sunk by British or Allied

submarines were in areas that were denied to surface or air forces by either
enemy forces or the distance of the patrol area from Allied bases.53
The second aspect of British operations in denied areas – mine war-
fare – covered a range of tasks: blockade minefields, the Dover Straits
Barrage, trap minefields, and mine barrages.54 Of these blockade mine-
laying is the activity that closet resembles that of defeating the submar-
ine in near port, denied areas. In the First World War, the success of these
operations was limited for much of the conflict by the ineffectiveness of
the British mines with the result that only two U-boats were sunk before
September 1916.55 However, once the British had a reliable mine
a further eight U-boats were destroyed.56 In the Second World War,
enemy action rapidly forced a move away from using surface forces for
minelaying towards submarine and then increasingly air laid minefields in
coastal waters and further offshore. In areas where U-boats most fre-
quently operated – the Baltic, Kattegat, Southern Norway and the Bay of
Biscay – 28,727 aerial mines were laid in additional to those laid by
surface ships and submarines. Altogether, these mines sank 18
submarines.57
Aircraft were also involved in patrolling near port areas to hunt down
transiting submarines in addition to the aerial mine laying effort. The most
notable example of this type of operation was the RAF Coastal Command’s
‘Bay Offensive.’ In many ways, the Bay offensive was born out of the
limitations of Coastal Command materiel – many of the aircraft in 1941
did not have the range needed to operate effectively over the convoys at
range, out in the Atlantic, but they could operate off the Biscay coast from
bases in South West England. As Figure 3 shows, results were poor. The first
Bay offensive from June 1941 to the end of that year was a failure with only
one U-boat sunk (U-206) after over 3600 flying hours, 31 sightings and 28
attacks.58 The second offensive from February 1943 was also disappointing;
11,570 flying hours to the end of April saw just four U-boats sunk, or one
U-boat per 2892.5 flying hours.59 The failure of this can be seen not just in
the lack of U-boats destroyed, but in the far more important impact on loss

52
Ibid.
53
Ibid., 156.
54
Ibid., 147.
55
CB 3304 (1A), 148; BR 1736 (56) (1), Naval Staff History, British Mining Operations, 1939–1945, vol. 1
(London: MoD 1973), 9.
56
CB 3304 (1A), 148.
57
CB 3304 (1A), 148; BR 1736 (56) (1), 461–547.
58
Terraine, Business in Great Waters, 371.
59
Data on flying hours drawn from the CB 4050, Monthly Anti-Submarine Report, July 1942-June 1943
while the U-Boat losses and causes were extracted from CB 3304 (1A), Appendix 2 (iii), 254–61 with
amendments listed on xlix-li. See also A Price, Aircraft versus Submarine, rev.edn. (London: Janes
1980), 120.
14 D. REDFORD

rates. In February 1943, the three measured loss rates60 all show small
reductions on the January 1943 rate with the greatest difference (0.3%) for
the convoyed ships loss rate.61 Of course, the convoyed loss rate includes
close quarters ASW protection, so the logical comparators are the indepen-
dently routed shipping loss rates for the effectiveness of offensive patrols (of
which the Bay offensives were the prime examples). Unfortunately, the loss
rate (which takes into account all variables) for independent shipping rises
in March 1943. It almost doubles for independent shipping under 15 knots
and jumps to 5.3% from 1.1% for independent shipping over 15 knots,
before falling in April to 2.5% and 3.8%, respectively – still higher than
before the Bay offensive was launched. The third offensive sought to capi-
talise on the realisation that the U-boats had withdrawn from the North
Atlantic convoy routes at the end of May 1943 and initially met with
considerable success: 12 U-boats sunk by the Biscay air patrols in
July 1943. However, as the Germans quickly got the measure of the Allies
new centimetric ASV III surface search radar, the numbers of sinking rapidly

7000
14
6000
12
5000
10

U-boats sunk
Hours flown

4000
8

3000
6

2000 4

1000 2

0 0

Month
U-boats sunk Hours on task

Figure 3. The effectiveness of the Bay of Biscay choke point patrols July 1942-
December 1943.62

