Submarine Warfare (Military History)

Introduction

Few branches of military service are as captivating, as popularly thrilling and as discomfiting as the submarine service. From its myths and legends to its stealth and questionable legal status, undersea warfare commands attention. Correspondingly, it has been graced with a massive historiography, dominated more by popular, nonacademic works than scholarly studies. But whether the works are academic or not, the focus lies primarily on one state: Germany. The legendary U-boat drives the bulk of scholarship and has helped make submarine warfare so captivating that a relatively large body of reference texts and encyclopedias exist, providing a foundation for the amateur and expert alike. Upon this foundation are built studies of the eras of submarine warfare and their most relevant associated themes, particularly technology and international law. The first school of study begins with the earliest technological coup, when the first submersible dirigible was developed during the American Revolutionary War, though from the 18th century to the 20th century, the story of submarine warfare is predominantly a story of tremendous technological adolescence. Until it gained greater seaworthiness, as it had by World War I, incidences of submarine warfare were few and far between. The German U-boat war of 1914–1918 shocked the world, but in scholarship it has been wholly eclipsed by the cataclysm of World War II. World War I’s descent into “unrestricted” submarine warfare scarred participants and observers so profoundly that rules of submarine warfare commanded statesmen and militaries’ interests alike in the interwar period, as the swelling historiography indicates. The attention was to no avail, and the legal issues that had underscored submarine warfare’s “inhumane” nature remained unresolved. This did not stop two states from planning for the same style of warfare, and Germany and the United States let loose their campaigns almost from the beginning of World War II. In this, they were not alone, they were simply the two largest. With the absence of submarine conflict in the postwar era, works on submarine warfare have returned to the minority, and the outpouring of attention remains fixated especially on the German U-boat, still as popular today as ever.

General Overviews

Broad scholarship on submarines is plentiful but repetitive. It is easy enough to find a picture book that chronicles submarines through the ages, reflecting the fact that this area fulfills the needs of the general public’s curiosity about undersea warfare more than it reflects good, scholarly studies. For example, Hutchison 2001 is the most straightforward, image-loaded example, but for those seeking a narrative account, van der Vat 1995 is the only real choice. Given that the lion’s share of interest in the area of submarine warfare falls upon Germany’s U-boat, Mallmann Showell 2006 is included here to reflect that interest, while Redford 2010 illustrates the parallels between the mythological status of the German U-boat and the British submarine service.

Hutchison, Robert. Jane’s Submarines: War beneath the Waves, from 1776 to the Present Day. London: HarperCollins, 2001.
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Presents information without argument or analysis, but is instead more descriptive, flowing from early designs through the world wars, the nuclear age, and midget submarines—“the new underwater menace.” A good source for interested parties and beginners.
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Mallmann Showell, Jak. The U-Boat Century: German Submarine Warfare, 1906–2006. London: Chatham, 2006.
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Offers a complete overview of one hundred years of U-boats, but as a tertiary source without new conclusions. Some mistakes and oft-propagated myths make this more appropriate for interested parties seeking a good read rather than those with academic intentions.
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Redford, Duncan. The Submarine: A Cultural History from the Great War to Nuclear Combat. London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2010.
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Explores the submarine in terms of its effect on British society and how culture and ethos, in turn, shaped the submarine service. For a state defined by its naval elitism, Redford argues that submariners were an even more elite group within that naval world, with a corporate identity and symbols. Best for academic audiences.
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van der Vat, Dan. Stealth at Sea: The History of the Submarine. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995.
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Narrative, good for novices, and written in good, engaging prose. Without the depth and analysis of a more academic work, it is at its best when covering the two world wars, yet the work is marked with some errors and is overly brief in relegating the entire nuclear era to just an epilogue.
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Reference Works

This area of scholarship is both broad and deep. Most of the sources here are not those that one would pick up for a stirring read, but instead those that would complement deeper study. The significant U-Boat.net and Valor At Sea, however, are sources that can be perused for their own sakes or used to launch readers toward further study. Again reflecting the fact that the German U-boat war has been substantially written about, Miller 2000 and Möller and Brack 2004 serve primarily to satisfy technical questions, both basic (the former) and more advanced (the latter). No reference collection would be complete without Rohwer 1999 and Niestlé 1998; Rohwer’s groundbreaking compilation of all Axis submarine successes is not without imperfections, but it definitively answers any question of U-boat effectiveness at sea (notably because many targets claimed sunk in the heat of battle were later rescinded with postwar analysis; originally published in 1983, Rohwer’s 1999 update improves upon this with the most recent information). Equally, Niestlé 1998 gives the other side of the coin, yielding the best answers, when possible, to the fates of U-boat casualties.

