Germany, which had initially considered the submarine only useful for coastal defense, soon embraced this vessel as an effective naval combatant. During the early years of the war, the Allies could do little to disrupt the Unterseeboote, Germany’s infamous U-boat.
Although America remained neutral for two-and-a-half years, preparations were underway for what many considered an inevitable entry into the war. A submarine fleet was being organized, and the Atlantic flotilla soon found a home along the Thames River in Groton, Connecticut. Scientific and industrial leaders had been attempting to convince President Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels that a solution to the submarine problem—a contemporary understatement—which was having a devastating effect on the war, could be found if resources were allocated to put those civilian minds to work. Almost immediately after the United States declared war on April 6, 1917, antisubmarine efforts were underway at experimental stations at Nahant, Massachusetts, and at Fort Trumbull in New London, Connecticut. The monumental efforts of these civilian scientists and engineers supported by naval personnel at home and abroad would rein in U-boat predation on the high seas and hasten the end to a brutal war.
After Armistice, the Naval Experimental Station at New London continued its work until August, 1919, when it was closed. Two decades later, as Germany’s submarines descended into the Atlantic, and Japan’s patrolled the Pacific during World War II, scientists returned to Fort Trumbull. The New London Laboratory of the Columbia University Division of War Research was established to create the next generation of antisubmarine devices. Additional submarine detection technologies were being developed at the Harvard Underwater Sound Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Soon after Japan surrendered in a formal ceremony aboard the USS Missouri on September 2, 1945, the Soviet Union emerged as the next great threat. The Cold War had begun. Experimental work that had been underway in New London and Cambridge throughout World War II was consolidated at Fort Trumbull and continued when the Navy-supported university research transitioned directly into the Navy Department—now officially titled the U.S. Navy Underwater Sound Laboratory, USN/USL. For two World Wars, the focus had been submarine detection; this would remain the mission of the “Sound Lab” in New London with a succession of name changes, for the next half-century.13
I joined the USN/USL staff in 1967, when the world was under threat of a nuclear confrontation. Soviet submarines patrolled the oceans, carrying weapons far beyond the imaginations of those who went before us. The “listening devices” of 1918 had also improved, but the goal was the same: detect, track, and, if the Cold War became a hot war, destroy the enemy. I can remember the nervous anticipation of everyone on board USS Pargo (SSN 650) in 1970 when we detected and then tracked a Charlie-class Soviet submarine. We were using an experimental, passive “listening” sonar system, which would eventually be installed on every U.S. attack submarine.14 All of us on board Pargo felt the same urgency to provide an effective deterrent to an enemy submarine, as did those who preceded us a half century earlier.
This book tells the story, often through the voices of those who were there, of the emergence of the submarine in 1914, when no one, including the Imperial German Navy, anticipated the impact these sleek, submersible vessels would have on the war. By Armistice on November 11, 1918, after a four-year effort to put an end to this efficient predator, the “listeners” had gained the upper hand. In the words of Admiral William Sowden Sims, then commander of all U.S. naval forces in Europe: “A listening device placed on board ship, which would reveal to practiced ears the noise of a submarine at a reasonable distance, and which would give its direction, would come near to solving the most serious problem presented by the German tactics.”15
After the war, Ernst Hashagen, captain of U-62, and someone very familiar with those “German tactics,” described the effect antisubmarine technologies had on German submarine crews:
The last year of the War is the worst. For three long years we have allowed our enemies time to study the nature of the submarine, to pry into its most intimate secrets. They pursue and fight us on the surface, through fog and storm, from the air and in the depths of the sea, on the coasts and in the open…. They listen-in for us, to hear the distant beat of our screws; and feel for us with electric fingers along the sea-bed.16
THE LISTENERS
INTRODUCTION THE WAR TO END ALL WARS
L-class submarines on station at Bantry Bay, Ireland. The “A” has been added to distinguish the American submarines from British L-class boats. Forward of each sail is the barrel of a stowed 3-in/23 caliber retractable deck gun. Visible on AL-10 are three vertical struts on which are mounted hydrophones in a K-tube arrangement. (Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC) NH 60252)
They bear, in place of classic names,
Letters and numbers on their skin.
They play their grisly blindfold games
In little boxes made of tin.
—Rudyard Kipling, Sea Warfare, 1916.1
In 1915 and 1916, Rudyard Kipling published a series of articles in British and American newspapers describing the early progress of the naval war, writing of the U-boat as a hidden predator. “One class of German submarines meant for murder off the coasts may use a winding and rabbit-like track between shoals …” while others are sent “off for deep sea assassinations.”2 His writings evoked a sense of the violence and desperation of a war that had taken his eighteen-year-old son along the Western Front on September 27, 1915.
As far as the world was concerned, this had become a global conflict as countries aligned with either the Central Powers (primarily Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire), or with the allied countries referred to as the Triple Entente (Russia, France, and the United Kingdom of Britain and Ireland). Most contemporary authors referred to it as “The Great War,” although the phrase “The War to End All Wars” became popular after H. G. Wells published The War that will End War in 1914.
By the end of 1914, Britain had begun a blockade of the North Sea, yet presumably allowing neutral shipping with cargoes consisting of non-military goods bound for Germany to pass. It was argued by Germany, however, that shipments intended for civilian use were being confiscated, providing an excuse for Germany to retaliate. On February 4, 1915, Admiral Hugo Von Pohl, Chief of the Admiralty Staff, announced: “The waters round Great Britain and Ireland, including the English Channel, are hereby proclaimed a war region,” and that: “On and after February 18th every enemy merchant vessel found in this region will be destroyed, without its always being possible to warn the crews or passengers of the dangers threatening.” Von Pohl added that “incidents [are] inevitable in sea warfare, attacks intended for hostile ships may affect neutral ships also.”3
There was nothing ambiguous about this. The Imperial German Navy was about to embark on what everyone understood would be a massive assault on merchant shipping: a U-boat campaign to restrict the flow of food and fuel to Britain, starving them into submission. This policy resulted in the sinking of the Cunard Line Lusitania on May 7, 1915. As more lives were lost at sea, angry protests by America and other neutral countries resulted in a reduction in the aggressiveness of U-boat attacks during 1916. Yet, with the ground war in a stalemate and Germany willing to risk America’s entry into the war, a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare was announced to commence on February 1, 1917. No longer would warnings be given to ships encountered; no longer would ships be boarded to inspect cargoes; no longer would the “prize laws” be followed—there would be no attempt to recover survivors;