60
Convoyed ships, independently routed ships under 15 knots speed, independently routed ships over
15 knots speed.
61
CB 3304 (1A), 306.
62
CB 3304 (1A), 306.
 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES 15

fell. Overall, 21 U-Boats were sunk for 33,161 flying hours, or 1579 hours
flown per U-Boat sunk.
Once at sea and on route to a patrol area the submarine may be forced to
pass through what today’s practitioners often refer to as ‘choke points’. One
of the key issues in any historical consideration of this is the definition of
a choke point. Normally, maritime choke points are considered to be natu-
rally occurring narrow channels of dense shipping – the Red Sea, Dover
Straits, Straits of Gibraltar, the Kattegat and Skagerrak, and Malacca Straits.63
However, in the ASW game, the choke point does not necessarily need the
high density of shipping, just the geographical constraint. However, it must
also be understood that very few choke points are without an alternative
route that by passes them, either by sea, or by other transportation method,
at the cost of time, money or inconvenience.
Historically, the use of choke points to defeat a hostile submarine – our
fifth thread – has met with mixed success. In the First World War, the Allies
attempted to close the Dover Straits and the Orkneys-Norway gap to
U-boats transiting from the North Sea to the rich hunting grounds of the
south-western approaches by using a combination of mines, anti-submarine
nets, and surface patrols. For the first half of the war, the ‘Dover Patrol’ was
generally ineffective, failing to deter or destroy German submarines which
regularly made the passage through it to and from the south-western
approaches and only two U-boats were sunk. 1917 proved to be a more
successful year with six U-boats sunk, but as 253 transits of the Channel
were made, this represents a loss rate of just 2.3%.64 It was in 1918, after the
decision to lay a new mine barrage (the mines were copies of German ones
and could be relied on to work) that the Dover Straits was closed. At least
ten U-boats were sunk in the Dover Straits in the first half of 1918, mostly by
mines and in September, the Germans abandoned the route as too
dangerous.65
In the Second World War, the Dover Straits choke point proved to be very
dangerous for German U-boats attempting to pass into the English Channel.
Between September 1939 and the summer 1940 three U-boats were
destroyed by the Dover Straits minefields and one forced to turn back.
The loss of three U-boats represented 8% of the available German force;
however, as only six boats attempted to force the Dover Straits, the three
sinkings actually meant a 60% attrition rate from the five that made the
passage.66 Importantly, the Germans were not only able to find an alter-
native (and safer, if longer) route round the north of Scotland to the Atlantic,
but their successes in the spring and summer of 1940 in seizing first

63
https://www.marineinsight.com/marine-navigation/what-are-maritime-chokepoints/.
64
Farquharson-Roberts, World War 1, 180.
65
CB 3304 (1A), pp. 335–6; https://uboat.net/wwi/fates/.
66
BR 1736 (56) (1), 66–8.
16 D. REDFORD

Scandinavia and then France reduced Dover’s value as an ASW choke point
to zero. With the German strategic decision in 1941 to deploy U-Boats to the
Mediterranean the Straits of Gibraltar became an important and effective
ASW choke point. Here, the ASW forces, aided by complex oceanographic
conditions which hampered the U-boats managed to sink 12 (12.5%) out of
95 U-boats ordered into Mediterranean between 1941 and 1944.67 A further
six were so damaged by the ASW forces that they turned back, four gave up
the attempt to force the Straits, and another three had their orders can-
celled due to the strength of the ASW forces. In total, the Gibraltar choke
point prevented 25 U-boats (26%) so ordered passing through the Straits
into the Mediterranean theatre.
It is also important to understand the levels of realism in describing an
area as a choke point for a given level of ASW technology. In the Second
World War the Dover Straits and Gibraltar were clearly effective choke points
for ASW forces. However, the Orkneys-Norway gap, the Otranto barrage
(both during the First World War) and Greenland, Iceland, UK (GIUK) gap
(during the Second World War) were far too large to be effective choke
points for transiting submarines. The First World War Northern Barrage
between the Orkneys and Norway was, despite the British and US Navies
laying 70,117 mines after the autumn of 1917, a failure. It succeeded in
sinking between two and six U-boats and did not inconvenience German
submarines – unlike the Dover barrage in 1918.68 The Otranto barrage,
designed to close a 50 mile wide ‘choke point’ across the base of the
Adriatic to prevent German and Austro-Hungarian U-Boats reaching the
Mediterranean in the First World War, was even less successful – just one
U-boat was lost to it.69 During the Second World War, after the fall of
Norway to the Germans, the GIUK gap was seen as attractive because all
German submarines built after the summer 1940 passed through the area to
get from their construction yards and training bases to operational bases on
the French Biscay coast. The fact that the GIUK gap was too large to be an
effective choke point did not prevent the British from attempting to inter-
dict U-boats in this area using mines and air patrols. The various minefields
laid from the north of Scotland to the coast of Greenland consumed over
92,000 mines – roughly 35% of the Royal Navy’s minelaying effort for the
whole of the Second World War – and sank just four submarines while also
failing to influence the movements of enemy surface units.70 Nor were the

