Submarine warfare
Submarine warfare in World War I was primarily a fight between German and Austro-Hungarian U-boats and merchant vessels bound for the United Kingdom, France, and Russia.
British and Allied submarines conducted widespread operations in the Baltic, North, Mediterranean and Black Seas along with the Atlantic Ocean.
Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff (1853–1919), chief of the admiralty staff, argued successfully in December 1916 to resume unrestricted attacks from February 1917 and thus starve the British.
The German high command realized the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, now to include deliberate attacks on neutral shipping, meant war with the United States but calculated that American mobilization would be too slow to stop a German victory on the Western Front[1][2] and played a large role in the United States entering the war in April 1917.
Once naval convoys were implemented, sinkings did not reach the German Imperial Admiralty Staff's optimistic projections.
This was not legitimized until the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935, under which the UK accepted German parity in submarine numbers with the Royal Navy.
In World War II, submarine warfare was split into two main areas – the Atlantic and the Pacific.
The main steps in this tactic were as follows: With the later increase in warship and aircraft escorts, U-boat losses became unacceptable.
However, following a doctrine that concentrated on attacking warships, rather than more-vulnerable merchantmen, the smaller Japanese fleet proved ineffectual in the long term, while suffering heavy losses to Allied anti-submarine measures.
Japanese submarines operated in the Indian Ocean, forcing the British surface fleet to withdraw to the east coast of Africa.
During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union played what was described as a 'cat-and-mouse' game of detecting and even trailing enemy submarines.
Nuclear submarines, although far larger, could generate their own air and water for an extended duration, meaning their need to surface was limited in any case.
[citation needed] The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force has launched new models of submarines every few years;[citation needed] South Korea has upgraded the already capable Type 209(Chang Bogo class) design from Germany and sold copies to Indonesia.
[12][13] Russia has improved the old Soviet Kilo model into what strategic analysts are calling equivalent to the 1980s-era Los Angeles class, and so on.
[citation needed] At the end of his naval warfare book The Price of Admiralty, military historian John Keegan postulates that eventually, almost all roles of surface warships will be taken over by submarines, as they will be the only naval units capable of evading the increasing intelligence capabilities (space satellites, airplanes etc.)