Miller, David. U-Boats: History, Development and Equipment 1914–1945. London: Conway Maritime, 2000.
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This work serves as a good basic reference for beginners to U-boat study; it is written in a casual tone, though heavy on detail. This is mitigated by the many photographs and images, which make its presentation engaging.
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Möller, Eberhard, and Werner Brack. The Encyclopedia of U-Boats: From 1904 to the Present Day. Translated by Andrea Battson and Roger Chesnau. London: Greenhill, 2004.
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The title fully encapsulates the essence of this book. For the U-boat enthusiast, this work provides a detailed catalogue of all U-boats constructed, with an emphasis on technology.
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Niestlé, Axel. German U-boat Losses during World War II: Details of Destruction. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1998.
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Niestlé’s book is the response to Rohwer’s tabulation of Axis submarine successes, providing data on the fates of all Dönitz’s boats. Exceptional in its research and presentation, it is perhaps challenging for nonexperts to use in terms of its organization. It remains a reference staple for all U-boat studies.
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Rohwer, Jürgen. Axis Submarine Successes of World War II: German, Italian, and Japanese Submarine Successes, 1939–1945. Rev. ed. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1999.
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This is the revised, translated version of Rohwer’s U-Boot-Erfolge der Achsenmächte, 1939–1945 (Munich: J. F. Lehmann, 1968), which has benefitted from scholarship done in the sixteen years between printings; the updating is not uniform, though this remains an invaluable guide for statistics on ship sinkings. Originally published in 1983.
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U-Boat.net.
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This site provides a plethora of information for the U-boat enthusiast; the content is not necessarily produced by trained historians, but it is still an invaluable resource offering significant material from trivia to books and reviews, to details on the boats, sailors, photographs, films and more.
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Valor At Sea: The U.S. Submarine War in the Pacific 1941–1945.
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This site contains enormous amounts of data on the American submarine war, 1941–1945, highlighting the boats, weapons, the men involved, and, of most use for the serious scholar, an online version of JANAC’s (the Joint Army-Navy Assessment Committee) tabulations of confirmed successes in the war.
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Early Submarine Warfare

It is notable that, considering submarine combat effectiveness did not truly come of age until the 20th century, submarines were first developed almost 150 years before the outbreak of World War I. This makes the area of “early submarine warfare” more of an intellectual or technical history than military history, for there were few operations and little in the way of combat. Hutcheon’s biography of Fulton (Hutcheon 1981), Morris’s of John P. Holland (Morris 1998), and Roland’s study of these and other key figures in vision and engineering (Roland 1978) are thus critical pieces of the puzzle of early submarine warfare: understanding the lives of the men who pioneered and drove design development is the main objective for understanding the roots of submarine warfare. At once closer to and also farther from pure military history is Walker 2005, which presents a colorful account (in prose and graphics) of the first ship sunk (USS Housatonic) by a submarine (H.L. Hunley) in combat during the Civil War, as well as an account of the modern archaeological undertaking to find, raise the Hunley, and solve the mystery of the boat’s loss on a training mission. The same story is told with more emphasis on the social factor in Hicks and Kropf 2002, while the most academic and recent work is Chaffin 2008.

Chaffin, Tom. The H.L. Hunley: The Secret Hope of the Confederacy. New York: Hill & Wang, 2008.
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The emphasis on the Confederate states’ pursuit of a weapon that could harm the Union economy is critical to understanding the nature of the submarine: its allure was as the arm of the underdog. This extensively researched and wonderfully written work is suitable for academics but appealing to amateurs.
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Hicks, Brian, and Schuyler Kropf. Raising the Hunley: The Remarkable History and Recovery of the Lost Confederate Submarine. New York: Ballantine, 2002.
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Highly readable and well researched, though not a plumbing of archival depths. Hicks and Kropf capture the human-interest story of the men who sailed in the Hunley and were lost with her, and then detail the controversies and difficulties in what ultimately led to the boat’s 1995 recovery.
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Hutcheon, Wallace, Jr. Robert Fulton: Pioneer of Undersea Warfare. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1981.
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This is, as the title suggests, a biography of a submarine pioneer. A lack of context and some errors mar an otherwise readable work; this is thus best for interested parties rather than scholarly readers.
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Morris, Richard Knowles. John P. Holland, 1841–1914: Inventor of the Modern Submarine. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998.
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This old-but-relevant work has stood the test of time, as its three reprints attest. It still provides the best, most in-depth account of the life of the Irish-born Holland, an engineer and submarine pioneer. Originally published in 1966 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press).
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Roland, Alex. Underwater Warfare in the Age of Sail. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978.
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Roland’s work serves as a sort of intellectual history of submarine warfare, by examining the critical figures in the early development of undersea vessels, such as Robert Boyle, David Bushnell, and Matthew Fontaine Maury.
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Walker, Sally M. Secrets of a Civil War Submarine: Solving the Mysteries of the H.L. Hunley. Minneapolis, MN: Carolrhoda, 2005.
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A glossy, color-photo-filled, award-winning book, excellent as a popular source or easy read. With an introduction giving a brief history of subs from the Revolutionary to the Civil War, it is better in its first part, detailing the missions and loss of the Hunley; a highly entertaining work overall.
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World War I