67
CB 3304 (1A), 326.
68
CB 3304 (1A), 334 and https://uboat.net/wwi/fates/indicates two U-boats; R. Grant, U-boats Destroyed
(London: Putnam 1964) quoted in Terraine, Business in Great Waters, 115 suggests six.
69
Terraine, Business in Great Waters, 115–6.
70
BR 1736 (56) (1), 180–1. Cf subsequent analysis shows U253 was mined NW of Iceland on
23 September 1943, U743 mined Iceland North and Faeroes, U855 mined Iceland/Faeroes
unknown day Sept 1944, U925 mined 18 September 1944 Iceland/Faeroes in addition to U702 on
30 September 1944; see CB 3304 (1A), l, li, lii.
 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES 17

air patrols significantly more successful. From September 1943 until

April 1945 (the period when the RAF Coastal Command published separate
statistics for the Northern Transit Area patrols) 21 U-boats were sunk for 52,
212 h on task – 2486 h on task per U-boat sunk.71
Defeating the submarine in the open ocean is the focus of the sixth
thread. The authors of the ‘10 threads’ approach to ASW note that this
was where the bulk of the Cold War era anti-submarine effort was
directed and that its object was about defeating a hostile submarine
before it reached a firing position.72 This is rather misleading, in that
historical analysis points to this phase ending with the submarine gain-
ing contact with its target, and only then will it close to an attack
position.73 During the submarine wars of the twentieth century, three
broad methods were tried to defeat the submarine in the open ocean
before it gained contact with a target and started the process of closing
for an attack.
The first method was offensive anti-submarine hunting groups. The basic
premise was that by patrolling an area of open ocean, such as the south-
western approaches to the United Kingdom, these task groups would con-
tribute to the overall safety of the shipping in the area by deterring U-boats
from operating in these focal points where there was perceived to be large
concentrations of shipping. These patrols would also provide an opportunity
to attack and destroy enemy forces encountered within the patrol area.
When a submarine attack did take place, wireless messages would warn
shipping to stay away from a dangerous area. It was a method that spoke to
the desire for offensive action, to take the fight to the enemy and was the
same operational posture that was to be used to deal with the WW1 surface
raider threat. It was, however, a failure neither deterring the German sub-
marines from operating within the patrol areas, nor providing significant
opportunities to force battle on the enemy submarines during the First
World War.
ASW hunting groups were also tried in the Second World War. On the
outbreak of the war, the British were anxious to provide some protection to
undefended shipping that was already at sea moving to or from the UK. This
saw the use of fleet aircraft carriers as the focus of the ASW hunting forces
but unfortunately, a German U-boat managed to sink HMS Courageous (one
of only six fleet carriers available to the Royal Navy) on 17 September 1939 –
the German submarine (U-29) escaped. Furthermore, HMS Ark Royal had also

71
Flying hours from CB 4050, Monthly Anti-Submarine Reports, Sept 1943-May 1945; U-boat losses from
CB 3304 (1A), Appendix 2 (iii), 262–78 with amendments listed on li-liii.
72
Toti, ‘The Hunt for Full-Spectrum ASW’.
73
W. J. Gardner, Decoding History (London: Macmillan, 1999), 61. Gardner makes the point that historic
submarine operations can be divided into 4 phases, of which 2–3, depending on how the target’s
position is obtained, cover the aspects of thread 6.
18 D. REDFORD

been part of an ASW hunting group when on the 14 September 1939 it was
missed by torpedoes fired by U-39. These experiences saw a rapid move
away from using high-value capital units as the basis of ASW hunting
groups. Hunting groups were tried with more success in the summer 1943
by the US Navy using newly obtained escort carriers. Four escort carrier
groups were formed to hunt down German supply U-boats that were
refuelling and resupplying ordinary U-boats in the central Atlantic. In 3
months, the four USN escort carriers and their escorts sank three supply
U-boats, and given the concentration of U-boats in the area seeking supplies
from these submarines, another 11 ordinary U-boats were sunk. What made
this possible was intelligence, in particular the use of decrypted German
U-boat messages which allowed operational level commanders to steer their
tactical forces into areas where an interaction was likely. The British, whose
perseverance and technological superiority had provided the intelligence by
breaking the supposedly unbreakable Enigma coding machine, which the
Germans used for their radio messages, were not impressed as such opera-
tions were perceived as a very good way of showing the Germans their
codes were insecure.
Signals intelligence was at the heart of second method to defeat sub-
marines in the open ocean through evasion. In the Second World War
evasion very simply sought to place the submarine’s targets away from
the hunting submarines by using radio direction finding shore stations to
locate German submarines when they transmitted radio messages. The
bearings from these direction finding shore stations were passed to an
analysis organisation – the Admiralty’s Operational Intelligence Centre
(OIC) – where they were combined with other signals intelligence products
such as traffic analysis and (when available) decrypted enigma machine
signals.74 The resulting information was plotted in the OIC’s submarine
tracking room; the estimated positions of all German U-boats identified as
being at sea could then be used to steer threatened shipping around
submarine patrol lines.
The third method was to convoy shipping.75 Convoying was until the
Victorian period the accepted means of protecting shipping against
a maritime threat. However, by the 1870s it was felt, erroneously, that new
technology in the shape of steam propulsion had made convoying

