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This article examines how the archaeological record of 33 U-boats sunk in the English Channel during the Inshore Campaign, June 1944 to May 1945, compares with the assessment of U-boat destructions made by the Admiralty’s Anti U-boat Division (AUBD) in 1946. Comparison of the two shows an accuracy rate of 57 per cent across the entire Inshore Campaign, compared to ASD’s overall accuracy rate in the First World War of only 48 per cent. Crucially, the Inshore Campaign, when studied as two distinct phases (broadly 1944 and 1945) reveals the close relation- ship between accurate assessments of U-boats destroyed and detailed signals intelligence. It shows that, in 1944 in the English Channel, AUBD was 81 per cent correct in establishing where the U-boats were destroyed. This is for the main part down to the role Bletchley Park and the Secret Room played in decrypting U-boat radio signals, and the Operation Intelligence Centre (OIC) in co-ordinating the ASW effort during Operation Neptune. Such an accuracy rate represents total domination of the battlefield. By comparison, a lack of signals intelligence during 1945 caused by U-boat radio silence led to a drop in AUBD’s accuracy to only 36 per cent: even lower than the First World War. This shows the significant role signals intelligence played in tracking, hunting, and destroying U-boats, and being able to know when a sinking had occurred. The results show the crucial role ULTRA intelligence played during the key months of Operation Neptune and how it was used to target specific U-boats in transit to their operational areas.

This lengthy and lavishly produced new history of the battleship Bismarck from construction to destruction has been written by three respected authors on the study of the ship. Garzke and Dulin are...

Due to the circumstances of the loss of HMS Warrior and HMS Sparrowhawk in 1916, in which subsequent to disablement both had drifted and been towed unknown distances from the Jutland battlefield, they were not located in the 2015 Jutland survey. In August 2016 both ships were located and HMS Warrior was revealed to be a pristine warship wreck, the only example in this condition of the 25 ships sunk in the battle. HMS Sparrowhawk had a similar pattern of disturbance as seven of the other Battle of Jutland destroyer wrecks. The survey of these wrecks draws to a conclusion a long period of discovery at Jutland and raises questions as to how these important cultural artefacts should be treated in the future.

This book by Hans Joachim Koerver is a welcome new addition to histories of the first U-boat war. This is the author’s fifth book to examine aspects of this period. His first three were edited repr...

This paper examines how the Admiralty paid prize money to the Royal Navy for the destruction of U-boats in the First World War. The research shows that the method by which it did so was distinct from the standard prize process, primarily because of secrecy surrounding the anti-Uboat effort. Prize payments were only made by the Admiralty to the crew of naval vessels after the war had ended and this was based on reports compiled during wartime. The payments made closely match the detailed analysis into U-boat losses released internally by the Anti-Submarine Division (ASD) of the Naval Staff in January 1919. This listed 186 U-boats destroyed. The Admiralty considered 93 of these cases eligible for prize bounty. At least 41 additional cases were turned down. Where inconsistencies exist between the work of the Anti-Submarine Division and the prizes paid out, they are explained by the process of post-war reassessments of U-boats destroyed. In 1917 ASD was pioneering a new type of scientific undersea warfare and it is unfair to be too critical of its work when seen in this historical context. The final prize payments were made in 1932.

This paper presents the findings from surveys carried out in March 2016 of two wrecks sunk during the Battle of Jutland. The remains of HMS Indefatigable had previously only been partially understood. SMS V4, was found and surveyed for the first time. They represent the first and last ships sunk and allow the timings of the opening and closing of the battle to be established. In the case of HMS Indefatigable, the discovery that the ship broke in two, seemingly unnoticed, substantially revises the narrative of the opening minutes of the battle.

This most interesting new publication by Aidan Dodson and Serena Cant has been aimed at filling a long-noted gap in the histories of the fleets of the defeated nations of the First and Second World...

The author of this book has been a practising archaeologist for over 40 years. During that time he has been fortunate enough to have partaken in and reported on a very diverse range of maritime arc...

This paper examines how the archaeological record of 35 known U-boat wrecks sunk in WW1 in the English Channel compares with the assessment of U-boat destructions made by the Admiralty’s Antisubmarine Division (ASD) in 1919. Comparison of the two shows that only 48% of the 37 assessments was correct. This divergence between the extant archaeology and the 1919 assessment was partly caused by over optimism at ASD regarding reported attacks. However, it is also observed that ASD’s own processes were on occasion overridden by a need to overstate Allied successes, and should be seen in the broader context of a wider range of inefficiencies that confronted the Naval Staff during WW1. The same mistakes seem entirely absent from the WW2 records in the same geographical area. The research reveals that the radio silence observed by the Flanders Flotilla proved a challenge to combating its U-boats at sea, making the tracking of the U-boats and the rerouting of Allied ships practically impossible. This was a factor in the early adoption of “controlled sailings” in the Channel. It may have also been the driving factor behind the Navy’s pressure to attack the Flanders bases by land in 1917, a key component often overlooked by historians.

This paper presents the most recent findings up to August 2016 of the extent to which the shipwrecks from the battle of Jutland have been exposed to salvage for metals. Commercial salvage of the wrecks is not new and archival research has traced salvage activity as far back as 1960. However over the last 15 years the rate at which metals have been extracted from them has increased significantly, so that now at least 65 per cent of the wrecks in the battlefield bear the scars of commercial salvage activity, where propellers and condensers in particular can be seen to have been removed. The majority of this activity is believed to be unauthorized by the governments of Britain and Germany who still own them.

This book examines the survivors of five vessels of the Kriegsmarine as the British shifted them through the interrogation process after capture. All were sunk in late 1943 and early 1944, a period ...

This paper presents the findings from a survey of one of the shipwrecks of the Battle of Jutland, and is extracted from a longer currently unpublished report which examines the six known Royal Navy wrecks. While all of the wrecks yielded unique insights into the battle, Defence was a particularly surprising case. The extant remains of this wreck showed for the first time how the ship was destroyed and explains what some eyewitnesses reported at the time. Intact and unsalvaged, it is a source of much valuable archaeological and historical data. © 2012 The Author. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology © 2012 The Nautical Archaeology Society.