The Influence of History

A few months ago I posted an  overview  of the five largest submarine forces of WWII. That was intended as background for this post and I would suggest reading it before continuing. As mentioned in my previous post, the focus on the German submarines is only natural given their massive numbers. The growing interest in the American submarine campaign can also be largely explained by the fact that the United States had the second largest submarine fleet by a farily significant margin. However, while larger numbers almost certainly allowed for a greater influence on the course of the war, they say little about the quality of the forces involved. So here are some figures to assist in determining which nation actually had the best submarine force during the war. Since the most well known contribution of submarines to the war was in sinking merchant ships, we will turn there first. Gross registered tonnage sunk by each nation's submarines As can be seen, the Germa...

The German Type VIID submarine U-218 Submarine warfare is an iconic aspect of WWII. However, attention has long been focused on the U-Boats of the Kriegsmarine while the undersea arms of the other navies were largely neglected. Recently, there has been growing appreciation for the effectiveness of the American submarines, but the Japanese are still widely disparaged for not using their submarines correctly and little is heard about the British or Italians at all. This post is intended to provide basic overview of the size and composition of the submarine arms of the five great navies of WWII, in order to lay the foundation for a later analysis of their wartime effectiveness. Force Size The following chart include all submarines that served during the war, excluding dedicated training submarines, transports, minisubs, and manned torpedoes. What immediately leaps out is that the German submarine force was 40% larger than those of the other four navies combined - eas...

The introduction of the cruiser float plane after the Great War vastly improved the scouting efficiency  of navies. So let's take a closer look at this rather underappreciated naval development. While the aircraft are an interesting subject themselves, the cruisers that operated floatplanes have been severely neglected despite being a critical part of interwar naval strategy. Japan Despite the early experiments by the United States and the large number of seaplane tenders and early carriers commissioned by Great Britain, the first navy to put float panes on its cruisers was in fact the Japanese. The Nagara - class light cruisers (lead ship commissioned in 1922) were constructed with flying off platforms above their bow armament and one plane hangers built into their bridges. This unusual arrangement was repeated in the 1924 Sendai - class and the 1926 Furutaka - class heavy cruisers also commissioned with flying off platforms (but mounted on their aft Number 4 turrets rather than...