74
D. Redford, A History of the Royal Navy: World War II (London: I. B. Tauris, 2014), 53–58; Beesley, Very
Special Intelligence, 70–2, 94–6; F. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. II (London:
HMSO, 1981), 170–9; J. Winton, Ultra at Sea (London: Leo Cooper, 1988), pp. 94–6; Cf Terraine,
Business in Great Waters, pp. 325–6 where it is implied that ‘Hydra’ and Heimishce are different codes
when they are the same thing. Hydra was the name given to the code after 1943.
75
Least it be thought that the defence of mercantile shipping offers no insights for today’s practi-
tioners; it is worth considering that a modern naval Task Group is just a convoy of warships and their
auxiliaries.
 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES 19

impossible.76 Perversely, during this period navies continued to use convoy

for their own protection – a fleet (or task group) was (and is) a convoy of
warships. Circumstances and a certain amount of desperation made the
British try convoying for merchant shipping in the face to devastating
shipping losses to German U-boats in the first half of 1917 and the results
were dramatic. As Figure 4 shows, the loss rates (the ratio of losses to ships
sailed and the most pertinent measure of the effectiveness of ASW mea-
sures) between convoyed and non-convoyed shipping were starkly different,
with the loss rates in convoy being at least 75% less than the non-convoyed
shipping. Indeed, for the period August 1917 – October 1918 convoys were
over ten times safer than non-convoyed shipping
with loss rates of 0.53% compared to 5.43%. The Second World War also
demonstrated the relative impunity of ships in convoy to submarine attack
compared to those proceeding ‘independently’. Even at what was

10

7 In convoy (A)

6
Loss rate %

Before joining and after

dispersal from convoy (B)
5
Total pre, in and ex convoy (A)
and (B)
4
Non convoyed (C)
3
Total loss rate outside convoy
2 (B) and (C)

0
Oct-17 Jan-18 Apr-18 Jul-18 Oct-18

Figure 4. Loss rates in convoyed and non-convoyed shipping.

October 1917 – October 1918.77

76
[Portsmouth, United Kingdom] N[aval]H[istorical]B[ranch], T87000, Admiralty Foreign Intelligence
Committee report no 73, The Protection of Commerce by Convoy and Patrol, May 1885, 13–9;
NHB, T79989, Admiralty, Protection of Ocean Trade in Wartime (1903), 10; NHB, T16747, The Attack
and Defence of Commerce (1908), 3; B. Ranft, ‘The protection of British seaborne trade and the
development of systematic planning for war, 1860–1906ʹ, in B. Ranft (ed.), Technical Change and
British Naval Policy, 1860–1939 (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1977), 6; R. Parkinson, The Late
Victorian Navy: The Pre-Dreadnought Era and the Origins of the First World War (Woodbridge:
Boydell 2008), 24–5, 29–31; J. Winton, Convoy: The Defence of Sea Trade 1890–1990 (London:
Michael Joseph 1983), 9–10, 17–31.
77
CB 3304 (1A), 304.
20 D. REDFORD

considered for many years the crisis of the Battle of the Atlantic – the first
four months of 1943 (Figure 5) when some in the British Admiralty felt that
‘we should not be able to continue convoy as an effective system of defence
against the enemy’s pack tactics . . . ’ – convoy (or a Task Group) was still
safer than proceeding independently.78 Furthermore, the anomalous convoy
loss rate for March 1943
can be explained by the relatively low numbers of independent shipping
at this stage in the war compared to the very high numbers being con-
voyed, in large numbers of convoys.
A key component of preventing the submarine moving from being in contact
to being in position to fire (and thus initiating the close quarters ASW battle and
defeating the incoming torpedo of threads 9 and 10) was speed. The faster the
submarine’s target moved, the narrower the angle at which the submarine could
approach submerged. More significantly, it was also possible for a target to move
sufficiently fast that although the submarine might gain contact, it was unable to
get close enough either on the surface or dived to reach a firing position.
In Figure 6, the faster the convoy/task group, the smaller angle P is. In order
to reach a firing position, the submarine must remain ahead of the limiting line
of submerged approach. Therefore, the water astern of the convoy is of no
interest as a submarine cannot catch up with the convoy and make an attack.
A dived submarine at A would gain contact at A1 and be able to alter course
and speed to attack at A2. However, if submarine B was dived, it would not gain
visual contact until B2 and be unable to reach a firing position submerged.
Submarine C would only be able to attack if by chance it was steering a course
across that of the convoys; by the time it reaches C2 and gains contact visually,
it will be too late to manoeuvre to reach a submerged firing position. This

