Angry Planet - From loathed to loved – the deadly history of the submarine

Episode Date: May 24, 2017

Submarines are an accepted part of a strong navy and the cornerstone vessel of a superpower. But these stealth-killers of the ocean were once as derided and feared as the drone is now. This week on War College, former journalist and current naval historian Iain Ballantyne takes us through the history of the submarine. From the American Revolutionary War to the modern age of the nuclear triad, few weapons have been as controversial and as feared as the submarine. Find out why on this week’s episode. By Matthew Gault Produced by Bethel HabteSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. The views expressed on this podcast are those of the participants, not of Reuters' News. The battleship admirals, who came from a tradition of these massive surface vessels with powerful guns, in general they hated submariners because here they were in their... impudent little boats with these very cheap weapons called torpedoes, and they could sneak

around under the water and could actually do them great harm. You're listening to Reuters War College, a discussion of the world in conflict, focusing on the stories behind the front lines. Hello, welcome to War College. I'm your host, Matthew Galt, and with us today is Ian Ballantyne, a former journalist and a current naval historian. He covered conflict of the 90s, and currently edits warships magazine and has spent more time on more warships than anyone else that I know. He's here today to walk us through the history of the world's stealthiest naval vessels, the submarine. Ian, thank you so much for joining us.

That's my pleasure. All right, so you just finished writing a book about submarines, and you called it The Deadly Trade. Why that title? Well, there's a famous poem by Rudyard Kipling, written about a century ago, about the trade submariners and it makes reference to the deadly trade and calls it one-eyed death. And it's famous in the Royal Navy Submarine Service as a piece of work. And they do call their pursuit the trade in the Royal Navy. So that's where that kind of comes from.

And I added the deadly bit because I wanted to convey the fact that it's lethal, not only to the people they stalk and attack, but also to themselves, really, to submariners. So it's a risky and a deadly trade. there higher casualty rates on submarines than other naval vessels? I would say it depends. Certainly the U-boat service in the Second World War suffered 75% or 70% casualties, and 28,000 German submariners died and 5,000 were captured out of a force of about 40,000. So that was a huge and heavy death rate.

And then, of course, the Royal Navy and the other Navy did suffer as well. But they weren't in the same kind of rolls, so they weren't placing the... themselves in harm's way in quite the same way. There was certainly a high casualty rate, but I think it's the U-boat service of the Second World War that probably suffered the worst casualty rate because they had to go in and attack these very heavily defending convoys. Whereas I think on the Allied side, the German Navy and German commerce wasn't really there to the same extent, and the Japanese Navy wasn't quite as efficient as the raw Navy at killing submariners or sinking submarines.

What were the differences between those two services that made one more deadly? It's just the Germans were more offensive than the British? No, I mean, the thing that I was often overlooked is that the Royal Navy Submarine Service did not have the targets. It didn't have the shipping to sink. It didn't have the convoys to attack. So its most active theater during the Second World War was in the Mediterranean, where the objective was for Malta-based submarines to cut the supply lines. from Italy to Rommel's Africa Corps.

And those submarine forces based at Malta did suffer quite a high casualty rate because there, I would say, in that arena, they were operating in an environment more akin to that face by the U-boat force in the Atlantic. So they did suffer high casualty rates. But I think it was the sustained nature of the Battle of the Atlantic and the fact that the U-boats were having to go up against a very, very complex, certainly by 1944 and 1943, a very complex and complex.

experienced set of U-boat killers, British, American and Canadian, that increased the casualties. So it was a pretty deadly trade wherever you pursue it. But I think for the, as I say, for the U-boat force in World War II in the Atlantic, I think that was the deadliest of them all. Well, let me back out and ask a big picture question. And I think that we've kind of been answering it already, but I just want to drill down. What makes submarines so important, especially in modern day? Stealth is a very important aspect of it. You don't know where they are.

They could be anywhere, so that deters any Navy's surface ships from going to certain areas because they don't know if there's a submarine out there. I think they can sneak into territorial waters and gather intelligence and other information. And they can also land forces, and you don't really know they're there. So I think they're very valuable from that point of view in terms of conventional warfare. And they can attack shipping without water. warning if need be. But I think, of course, you know, in the modern era, the battleships of today are the ballistic missile submarines, which have a world-ending capability. So, I mean, that

makes them truly formidable. But that's today's situation rather than the past, obviously. And what's the earliest known instance of an underwater boat? It goes back a lot longer than maybe some people think. I mean, I think the question probably would be, what's the earliest known instance of a viable underwater boat because I think there were many, many years, if not centuries when there were non-viable boats. But certainly the first casualty in what we might call submarining was actually in Plymouth Sound in the late 18th century when a guy called Day drowned when he went down in a especially converted wooden vessel that basically discovered pressure, which crushed it and he died in the late 18th century.