World War I was the watershed in submarine warfare. German Unterseeboote, or U-boats, were still essentially surface ships with submersible qualities, and they were fatally vulnerable to shellfire from defensively armed merchantmen. Still, the U-boats were able to be successful against the shipping trade, if not yet warships. Their maximum success was reached by the strategy of illegal “unrestricted” submarine warfare, failing to follow the rules of la guerre de course (see International Laws). Combining these factors of newness, effectiveness, and criminality gave rise to a body of myths and legends, and knitted the German state to this weapon in popular minds—a state of affairs that still dominates submarine literature. Terraine 1989 takes up the thread with the beginning of “unrestricted” warfare and follows it to its end in World War II, while Grey 1972 offers a nonargumentative account of the entire submarine war. In spite of the fact that a greater number of ships were sunk in a fraction of the time, when comparing World War I’s commerce warfare to that of World War II, there remains a dearth of scholarly work that focuses particularly on the first war. Spindler 1932 offers an old but still relevant account of this specifically, while Edwards 2005 and Kemp 1991 show lesser-known areas of Great War submarine history: the former by providing a narrative account of a virtually unknown theater of war, and the latter by presenting a reference-style catalogue of non-German submarines in this era. On the other side, that which arguably drove Germany to transcend the lines of illegal warfare were the “Q-ships”, modified merchantmen actually kitted out with larger caliber guns and a crew of soldiers. In what was an intensely psychological war, nothing scared U-boats like the threat of Q-ships, making Bridgland 1999, highly narrative text, a vital component to understanding the submarine war.

Bridgland, Tony. Sea Killers in Disguise: The Story of the Q-Ships and Decoy Ships in the First World War. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1999.
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The perceived threat to U-boats by Q-ships was significant; Bridgland provides an engaging story of those ruses, in a popular style for scholar and interested parties, alike.
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Edwards, Bernard. Death in the Doldrums: U-Cruiser Actions off West Africa. Annapolis: MD: Naval Institute Press, 2005.
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This volume highlights a relatively unknown theater of submarine warfare, providing a narrative with color but without as firm a scholarly basis as might be desired. Edwards’ book is best considered a popular source for general consumption.
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Grey, Edwyn A. The Killing Time: The U-Boat War,1914–1918. New York: Scribner, 1972.
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With a paucity of solid, academic sources, Grey’s book, though entirely popular and narrative, becomes that much more worthwhile a source.
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Kemp, Paul J. British Submarines of World War One. London: Arms and Armour Press, 1991.
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Essentially a picture book with some details on submarine specifics, Kemp’s work offers a glimpse of a lesser-known First World War weapon: the British submarine. It offers little to the serious scholar, but trivia and tales for interested parties.
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Spindler, Arno. Der Handelskrieg mit U-Booten. Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn Verlag, 1932.
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Spindler’s aged but still unsurpassed volume covers the war against merchant shipping in World War I. Better suited to academic readers than the general public.
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Terraine, John. Business in Great Waters: The U-Boat Wars, 1916–1945. London: Leo Cooper, 1989.
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Terraine’s work examines German “unrestricted” submarine warfare—hence the start date of his study—offering a general overview of the German war. His integration of memoirs and personal accounts breathe life into the text, making it ideal for generalists and specialists alike.
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Primary Sources

The non-Central Power perspective of the U-boat war, from the outset of “unrestricted” warfare in 1916 through the interwar period, was that this kind of warfare had been a uniquely German phenomenon, reflecting a vein of evil running through Germany’s people. This perspective is captured well in Frost 1918 and the broader Gibson and Prendergast 2003. Forstner 1917 does not respond to these implications, but was instead was designed to amplify the heroism and successes of the U-boat commanders, for when this volume was published, in 1917, the propaganda mills were heavily engaged in deceiving the German people about what the nature of the war truly was.

Forstner, Georg Günther von. The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner. Translated by Anna Crafts Codman. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1917.
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A rare glimpse through the eyes of a German U-boat commander, this comes with the biases and propaganda one would expect of a text published in 1917. A worthwhile source to provide the opposite perspective to Gibson and Prendergrast 2003.
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Frost, Wesley. German Submarine Warfare: A Study of Its Methods and Spirit. New York: D. Appleton, 1918.
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Frost’s contemporary account of Germany’s submarine war captures the essence of the spirit of German Schrecklichkeit (frightfulness), which the Allied world considered to have typified underlying cause of the U-boat war.
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Gibson, R. H., and Maurice Prendergast. The German Submarine War, 1914–1918. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2003.
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While this tome fails to provide a modern introduction to put its contents into context, it is invaluable in capturing the interwar sentiments about Germany’s U-boat war, 1914–1918, using inflammatory language to demonize Germany and paint all non-Germans as victims of this “pernicious” campaign. Originally published in 1931 (London: Constable).
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Interwar Period