Loss rate per January February March April Four

voyage months
overall
Convoyed 1.3% 1.0% 2.7% 1.1% 1.6%
ship
Independently
routed ships:
Under 15 1.6% 1.5% 2.8% 2.5% 2.8%
knots speed
15 knots or 1.0% 1.1% 5.3% 3.8% 2.8%
faster

Figure 5. Loss rates January to April 1943.79

78
CB 4050/43(12), Monthly Anti-Submarine Report, Dec 1943, 3. See also CB, 4050/43(3), Mar 1943, 3. For
a detailed examination of the March 1943 crisis in the Battle of the Atlantic and statistics regarding
the safety of convoy see Redford, ‘The March 1943 Crisis’, 64–83.
79
CB 3304 (1A), 306.
 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES 21

Figure 6. The submarine approach problem.80

model broke down in combat in two ways. First, the tactic of the U-boat
attacking on the surface at night, exploiting its superior surface speed to that
of a relatively slow mercantile convoy, meant that the area astern could not be
ignored by the escort. Second, the use of third party targeting – sometimes
aircraft but more often another submarine remaining in contact with the
convoy (and outside detection range of the escorts) homing in other submar-
ines to attack en masse – the pack attack.
The impact of speed on convoy/task group safety was quite clear in the
statistics gathered by the Admiralty during the Second World War. When the

80
TNA, ADM 186/40, Mercantile Convoys: general instructions for Port Officers, ocean destroyer escorts
and Commodores of Convoy.
22 D. REDFORD

minimum speed of vessels to sail outside the protection of convoy was

reduced from 15 knots to 13 knots between November 1940 and May 1941
the loss rate was 7.3% per voyage while the loss rate of ships sailing at 15
knots or more was around 2.8%.81 The speed issue was also seen within
the Second World War convoy statistics. The slow 7½ knot convoys were
more dangerous than the fast 9 knot ones: 38 out of 377 (10%) fast UK
bound HX convoys were attacked compared to 29 out of 177 (16%) slow UK
bound SC convoys.82 More significantly, the relatively small increase in
convoy speed of the HX convoys compared to that of the SC convoys had
a profound impact on their susceptibility to submarine attack.
What convoys were doing (or indeed a modern naval task group does)
was, as Figure 7 shows, reducing the number of targets at large and the
opportunities for detection. Key to this was the idea that the range at which
a submarine would detect a ship was almost the same
whether it was a single ship, or a group of them – a convoy. Therefore, sailing
ships in convoy reduced the number of opportunities for a submarine force to
detect, classify and subsequently attack the target shipping.83
When convoy was paired with evasion (as well as improved tactics,
techniques and procedures), the results were entirely positive for the ASW
force. February, March, April and May 1941 had seen 18, 28, 13 and 29% of
all convoys arriving or departing from the UK losing one or more merchant
ships, June, July, August and September saw 3, 13, 8 and 17% of convoys
losing one or more merchant ships (Figure 8). At the same time, as
Figure 9 shows, the tonnage sunk per day at sea, per submarine (the
measure of submarine productivity) fell – submarines were finding harder to
get in contact and when they did the were less successful. The fact is that, as
Figures 5, 8 and 9 demonstrate, ASW is the story of non-events, the ships
not sunk, the convoys or Task Groups that are not attacked – but this makes
for dull history.
The seventh thread is to draw enemy submarines into kill boxes at
a time and place of the ASW force’s choosing. This is a little problematic
in that it does not seem to recognise the submarine’s ability to choose
to refuse battle, in that the timing of any submarine move into a kill
box will be as a result of a positive decision by the submarine, not the
ASW force. That said, techniques akin to drawing submarines into kill
boxes have been used in the past. The most well-known of these is the
Q-ship – the First World War technique used by the British of converting
a merchant ship into a warship by adding hidden weapons. The Q-ship
then sailed into an area likely to contain U-boats and looked innocent,

81
CB 3304 (1A), 304–5.
82
A. Hague, The Allied Convoy System 1939–1945 (London: Chatham 2003), 124, 133.
83
Gardner, Decoding History, 70–3.
 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES 23