But prior to that, all sorts of people had played around with ideas for submarines or submersibles. You know, Leonardo da Vinci and Alexander the Great was said to have gone down inside a glass diving bell and there were other people as well, a guy called Matthew Bourne in England, who was a mathematician but also a former gunnery officer in a wooden warship. he came up with an idea for putting two rowing boats together, but he never actually did it. So I think the real thing is when did it become viable? And that didn't happen until, in fact, I would say, as a weapon of war, until the American Civil War in the 1860s. So that was the first instance of a proper offensive submarine.

And what was that submarine like, that Civil War submarine? That was the Hunley, which was basically a metal cigar-shaped thing. I think she was actually made out of a tapered boiler, and she was man-powered and had a spar torpedo, a charge in the end of a long lance. And she attacked a union and a northern warship called the Hussetonic, and managed to sink her, but in the process sank herself. So the Hunley was the first ever submersible war vessel, but she didn't survive that effort. All right, so coming off the heels of the Civil War, we look at World War I. And you tell us a little bit about the submarines during that time, and who was Admiral Jackie Fisher? Yeah, Jackie Fisher was the first sea lord in the Royal Navy, and he was the boss of the Royal Navy in the period just before the First World War.

And he was a man who believed in getting rid of old-fashioned ways and old-fashioned warships and introducing new ones. and he introduced Dreadnought, the first ever all-big-gun battleship. But he was also keen on submarines, and he did see that submarines would have a great effect on warfare. But I think even he thought that submarines would just be coastal defense vessels and protect harbors. I don't think he saw them. I don't think anybody before World War I saw the submarine as a commerce attacker.

I think they saw submarines as subservient to the battle fleet, And it was only as the war evolved and the fighting bogged down on land, that more emphasis was put on using, for the Germans, on using their U-boats to try and starve the Allies, the Allied side into coming to some kind of terms and ending the war in their favor. So I think prior to World War I, there was not a great opinion in certainly the upper ranks of any Navy

about what submarines could achieve. Right, the words I see, I think in copy about your book is that this idea was derided and loathed. Yeah, I mean, the battleship admirals who came from a tradition of these massive surface vessels with powerful guns, they absolutely hated, in general, they hated submariners because here they were in their impudent little boats with these very cheap weapons called torpedoes, and they could sneak around under the water and basically sink a battleship, potentially. and it outraged the traditional battleship admirals that these cheap little vessels with torpedoes

could actually do them great harm. So they were very suspicious and they didn't like the submariners because submariners were considered not to be gentle one really because they were in smelly submarines and they smelled themselves of either vomit or oil and they just looked down upon submarines and their crews as being almost like filthy pirates really.

So in a way, or I guess in all the important ways, the history of the submarine kind of fits neatly into the history of World War I in general, right? Where's this new emergent technology kind of disrupting traditional warfare? Yeah, I mean, I was thinking about this the other night. I was thinking about the casualty rate and the war on land and the futility of the war on land and whether or not, in fact, the submarine actually prolonged the war in a way. because the German army high command realized that they couldn't really break the stalemate on the Western Front. And they looked to the U-boat force at least once during the war to try and achieve the sort of breakthrough in victory at sea by destroying the trade of Britain primarily that they couldn't achieve on land. And perhaps if the submarine hadn't offered that idea of achieving victory via the U-boat,

and war against commerce, perhaps the Germans might have thought, well, we'll try and come to terms a bit quicker. The submarine came along and evolved, and then it seemed to offer this magic bullet, this silver bullet, to the Germans that they could win the war and get the best terms, I think, is the best way to describe it, in any kind of negotiated settlement. In fact, that proved to be an illusion. Did the Germans, it seems like, just from our conversation, they really pioneered the, the use of this of this new weapon. Do you think that's accurate? I don't think in part the use of the new weapon. I think the British and the US Navy didn't really pay much of a role in terms of submarine warfare in the First World War, but certainly the

British and the Austrians as well and the Germans. I think they all they all explored anti-shipping tactics. The British did it in the Dardanelles and also in the Sea of against the Turks because their idea to try and win the war was to break through to Constantinople and to, with submarines, particularly to terrify the Turks into capitulating and then sent through a battle fleet to cow Constantinople and take Turkey out the war so that supplies could then get through to Russia to help Russia then prevail upon the Germans on the eastern front. So that was the British idea. And the Royal Navy did sink a lot of ships. shipping in the Sea of Marmara and even attacked a vessel or vessels in Constantinople Harbour.