World War I stripped the Western world of its innocence in many ways, not the least of which was through the illegal—and “pernicious”—submarine warfare campaign, which targeted innocent civilians by way of sinking merchantmen. The interwar period thus opened up an era of trying to “put the genie back in the bottle,” though to little avail. Douglas 1974, an examination of the attempt to limit (and, some hoped, abolish) the submarine at the 1921 Washington Conference, succinctly shows that the status of this controversial weapon would not soon be easily resolved. Rickover 1935, a study of the legality of the weapon and what stood in the way of allowing effective submarine warfare, is both canonical in terms of the international law component, but also in showing that, by the eve of World War II, the matter was still unresolved. Herwig 1996 undertakes a comparative analysis to show that, regardless of laws, Britain, Germany, and the United States were all on the road to “total” submarine war in future conflict. Indeed, though the Versailles Treaty of 1919 and the London Naval Conference of 1930 impeded Germany’s ability to rebuild its U-boat arm, as Saville 1963 shows, Germany did not pause even momentarily in ignoring limitations and readying for a future “unrestricted” war. The lesser-known reality is that the United States, too, struggled with carving out a suitable role for its submarine fleet (Andrade 1971 and Weir 1991 speak to that), but key naval figures ultimately moved toward “unrestricted” war as was the best option in light of the then-current laws of war, as Holwitt 2009 argues.

Andrade, Ernest, Jr. “Submarine Policy in the United States Navy, 1919–1941.” Military Affairs 35.2 (1971): 50–56.
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Explores American interwar planners’ intent for future submarine war, and how that shaped fleet construction leading to World War II. A must-read for understanding the resources available to the US Navy when war broke out in 1941, and an excellent companion to Weir 1991.
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Douglas, Lawrence H. “The Submarine and the Washington Conference of 1921.” Naval War College Review 26.5 (1974): 86–100.
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The 1921 Washington Conference’s influence on opinions about the future of submarine warfare is critical to understanding its legal standing in World War II. Douglas’s article is straightforward enough that novices will be engaged by it, as will serious students of undersea war.
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Herwig, Holger H. “Innovation Ignored: The Submarine Problem—Germany, Britain, and the United States, 1919–1939.” In Military Innovation in the Interwar Period. Edited by Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, 227–264. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
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Herwig’s chapter compares the simultaneous developments undertaken by the three states in question, and points to the fact that a persistent tendency to overestimate antisubmarine warfare’s strengths shaped a strategy of “total” war in World War II.
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Holwitt, Joel I. “Execute Against Japan”: The U.S. Decision to Conduct Unrestricted Submarine Warfare. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2009.
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Holwitt shows how the decision for “unrestricted” warfare was arrived at well in advance of the infamous order, given hours after Pearl Harbor. The argument here is that “unrestricted" war was only illegal because international laws had not dealt with armed merchantmen, making submarines overly vulnerable to attack when behaving lawfully.
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Rickover, Hyman G. “International Law and the Submarine.” United States Naval Institute Proceedings 61.9 (1935): 1213–1227.
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Explains what needed to be resolved for the rule of law to limit submarine warfare effectively. With its brief treatment of the laws of war, it is a good introduction to the more advanced section on International Laws, and fully captures the American perspective (echoed in Holwitt 2009) on the problem of armed merchantmen.
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Saville, Allison Winthrop. “The Development of the German U-Boat Arm, 1919–1935.” PhD diss., University of Washington, 1963.
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Saville’s unpublished dissertation is significant in explaining the way Germany developed its U-boats in spite of the limitations of the Treaty of Versailles. Decades later, no one else has yet published in the same area, underscoring the importance of this technical, but readable, work.
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Weir, Gary E. “The Search for an American Submarine Strategy and Design, 1916–1936.” Naval War College Review 44.1 (1991): 34–48.
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Weir shows how the state of technological evolution in submarine design drove American strategy, yielding insight into the fact that American war planners knew their fleet was able to do duty as scouts as well as raiders.
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World War II

World War II featured the most significant instances of submarine warfare. This included the German U-boats’ “unrestricted” submarine war, the Americans’ similarly focused campaign against Japanese shipping, and other states’ smaller campaigns, like the Japanese attacks on American warships. While the lion’s share of publications to date examine the German war, the American war has also been the subject of a number of studies, and a growing body of comparative work has developed that contrasts these two biggest campaigns, bringing new conclusions and depth to fields that have already been heavily examined. Speaking to the topic’s popular appeal, there are a good number of Primary Sources, such as sub captains’ memoirs, providing color to the technical studies and more academic works.

Comparative Studies

World War II provides perhaps the most famous scenes of submarine warfare. Arguably, few are unaware of German Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz’s “wolf packs,” and the U-boat war is possibly one of the most written-about campaigns in the war. Three historians in particular have taken the lesser-known American commerce war and measured it against the well-known U-boat war, though much ground remains to be covered. Manson 1990, pioneering study, is perhaps an imbalanced comparison, focusing more on the diplomatic side of engaging in illegal war. Papadopoulos 1999 examines the rules governing the two navies’ operations, while Cousineau 2007 points to the vast dissimilarities in executing what was, strategically speaking, the same kind of war.