Figure 7. The theory of convoy.

inviting a U-boat to surface and attempt to board, search and then

scuttle the supposed merchant ship in accordance with the Prize Rules.
When the U-boat was close enough the hidden guns were unmasked,
the white ensign raised, and the U-boat overwhelmed with close range
gunfire. Of course, if the U-boat was suspicious it could refuse to take
the bait or remain submerged and torpedo the Q-ship without warning.
When first introduced in 1915, the Q-ships enjoyed some success sink-
ing four (20%) of the 20 U-boats lost that year. The flaw was that if
a submarine escaped the Q-ship, it could report what happened, ensur-
ing other U-boats were far more cautious. As a result, the successes of
Q-ships rapidly fell away; two U-boats (9% of all U-boats lost that year)
were sunk by Q-ships in 1916, while 1917 saw four (6% of all U-boats
sunk that year) while in 1918 there were no submarines sunk by
Q-ship.84 Thirty-eight Q-ships were also sunk out of around 193 in
service. A refinement of the Q-ship tactic was to use a trawler, which
was towing a submerged British submarine but in 1915 only two
U-boats were sunk in this manner.
Also falling within the idea of kill boxes was the use of deep ‘trap’ minefields
laid under convoy routes in the North Western Approaches. Unfortunately, by
the time these minefields were laid at the end of 1940 the U-boats had moved
further out into the open Atlantic.85 The idea was revisited in August 1944 as
a result of the U-boats moving their operating areas onto the continental shelf
and particularly the Irish Sea and English Channel, but these new deep mine-
fields did not claim any U-boats. It might also be considered that the convoy or
Task Group is itself an attempt to draw the submarine into a kill box where ASW

84
https://uboat.net/wwi/fates/losses.html.
85
BR 1736 (56) (1), 732.
24 D. REDFORD

Numbers of Convoys arriving/departing the UK and the percentage losing

one of more merchant ships.86

Month Number of Number losing Percentage

Convoys one or more
arriving or merchant
departing the ships
UK
Jun 1940 60 6 10%
Jul 49 8 17%
Aug 48 10 21%
Sept 48 10 21%
Oct 48 6 13%
Nov 35 7 20%
Dec 36 3 8%
Jan 1941 34 3 9%
Feb 33 6 18%
Ma 29 8 28%
Apr 31 4 13%
May 31 9 29%
Jun 31 1 3%
Jul 30 4 13%
Aug 40 3 8%
Sept 30 5 17%
Oct 33 5 15%
Nov 29 4 14%
Dec 28 2 7%

Figure 8. Numbers of convoys arriving/departing the UK and the percentage losing

one of more merchant ships.86

assets can be massed. This emphasises the point that to win its battle the
submarine must reach a firing position against the convoy or Task Group.
An interesting product of this seventh full spectrum thread is the desire to
attack the submariners’ morale as ‘if the submarine crew knows that [they are
being drawn] into kill boxes specifically designed to destroy them, [it] will
influence the crew’s behaviour in many desirable ways.’87 Important though

86
Table derived from data in Hague, The Allied Convoy System and CB 4050, Jun 1940 – Dec 1941.
87
Toti, ‘The Hunt for Full-Spectrum ASW’.
 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES 25

Tons of Allied and Neutral shipping sunk (in thousands

1000
900
800
700
600
500
of tons)

400
300
200
100
0
Sep-39
Oct-39
Nov-39
Dec-39

Mar-40

Dec-40

Aug-41
Sep-41
Oct-41
Nov-41
Dec-41
Jan-40
Feb-40

Apr-40

Aug-40
Sep-40
Oct-40
Nov-40
Jun-40

Jan-41
Feb-41
Mar-41
Apr-41

Jun-41
May-40

Jul-40

May-41

Jul-41
Figure 9. Tons sunk per U-boat day at sea on war patrols, 3 September 1939–31
December 1941.88

morale is, attacks on mass morale have a difficult track record – the RAF’s
Bomber Command’s attacks on German civilian morale after 1941 conspicu-
ously failed to induce a German collapse. Similarly, the devastating losses being
inflicted on the German submarine service during the latter half of the Second
World War might be considered to have an impact on morale. Certainly Allied
Ultra decrypts of German messages encoded using the enigma machine were
showing signs of faltering morale from February 1943 onwards.89 Yet the
U-boats kept going back into the attack; right up until the end of the war
ships were being sunk by German submarines – 16 in April and the first week of
May 1945.90 This was a very minor loss compared the casualties inflicted on
Allied shipping earlier in the war, but it rather illustrates the point that morale is
hard to attack in a meaningful way and even if morale is weak this may not in
itself be sufficient to ensure an enemy is defeated. Indeed, the difficulty with
morale as a target is being able to ascribe cause and effect; for example, the
difference between a lack of skill and a lack of morale as a cause of a submarine
failing to press home an attack in the face of ASW opposition.
The eighth thread is to acoustically mask friendly forces from submarine
detection or classification with large numbers of false targets and has no
historical precedent. This is different from using torpedo decoys to prevent
a torpedo fired by a submarine that has detected a viable target and is the
thrust of thread 10.