So the British did do that where they had the opportunity. But the problem, as happened during World War II, was that the Germans, if they were to prevail, had to attack the world's biggest merchant fleet, which was the British merchant marine. But there was no reliance on sea commerce in the central powers. So there were no targets available. So the war and how submarines were used kind of shaped up to reflect the geography and the strengths of the different nations. So I think they all explored various elements of it. But I think that in terms of what they needed to do for their nations,

that dictated the kind of tactics and the kind of war they pursued. All right, Ian, I'm going to pause here for a break. You are listening to Reuters War College. I'm your host, Matthew Galt. We're on with Ian Ballantyne. We're talking about his new book, The Deadly. trade and the history of submarine warfare. Hello, thank you for listening to War College.

I'm your host, Matthew Gaunt. We are on with Ian Ballantyne, talking about his new book, The Deadly Trade, and the History of Submarine Warfare. So, Ian, right before the break, you said something that kind of stuck out to me and was interesting, and that is that part of the British plan was to so fear with these weapons. Are submarines thought of as a scary weapon? Is this something to be... I'm talking pre-nukes, obviously, but these were something that people were frightened of.

Yeah, I think certainly during the First World War, they were seen as underhand and also, I suppose, I think it was an American president referred to as beastly. You know, they were seen as a terrible, terrible development, and they were a weapon of fear. Whether that was born out in reality is another thing, but yeah, they certainly were seen as kind of like undersea devils by many people. And between the wars, there was great effort, certainly from the British, who had the most to lose because they had the most battleships, to get rid of submarines. And certainly there was a feeling, I think Woodrow Wilson was very anti-submarine. Well, he was very anti-submarine. And there was a feeling that there was something not right about them. And certainly before the First World War, Winston Churchill was of the opinion that anybody that used submarines against maritime commerce, against merchant ships, would be, should have the worst things visited.

them, including pestilence and plague, and any tactic was justifiable if people used submarines against, you know, in essence, the civilian population and what kept it alive. It's funny when you talk about it that way. It reminds me of the way people talk about drones now. Yeah. And I'm wondering if we see that, do you kind of see that as a military historian and a naval historian, more specifically, that anytime a new weapon comes up, people are kind of frightened of it and then it gets settled into use? I don't know. We've paused, haven't we?

We went from World War I to World War II and then the use of the submarine to its fullest extent stopped and then we haven't really seen that for the past 70-odd years. So I think submarines would still be viewed as terrible weapons, but I think people are now more familiar thanks to fiction and factual books and movies and the fact they've got human beings in them, and they're not just these terrible devils under the sea, yeah. Well, speaking of World War II, that's the bulk of your book, right? I think you told me that three-sevenths of it is World War II?

Yeah, I would say so. I mean, it's four parts, and part one is ancient times right through to, I would say, 1914, part two is World War I. Part three is World War II, and then part four at the end is, from 1945 to right up to today. So, yeah, I guess so, because there was so much going on. Was World War II kind of the golden age of submarine conflict and why, if that's true? Yeah, I think World War II was when it went truly global,

and I think that's the reason that it took up so much in the book as well. I think also the Battle of the Atlantic was so vast in World War II. It was just so complex. There was so many convoys. It was different to World War I. In World War I, anti-submarine warfare was very much in its infancy and was in fact not very effective. It was convoys that saved the Allied side, the custom of convoying.

But in World War II, I think it needed so much more from co-breaking through to Sonar, Azdic, you know, and tactics and everything. So it was so much more complicated. And also, we had the war in the Pacific. And I think that war, but the U.S. Navy waged against Japan was a most incredible campaign. And it brought Japan to its knees, really. And who do you think was the dominant sub-power during World War II? The most efficient and I would say the most effective practitioners were probably the U.S. Navy, I would say.

But it always depends upon your opponents. It's a bit like trumps. You know, if you try and trump in card games, you try and trump the opponent. and if your opponent doesn't trump you or your opponent can't match you and exceed you technologically, then you're going to get the upper hand. And so I think the US Navy was able, due to failings in Japanese technology and tactics, to achieve a dominance with its submarines that wasn't possible. Even though the Germans had more U-boats, a bigger force,

they did not achieve the same. In the end, they didn't achieve the same effect because the allies were so much more efficient. fighting back. So I think the US Navy certainly achieved an amazing effect in the Pacific, but I think the opponent was that much weaker. What made the Japanese technology and tactics weaker? What was it about their subs and the way they used them? Well, the submarines is one thing, but their escorts and their technology in terms of anti-submarine warfare against American submarines was not on the same level as it wasn't developed properly.