Cousineau, Stephanie. “Ruthless War: A Comparative Analysis of German and American Unrestricted Submarine Warfare Campaigns of the Second World War.” PhD diss., University of Calgary, 2007.
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Cousineau compares the nature of the German and American submarine warfare campaigns, from idea to inception to execution, focusing especially on how manifestly different these two unrestricted campaigns were, in spite of their similar strategies.
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Manson, Janet M. Diplomatic Ramifications of Unrestricted Submarine Warfare, 1939–1941. New York: Greenwood, 1990.
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With a slightly misleading title, the bulk of Manson’s book looks at the effects of the German campaign, from World War I through the interwar period, and the decision to repeat the illegal strategy in the World War II, with a scant section on the American submarine war at the end. This is a good, but not definitive, resource for serious students.
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Papadopoulos, Sarandis. “Feeding the Sharks: The Logistics of Undersea Warfare 1935–1945.” PhD diss., George Washington University, 1999.
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Papadopolous’s work provides a vital contribution to understanding the rules and doctrine of the two largest undersea campaigns of World War II.
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Primary Sources

There is no lack of memoirs and primary sources on World War II, providing ample color and life to the stories of the “silent” services. Dönitz 1959 aimed to shape definitively the way the submarine war was remembered, through the author’s own perspective.Though unsuccessful at that, this work is still a necessary starting point to decoding some of the seemingly inexplicable directions the Kriegsmarine followed. This, notably, includes the so-called Laconia incident. When the RMS Laconia was torpedoed and sunk, the offending U-boat offered assistance to the shipwrecked, which allowed an American plane to hunt and kill the boat. (McLoughlin and Gibb 2006 provide one survivor’s account of the shipwreck.) Thereafter, Dönitz issued the “Laconia order,” whereby it was forbidden to attempt to rescue survivors or offer them succor—for which, in part, Dönitz later faced an indictment at the Nuremberg trials. Beyond these specific stories, as in World War I, the propaganda value of successful submariners was rightly considered significant and worth disseminating; embodying this is Prien 1954, while Suhren and Brustat-Naval 2006 yields a less hero-worshipping, more reflective narrative. On the other side, Calvert 1995 offers an excellent account of an American skipper’s experience. Finally, one of the most important books on the American submarine war is Roscoe 1949; it is neither academic nor analytical, but instead looks to recognize the triumph of the “Silent Service” for its part in defeating Japan. Roscoe uses racial vernacular, which may be off-putting to readers. Still, the tone and self-perception speak volumes, and this work shaped the way that the submarine service would be remembered thereafter.

Calvert, James F. Silent Running: My Years on a World War II Attack Submarine. New York: Wiley, 1995.
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Calvert’s account of his eight patrols in the Pacific highlights the fear and danger of patrol, minimizing the boredom and routine, providing a good story for any submarine enthusiast.
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Dönitz, Karl. Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days. Translated by R. H. Stevens. Cleveland, OH: World Publishing, 1959.
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Part memoir, part history of the U-boat war, Dönitz’s work tells his version of events, from sailing in World War I to the submarine drought of the interwar period, and to his rise through the ranks to ultimately become the “last Führer.” A vital piece of scholarship for anyone studying U-boat warfare, it must still be taken cautiously.
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McLoughlin, Jim with David Gibb. One Common Enemy The Laconia Incident: A Survivor’s Memoir. London: National Maritime Museum, 2006.
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Describes the experience of being on the receiving end of a successful U-boat attack, notable especially for being part of the infamous “Laconia incident” (when Dönitz ordered that survivors be shot, lest they pass on U-boats’ position intelligence to the Allies).
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Prien, Günther. I Sank the Royal Oak. London: Grey’s Inn Press, 1954.
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Prien was the first of the German U-boat aces, due to his coup in sinking an atypical target for a U-boat: the capital ship Royal Oak off Scapa Flow. Prien’s translated memoir is even more significant because he died in battle in 1941. Intensely propagandistic, it is still a compelling read.
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Roscoe, Theodore. U.S. Submarine Operations in World War II. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1949.
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Written by a serving naval officer, this work’s stated aim is to tell the amazing story of the US Navy’s “silent” service in its heroic campaign. A contemporary and unique source: no other published work offers as clear a perspective on how the US Navy saw its duty in seeking victory under the sea.
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Suhren, Teddy, and Fritz Brustat-Naval. Teddy Suhren, Ace of Aces: Memoirs of a U-Boat Rebel. Translated by Frank James. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006.
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This translated version of Suhren’s memoirs is a riveting read for any level of submarine student.
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Germany

This is the greatest area of scrutiny in all of submarine warfare, and, as such, offers some of the most exceptional scholarship. Familiar to those who have seen the film Das Boot, Buchheim 1978 contains the images and perceptions of the journalist whose time aboard the U-boats was somewhat fictionalized in the film of the same name. Blair 1996 provides one of the most total, heavily researched works, which was decades in the development and is unarguably a vital source for any U-boat project. On the other side, Salewski 1970–1975, a three-volume account from the German perspective, began a revisionist school of literature, necessary in understanding the development in U-boat historiography. The lighter, easier single-volume accounts of either Padfield 1995 or Gannon 1990 do not add further analysis to an already deep field, but they make the submarine war inclusive for any audience. Maybe the single best book written about U-boats is Hadley 1995, which addresses the construction of the myth of U-boat greatness and how it was perpetuated in popular culture. Also providing a specialized analysis is Mulligan 1999, a social history of U-boaters that complements the “great man” nature of the memoirs listed under Primary Sources.