88
Source data derived from analysis of U-Boat patrols https://uboat.net/boats/patrols/with tonnage
information from S. W. Roskill, The War at Sea (London, 1954–60) and CB 3304 (1A).
89
Beasley, Very Special Intelligence, 180–1; Winton, Ultra at Sea, 136, 145.
90
CB 3304 (1A), Table 13.
26 D. REDFORD

Traditional close-quarters ASW is the remit of the ninth thread. This is perhaps
misleading as close quarters ASW has not been the traditional response to the
submarine threat. As the analysis in the preceding seven of eight threads
illustrates, historic ASW has seen considerable assets and efforts employed out-
side the close quarters battle. Unfortunately, as has been described, these efforts
to defeat or more often destroy a submarine threat before it gets to the close
quarters battle have been generally unsuccessful with the notable exception of
avoiding the ASW battle through evading the enemy (thread 6). Happily, for
those seeking to destroy a submarine, the evidence is that the close quarters
battle is the place to do so – admitting that it is not necessary for the ASW force
to sink submarines to win against such a threat. As Figure 10 shows, ASW escort
forces carrying out the close-quarters battle has been the most productive area.
In the Second World War 42% of German U-boats were destroyed by ASW escorts
in close-quarters battle and between 1941 and 1943 air and surface escorts
destroyed not less than 54% of all German submarines sunk.
Finally, the tenth thread is to defeat the torpedo once it has been launched.
Until 1943, this was relatively straightforward, if difficult to achieve in practice.
The unguided straight running torpedoes in use before late 1943 could, if the
wake was spotted, be avoided by turning towards or away from them to reduce
the target area. In September 1943, the Germans deployed an acoustic homing
torpedo. This was primarily an anti-escort weapon and sank three escorts in the
four days of fighting around convoys ON202 and ONS18 (six merchantmen were
also sunk). The initial response was to develop a manoeuvre to ensure the escort
stayed outside the homing range of a torpedo on the assumption one had been
fired – the ‘Step Aside’ tactic developed extremely quickly by the Western
Approaches Tactical Unit (a shore-based think tank).91 Very quickly after the
introduction of the ‘Step Aside’ towed acoustic decoys were developed by
both the British and Canadian.92

Conclusion
The full spectrum approach to ASW provides an interesting insight into the
submarine problem. However, the ability to test concepts and doctrine against
the ultimate test of war-fighting through historical evidence rather than the
artificiality of peacetime exercises means much of the Full Spectrum’s rationale
is either scanty or demonstrates little gain for considerable investment of time
and resources. This should be a salutary warning to practitioners and theorists
alike not to ignore historical evidence, but to use it to test their ideas – with the
added bonus that historical analysis is cheaper than mounting a naval exercise

91
M. Williams, Captain Gilbert Roberts R.N. and the Anti-U-Boat School (London: Cassell 1979), 133.
92
Redford, World War II, 91; D. Syrett, The Defeat of the German U-boats (Columbia: SC, University of SC
Press 1994), 181–229.
 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES 27

140

120

100 Air and/or Surface escort

U-boats sunk

Offensive ASW/patrols
80
Mines
60
Unknown

40 Other (accident, scuttled,

bombing etc)

20

0
1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945

Figure 10. U-boat losses by cause, 1939–45.93

and less likely to be affected by artificial peacetime constraints distorting the

results. However, the historical evidence does include some traps for the unwary.
Navies, for understandable reasons have concerted on recording when they
think they have destroyed a submarine – assessing the numbers that have
been deterred from making an attack is highly subjective and almost impossible
to achieve with the surviving records. Furthermore, key areas of the record are
hard to access, particularly the numbers of independently routed shipping that
sailed. Using the British experience as the basis for analysis, gives the widest
single range of records and approaches for consideration, but that this should
not be taken to mean the historic anti-submarine activities of other navies cannot
add further to our understanding of the evidence for or against the full spectrum
approach. It is to be hoped this paper will encourage historians of other navies to
examine other evidence sets to produce more analysis of historic ASW cam-
paigns with the 10 threads of the full spectrum approach as the core of the
approach.
Problems with the available evidence notwithstanding, the full spectrum
approach is too vague in its success criteria of ‘defeating’ the submarine and
fails to articulate a suitable measure of success. Indeed, the full spectrum
approach fails to consider the fundamental issue of what the ASW force is
trying to do – it is trying to get shipping to a certain place, at a certain time,
to carry out a mission. The historical evidence is that given this fundamental