There was rivalry between the different factions in the Japanese military that prevented the aircraft and the technology and the people from being used to the greatest effect against the American submarines. But the submarines themselves, the Japanese submarines themselves, were very impressive and they were very professional force. But the Japanese submarine captains are driven slightly mad on occasion by the fact that their their bosses would not allow the Japanese submarine captains to use more than certain number of torpedoes against a certain number of ships.

And he also directed the Japanese submarine force, Japanese submarines, to concentrate on attacking enemy warships. And even when advised by the Germans that the best way to affect the American war effort was to sink oil tankers and the rest of it, the Japanese mindset was that that wasn't really honorable or worthy and that the best way to destroy the American war effort was to send carriers and battleships. So there were all sorts of rigid rules set down, which prevented Japanese submarine captains from using their initiative in terms of causing damage. After World War II, when I think about submarines, I think about nukes. Who was the first person to put a nuke on a submarine?

Well, I was obviously the US Navy with Nautilus. She was the first, what we'd call an SSN, the first attack submarine with nuclear power. I was in the late 50s, the mid-50s. So America got the lead there. The Russians weren't far behind. And so America was definitely from the off on the cutting edge there. So I think America was predominant really during the Cold War period.

And right up to today, it's the same today. that begs a question, actually, is when did, you know, talking about World War II, we left out Russia, and when did Russia get submarines? Well, Russia's had submarines for a long time. I mean, we're talking centuries, but it's the effective development and utilization of them that was perhaps elusive for the Russians. And also the mindset in World War II was that the Russian Navy, the Soviet Navy, was subordinate to the land forces. And so they had submarines. they had a very large submarine force, but it wasn't necessarily used as efficiently as it could be.

And sometimes, you know, they did achieve what you might call success, but they didn't wage any kind of coordinated anti-commerous war because, of course, there weren't the German targets. So they suffered from the same handicap as the British. They didn't have the same types of targets. But they were, I would say that the Russian submarine force really came into its own after World War II. it grew and grew and became quite an awesome force quite quickly after World War II. And what kind of missions and things were they doing during the Cold War?

What was the point of having these submarines? I mean, obviously there's the nuclear triad, right? Yeah. But other than that, what kind of missions are these things doing? The concept for the, certainly in the 50s, the 40s in the 50s, for the very large by then Russian submarine force, which was primarily diesel electric with nuclear submarines coming along, not long after the Americans,

was to stage another battle of the Atlantic against the NATO powers to stop the reinforcements from America getting through, as was the standard tactic, I think, throughout the Cold War, to prevent the resupply of the NATO forces in Europe and also undermine the ability of American reinforcements to get through. So I think that was the main aim in terms of conventional, warfare throughout the Cold War. And they did maintain a very large force to do that. And what is the, instead of curiosity, do we have any idea what the Russian naval forces look

like now and what their submarine forces look like? There was a fallow period following the end of the Cold War for, let's say, 10, 15 years where regenerating the submarine force of Russia was slow and sluggish. But I think in recent years it's really picked up pace. And there's certainly a big effort in turning out what they call improved Kilo-class submarines for the Black Sea Fleet and for the Northern Fleet. That's the fleet based in the Arctic and the fleet obviously based in the Black Sea. And there's going to be six of these new Kilo-class submarines that can fire cruise missiles based both in the Black Sea and in the Northern Fleet.

And those are pretty handy conventional submarines. But the Russians are also building new attack submarines and ballistic missile submarines. and they're regenerating their older force, such as the Oscar class, guided missile submarines. So there's a huge effort currently underway in regenerating, refitting, and even building new submarines in Russia. What's your sense of the importance of submarines in general to modern war effort? It feels like, to me, the kind of weapon that we won't really see all of its potential uses until there's a, a large-scale conflict? Yeah, I think, as we know, what happens with war is war accelerates technology

and accelerates the development of things. And some sacred cows that we think of as being invincible or, you know, it's a bit of a mixed metaphor. But, I mean, if you look at the battleship in World War II, the battleship survived until, let's say, the middle of World War II is the prime weapon platform. but then the carrier came along and so I think the carrier's reign as the supreme

vessel on the face of the planet is still happening but I think if there was any future war where the full scale of naval capability of weaponry was unleashed I think that is when you would see the submarine truly

become the dominant player in terms of naval warfare because I think by the end of World War II you were getting towards using what they call the true submarine, not a submersible, what basically is like a torpedo boat that dives, but a true submarine. And that was the type 21 submarine,