Blair, Clay. Hitler’s U-Boat War. Vol. 1, The Hunters, 1939–1942. New York: Random House, 1996.
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The first volume in a two-volume work, invaluable for any serious student of U-boat warfare, serving partly as a reference work, and partly as a narrative. No other source comes close to being as complete as these two volumes, though their lack of argument and sometimes of analysis can leave academic historians wanting. It remains canonical literature in U-boat historiography. Volume 2, The Hunted, 1942–1945, was published in 1998.
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Buchheim, Lothar Günther, ed. U-Boat War. Translated by Gudie Lawaetz. New York: Knopf, 1978.
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This picture-and-storybook account of the experience of the U-boat war is an entertaining narrative, made more substantial by the concluding essay by Michael Salewski, “The Submarine War: A Historical Essay,” which provides depth and context for this otherwise popular work.
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Gannon, Michael. Operation Drumbeat: The Dramatic True Story of Germany’s First U-Boat Attacks along the American Coast in World War II. New York: Harper & Row, 1990.
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This popular source is without citation or original research, but delivers on the promise in its title—the drama of Operation Drumbeat, the U-boats’ “second happy time” off the American eastern seaboard, is unarguable.
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Hadley, Michael L. Count Not the Dead: the Popular Image of German Submarines. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995.
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Hadley’s work sheds light on the immense prestige and popularity of the German submarine in popular media. A critical source for anyone appreciating an innovative approach in seeking to understand the reasons for the mythical allure of the U-boat, and the myth’s foundations.
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Mulligan, Timothy. Neither Sharks nor Wolves: The Men of Nazi Germany’s U-Boat Arm, 1939–1945. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1999.
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Mulligan’s work is a social history of the men—the ordinary men—who filled the ranks of the U-boaters in the war. Derived from questionnaires and personnel records, this important and highly readable book is excellent reading for amateurs and experts alike.
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Padfield, Peter. War Beneath the Sea: Submarine Conflict, 1939–1945. London: John Murray, 1995.
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A wholly popular source, Padfield runs afoul of some of the popular misconceptions of the U-boat war (e.g., the accidental targeting of the Athenia as the opening of “unrestricted” submarine warfare); it is therefore a better source for those seeking a good story than a solid backdrop for academic study.
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Salewski, Michael. Die deutsche Seekriegsleitiung, 1935–45. 2 vols. Frankfurt-am-Main: Bernard & Graefe, 1970–1975.
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This still-important work built on the revisionist tradition begun in the mid-1960s. Further developments in terms of Dönitz’s role in U-boat building and of the connections between the Kriegsmarine and Nazi state have been explored in the years since these volumes appeared, but it remains a standard work for any serious student of U-boat war.
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United States

The title of Blair 1975, Silent Victory, says it all: the US Navy’s submarines were the “Silent Service,” though they found a voice in postwar accounts, not the least of which is Blair’s nearly exhaustive work. Unarguably, no scholar of American submarine warfare could begin without consulting it. There is no other equally complete work in the historiography, though Papadopoulos 1999 and Cousineau 2007 both deal, in part, with the Pacific war. Sturma 2009 probes the meaning of the American campaign to find that conscience underscored “unrestricted” submarine warfare in the Pacific, not atrocity. DeRose 2000 rightly points to the importance of leadership in submarine warfare by focusing on the aggressive commanders who decisively took control of the Pacific theater, of whom Eugene Fluckey was one (see Fluckey 1992), and Slade Cutter—the subject of LaVO 2003—was another.

Blair, Clay. Silent Victory: The US Submarine War against Japan. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1975.
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Blair’s work in submarine warfare is unparalleled in breadth; derived from interviews conducted by the author, and enormous primary research, this is the first book any student of the US submarine war should read. The citations are incomplete for those wishing to follow in Blair’s footsteps, which makes the source, itself, that much more crucial.
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Cousineau, Stephanie. “Ruthless War: A Comparative Analysis of German and American Unrestricted Submarine Warfare Campaigns of the Second World War.” PhD diss., University of Calgary, 2007.
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Though a comparative analysis, the chapters on the American war follow interwar decision making through to operations at sea in the Pacific, using case studies from January 1942 to late 1944.
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DeRose, James F. Unrestricted Warfare: How a New Breed of Officers Led the Submarine Force to Victory in World War II. New York: Wiley, 2000.
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A somewhat misleading title (having far less to do with unrestricted warfare than submarine commanders), this is a good source for novice readers interested in looking at the heroism of American sub commanders in World War II. Leadership was critical for success in submarine warfare, though DeRose’s pro-American bias risks overselling the point.
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Fluckey, Eugene B. Thunder Below! The USS Barb Revolutionizes Submarine Warfare in World War II. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992.
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Fluckey was, himself, the man who “revolutionized” the Barb’s warfare, yet this is more than a memoir. It chronicles some of the most aggressive and daring attacks of any American submarine in World War II, in a well-written and well-researched work suitable for all audiences.
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LaVO, Carl. Slade Cutter, Submarine Warrior. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2003.
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The engaging story of one of the US submarine aces—and a four-time Navy Cross recipient.
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Papadopoulos, Sarandis. “Feeding the Sharks: The Logistics of Undersea Warfare 1935-1945.” PhD diss., George Washington University, 1999.
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Papadopolous’s work is comparative; on the American side it focuses on the theoretical underpinnings of submarine warfare and the rules of engagement.
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Sturma, Michael. “Atrocities, Conscience, and Unrestricted Warfare: US Submarines during the Second World War.” War in History 16.4 (2009): 447–468.
DOI: 10.1177/0968344509341686Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Argues that the American submarine war was not an antiseptic, torpedo war, but fought equally on the surface with deck guns—yielding some atrocities, but more often acts of conscience by individual submariners. Derived more from published sources than archival work, this volume considers undersea warfare from a different perspective.
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Other States