93
U-boat losses from CB 3304 (1A), Appendix 2 (iii), 251–78 with amendments listed on xlix-liii.
28 D. REDFORD

consideration the loss rate is the only statistical measure that needs to be
monitored by an ASW force as it shows whether countermeasures to
a submarine threat are working, either through destroying a submarine,
about which navies have traditionally been enthused, or ensuring it – for
whatever reason – cannot reach a firing position.
In many respects the weakest aspects of the full spectrum approach are
those that either rely on political, diplomatic or international agreements
and/or pressure to deter the use of submarines, or those that lean towards
what in previous submarine wars has been categorised as ‘offensive ASW’.
To the credit of full spectrum approach it does not concern itself overly with
the destruction of submarines – this is an approach which is vindicated by
the historical record and British experience, but there is the nagging suspi-
cion that the fundamentals of submarine and anti-submarine warfare as
seen through the British experience of two world wars is missing – especially
what this means as to the most profitable place to search for and destroy
submarines, recognising that this is actually a bonus for ASW forces and not
a necessity.
Yet the hunt for a solution to the submarine problem that does not
require military resources has clearly been a seductive one for ASW forces,
given the effort that has gone into attempting to ban or control the use of
submarines since before its inception as a viable weapon system. This has,
however, been one that has been unsuccessful as submarines offered
quantitative and qualitatively inferior navies a chance to level the playing
field. Furthermore, as the British experience has demonstrated, even those
stronger powers that might lose out from potential adversaries operating
submarines may prevent agreements being made or allow a ban on
a country operating submarines to be replaced to obtain wider or more
significant political and military gains elsewhere.
With regard to the often favoured offensive ASW tactics, the reason why
these measures are so ineffective – even dangerous – is not they have not
destroyed enemy submarines during the First and Second World Wars – they
have. Indeed, Figure 10 might lead one to infer that although not quite as
successful at sinking submarines as ASW escorts, offensive ASW patrols did
rather well, destroying 203 U-boats (28%), compared to the 306 (42%) by ASW
escorts. However, when a measure of the safety of the ships these activities are
supposed to protect – be it a mercantile trade convoy, amphibious shipping en
route to carry out an operation or a carrier task group en route to a flying off
position for a strike – is included in the assessment, the results are poor. The loss
rates of escorted ships against those sailing independently protected by offen-
sive ASW patrols was 0.53% compared to 5.4% for the period August 1917 –
October 1918 and 1.6% versus 2.8% for January – April 1943. So not only were
offensive ASW measures not as good at sinking submarines – not that this was
a necessity – they were less effective at protecting shipping, which was actually
 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES 29

the real issue – despite what some practitioners at the time and since may have
thought was the purpose of ASW forces.
What the historical record shows very clearly is that those techniques so
often categorised as ‘defensive’ ASW are actually the most effective at both
protecting shipping – be it civil or military – at the operational level and
providing the best chance for limited ASW resources to gain contact with,
and destroy, hostile submarines at the tactical level. These techniques, the
convoying of shipping (again either civil or military) and the use of evasion to
avoid battle, gave navies the ability to meet the fundamental success criteria for
ASW forces – the safe and timely arrival of the protected shipping, where and
when it was needed to achieve a given mission. Perhaps now, the question now
for resource poor ASW practitioners is not whether the 10 steps work, but can
they afford the assets to make it work? If not, history may provide strong
evidence for how to get the best out of limited ASW forces.

Acknowledgments
I should like to thank Dr Martin Robson, Dr David Morgan-Owen, Dr Richard
Dunley, Dr Tim Benbow, Capt C. O’Flaherty RN, Capt S. Holt RN, Cdr Andrew
Livsey RN, Mr Ed Butcher, Mr Jonathan Downing and the Maritime Warfare
Centre’s Chief Scientific Advisor Mr Jonathan Mellows for their very helpful advice
and comments on earlier versions of this paper. Thanks must also go to the two
anonymous referees whose comments were extremely helpful in refining some of
the points I discuss.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
A former submariner, Dr Duncan Redford has written widely on aspects of British
naval history. His current research project is examining the relationship between the
Royal Navy and British national identity.

ORCID
Duncan Redford http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0519-4396

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