which was imperfectly developed by the Nazis, but then wasn't produced really in any number, and wasn't really deployed by the Germans. But then the Allies took various examples of the type 21 submarine, and they used it to evolve diesels, and also to create nuclear power. submarine. So I think what happened at the end of World War II was the pause in the use of the submarine and to its fullest extent. And if there ever was another major war, I think it's only now

you would then see what the true submarine, i.e. a nuclear pad submarine and probably the advanced diesel submarines that we have today could do. And I think it would be quite, in terms of conventional war, I think it would be quite devastating and quite terrifying again, really. an idea of what's on the horizon for submarines? Are we developing any new types, whether in America or Britain or anywhere else in the world? What's the next big evolution of the submarine? I guess the next big evolution will be a submarine that can carry a range of drone submarines and launch them and send them out. I guess that would be the goal for submarine developers eventually. But certainly the moment they're developing what you might

call the existing models to the furthest extent they can. So you have, in the USA, you have the Virginia class SSN that's also a guided missile submarine that can embark special forces into all those sorts of roles. In Britain, it's the astute class that, again, can embark special forces but has cruise missiles. And in Russia, the new attack submarine is really a guided missile submarine as well and can do all these different roles. So it's kind of pushing the conventional design and the conventional concept.

But then you've got what we call air independent propulsion conventional submarines, which are almost as good as nukes, but they're small, they can't carry the same range of weaponry, and their endurance is limited to probably dive to about a month. But they are very effective, and those diesel submarines that can stay down

and let's say carry out a transatlantic crossing without needing to surface. In fact, a German submarine has done that. So they are pretty formidable. But in terms of radical departures, I think we won't know for some time whether or not it's viable to have grown submarines that are perhaps operated by or launched by a mother submarine. But I think that will come. Do we have any sense of how well these things see each other in the water? Talking about all the new submarine technology that's kind of emergent, it makes it sound like a large part.

Like if there's ever another global conflict, underwater will be a big theater. And what kind of, I guess, what kind of submarine countermeasures do submarines carry? summary in Canemacher has been around for a while and I'm not a huge technical expert on it but I mean there's you know there's in World War II the Germans had the ability to fire effervescent pellets that would make noise and bubble and that would distract sonar and they could fire out all sorts of other things using an underwater gun if you like to distract and confuse the enemy and so those obviously have been developed over the decades in to being more efficient. So there are means of throwing a pursuer off the path. But I think sonar, the ability to listen passively for the enemy, to warn yourself that the enemy is coming and get out the way, or to find out where the enemy is and then move in to make a kill yourself.

That's the main thing. And modern sonars are incredibly powerful. And I think submarines are going to be teamed up with a modern equivalent of sosus, you know, the underwater surveillance system that America had to listen over hundreds if not thousands of miles for Russian submarines. I think the Chinese were establishing something similar in the South China Sea,

and the Russians will probably establish their own network up in the Arctic. So I think submarines are going to be part of a network in a way that they never have been before, but it will still rely on sonar and detection not only to kill the enemy, but also to protect yourself, I think. All right, I've got one last question for you, sir. Do you think, what effect of any, will climate change have on submarine conflict? It's an interesting question.

Climate change, in terms of making the sea warmer or in what way? Yeah, the sea level rise and sea warmer. Yeah. Especially in the Arctic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, the Arctic remains a key arena. So, I mean, going under the ice and, I'm not. operating under the ice did offer unique challenges for the both sides during the cold war.

So I guess if that all freeze up and it gets warmer, then it will make submarine operations easier. But I wonder if it will also affect sonar detection ranges and ability as well, because obviously you hide under a cold layer of water, and it's harder for the enemy to find you. So if the seas are less cold, then I suppose it won't have maybe the different layers. But I'm not an expert on that. So I don't, that's an element of it aside to it that I can't say I'm well versed on. Fair enough. All right, Ian Ballantyne, thank you so much for talking to us on War College.

The new book is The Deadly Trade. Yeah, it's not out yet. It's a few months before it's out, but it's, I've just kind of finished doing the heavy lifting on it, and we're working on tying up the loose end. So, yeah, it's a bit of an epic. Yeah, I wanted to get you while you were still in submarine headspace. Yeah. Yeah, I am. Yeah, for three years I've been in submarine world.

Well, it is a fascinating world, and thank you so much for telling us about it. That's my pleasure. Thank you for listening to this week's show. War College was created by Jason Fields and Craig Hedock. It's hosted by Matthew Galt, who also wrangles our guests. It's produced by me, Bethel Hoppe. If you like our show and want to support us, please, as always, give us a stellar review on iTunes. It very much helps other people find the show.

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