Numerous states beside Germany and the United States sent submarines to sea in World War II, but all were thoroughly overshadowed by the major campaigns. Jenkins 1992, on Japan, is a starting point for readers, while Boyd and Yoshida 1995 provides the best English-language source on Japanese submarines. Young 1953 illustrates the lesser-known part of Britain’s Second World War at sea, which was wholly overshadowed by its surface war in the Battle of the Atlantic.

Boyd, Carl, and Akihiko Yoshida. The Japanese Submarine Force and World War II. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995.
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Derived from Japanese language documents and Ultra-encrypted materials, this shows that the Japanese used their submarines first against military targets (as at Pearl Harbor), and then, poorly, against merchantmen. Ultimately, Boyd and Yoshida argue that Japan wasted its efforts by failing to choose more valuable targets.
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Jenkins, David. Battle Surface! Japan’s Submarine War against Australia 1942–44. Milsons Point, Australia: Random House Australia, 1992.
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Out of a paucity of sources on the Japanese submarine war comes this general book, based on secondary source material only. In the absence of better academic sources, Jenkins’s book becomes a more significant source but should be considered a popular history only.
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Young, Edward. One of Our Submarines. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1953.
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This memoir of an RNVR submariner is filled with drama, as the author cheats death by escaping his sunken boat off Chatham, sinks an Italian boat, and takes command of his own submarine as finishes the war in the Pacific.
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Nuclear Age

For all the attention paid to the postwar nuclear era, and to pop-culture films capturing fictionalized drama of nuclear submarines, there is a dearth of good scholarship that analyzes submarine warfare in the nuclear age. It is an unbalanced and currently understudied field, typified more by peculiarities than canonical works. For example, Craven 2001 and Vyborny and Davis 2003 provide insiders’ views on formerly classified, unknown elements of the American side of the Cold War under the sea. Beach 1962 is part-memoir, part-historical account of the first circumnavigation by a nuclear-powered submarine in 1960, taking only eighty-four days and earning Beach awards of the highest order. Weir and Boyne 2004, on the other hand, offer a more historical analysis of the Russian submarine service in the Cold War—though it is still an early work in the developing nuclear age field.

Beach, Edward L. Around the World Submerged: the Voyage of the Triton. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962.
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Beach was a serving skipper and long-standing officer of the US Navy, and later a writer of naval historical texts. His work is well researched but is still a personal tale, as he was intimately involved with Admiral Hyman Rickover in developing nuclear propulsion in submarines and skippered the USS Triton on its circumnavigation. Reprinted in 2001 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press).
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Craven, John P. The Silent War: The Cold War Battle beneath the Sea. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.
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More of a memoir and contemporary account, based on the author’s participation in the scientific development of the US Navy’s dark operations. The chapters are loosely connected not by argument but by narration of a variety of classified projects in which Craven took part.
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Vyborny, Lee, and Don Davis. Dark Waters: An Insider’s Account of the NR-1, the Cold War’s Undercover Nuclear Sub. New York: New American Library, 2003.
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Vyborny, a general dynamics engineer, is the “insider” in question here; this book provides a narrative account of the relatively unknown NR-1, a research and rescue sub. This is engaging for nonspecialists and those looking for lesser-known stories of Cold War submarines.
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Weir, Gary E., and Walter J. Boyne. Rising Tide: The Untold Story of the Russian Submarines That Fought the Cold War. New York: NAL Caliber, 2004.
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This work marks the beginning of English-language scholarship on the Soviet Union’s submarine arm, drawing especially from oral histories. It chronicles the trajectory of flaws in design, construction, and maintenance plaguing Soviet/Russian submarines, showing that the Soviets were especially aiming to match American capabilities throughout the Cold War.
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Technology

Submarine warfare is a highly technological undertaking; the fitness of the boat is at the heart of what stands between a watery grave and fighting another day. Preston 1975 depicts this in the most simplified version, while Weir 1991 and Weir 1993 together serve as more of an instructive manual, employing history to show how and why the submarine service developed as it did. Finally, for the most serious scholars, McCue 1990, a mathematical assessment of the technology that made the Bay of Biscay so dangerous, is an important, if difficult to digest, contribution to the field.

McCue, Brian. U-Boats in the Bay of Biscay: An Essay in Operations Analysis. Washington DC: National Defense University Press, 1990.
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The Bay of Biscay became a graveyard for U-boats by late 1943. McCue has undertaken a mathematic analysis of how technology helped or hindered the U-boats’ quest to sortie through the bay to the open Atlantic. This is a highly technical source, only for the expert and scientifically inclined.
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Preston, Antony. Submarines: The History and Evolution of Underwater Fighting Vessels. London: Octopus, 1975.
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Preston’s book offers the layman an easy introduction to technical specifics by way of 2-D images of boats, cross-section illustrations, and engine diagrams. The text is narrative, offering a good chronology for the technological developments from early design to the post–world war era.
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Weir, Gary E. Building American Submarines, 1914–1940. Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, 1991.
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In this first book of a two-work series (see Weir 1993), Weir has written a functional story of the major challenge in weapons acquisitions, highlighting the difficulties faced by the government and military officials charged with the task. Intended for government officers, it might be found to be lacking in narrative or color, but it remains an excellent source for generalists and academics alike.
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Weir, Gary E. Forged in War: The Naval-Industrial Complex and American Submarine Construction, 1940–1961. Washington DC: Naval Historical Center, 1993.
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The second tome of Weir’s series on fifty years of building American submarines (see Weir 1991).
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International Laws

It is impossible to study submarine warfare and ignore the laws of war. Indeed, part of what makes this contentious weapon so attention grabbing is the fact that it lurks in the shadows of illicitness. According to pre–First World War rules of Visit, Search, and Seizure, as well as Prize Laws and Contraband Laws, “unrestricted” warfare was against the law. Though the laws were flagrantly broken throughout World War I, in the interwar period the major powers failed to remedy the situation and pass effective laws. Thus, the same code governed, and the same code was broken, in World War II, as Stone 1954 shows. Mallison 1968 interprets and discusses these laws, which is also the focus of Robertson 1991, though in lesser detail. In the nuclear age, the laws have largely remained unchanged as other laws of war absorbed the bulk of scholarly attention; in fact, as Doswald-Beck 1995 shows, the word of law had barely changed by the end of the 20th century. Politakis 1998 contextualizes the debates of submarine warfare legality by examining the factors that shape its conduct, in a passionate, up-to-date format. In addition to these works, Manson 1990, Holwitt 2009, and Cousineau 2007 include chapters dealing with the legalities as each author has interpreted them.

Cousineau, Stephanie. “Ruthless War: A Comparative Analysis of German and American Unrestricted Submarine Warfare Campaigns of the Second World War.” PhD diss., University of Calgary, 2007.
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The first chapter provides an extensive look at the development of the laws making submarine warfare unlawful in World War II, the topic that forms the crux of the study.
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Doswald-Beck, Louise. San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511622052Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Offers the most recent status of international law and submarine warfare; interestingly, it fails to decisively resolve the ages-old issue of legality, instead reiterating laws similar to those that governed submarines through two world wars, stating that “unrestricted” submarine warfare would likely not be an issue without a future conflict of world-war proportions.
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Holwitt, Joel I. Execute Against Japan: The U.S. Decision to Conduct Unrestricted Submarine Warfare. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2009.
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Holwitt points to the failure to make armed merchantmen illegal as the reason submarine warfare was impossible to wage legally in World War II.
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Mallison, William Thomas, Jr. Studies in the Law of Naval Warfare: Submarines in General and Limited War. International Law Studies 58. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1968.
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Mallison’s text is dated, but also a strong, necessary source in seeking to understand the state of international laws toward the submarine through World War II. Good for intermediate and advanced scholars of the law of sub warfare.
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Manson, Janet M. Diplomatic Ramifications of Unrestricted Submarine Warfare, 1939–1941. New York: Greenwood, 1990.
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The opening section deals with the development of laws, and why such extensive diplomatic intercourse arose from the threat and actual conduct of unrestricted warfare.
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Politakis, George P. Modern Aspects of the Laws of Naval Warfare and Maritime Neutrality. London: Kegan Paul International, 1998.
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Does not deal directly with laws of submarine warfare, but rather the topics and issues that shape its legality and conduct, including war zones; mines, ruses, and perfidy at sea; contraband; and prize laws. Situates debates surrounding international law in a real world context, with intensity and thoroughness in research and references.
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Robertson, Horace B. Jr., ed. The Law of Naval Operations. International Law Studies 64. Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 1991.
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Within this collection are chapters that deal directly with the submarine’s precarious position in the rules of law (“The Law of Submarine Warfare Today” by Jon L. Jacobson, specifically), as well as other early Cold War considerations of other legal areas in which submarine warfare is controversial.
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Stone, Julius. Legal Controls of International Conflict: A Treatise on the Dynamics of Disputes and War-Law. New York: Reinhart, 1954.
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Stone, an international lawyer, provides a heavily researched, heavily footnoted account of the state of laws governing submarines and submarine warfare. An invaluable source of doctrine, allowing the reader to evaluate if, how, and why submarine warfare through the two world wars was against international law.