Heavily armed merchant ships with concealed weaponry
Q-ships
, also known as
Q-boats
,
decoy vessels
,
special service ships
, or
mystery ships
, were heavily
armed merchant ships
with concealed weaponry, designed to lure
submarines
into making surface attacks. This gave Q-ships the chance to open fire and sink them.
They were used by the
British
Royal Navy
and the German
Kaiserliche Marine
during the
First World War
and by the Royal Navy, the
Kriegsmarine
, the
Imperial Japanese Navy
, and the
United States Navy
during the
Second World War
(1939?45).
Though legally recognised as an acceptable tactic of military deception, they have attracted much controversy, enjoying only marginal success during WWI and none in WWII.
[1]
[2]
Etymology
[
edit
]
Short for
Queenstown
in Ireland, as Haulbowline Dockyard in Cork Harbour was responsible for the conversion of many mercantile steamers to armed decoy ships in World War One, although the majority appear to have been converted in larger navy yards such as Devonport.
[3]
Early uses of the concept
[
edit
]
The general idea and legal framework for the Q-ship derives from the classic
ruse de guerre
of "sailing under false colours". As a long standing element of naval tactics, warships may legally disguise themselves in various ways in transit, so long as the proper flags are hoisted before firing commences. Numerous examples exist of the tactic, used both defensively and offensively.
[2]
Examples of the tactic used against commerce raiders include
HMS
Kingfisher
in the 1670s and French disguised
brigs
during the
French Revolutionary Wars
. An example of the latter was beaten back by the privateer
lugger
Vulture
out of
Jersey
.
[4]
: 183
First World War
[
edit
]
Royal Navy
[
edit
]
In 1915, during the
First Battle of the Atlantic
, Britain was in desperate need of a countermeasure against the
U-boats
that were strangling its sea-lanes. Convoys, which had proved effective in earlier times (and would again prove effective during the
Second World War
), were rejected by the resource-strapped
Admiralty
and the independent captains.
Depth charges
of the time were relatively primitive, and almost the only chance of sinking a
submarine
was by gunfire or by ramming while on the surface. The problem was how to lure the U-boat to the surface.
A solution to this was the creation of the Q-ship, one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war. Their codename referred to the vessels'
home port
,
Queenstown
, in
Ireland
.
[5]
These became known by the Germans as a
U-Boot-Falle
("U-boat trap"). A Q-ship would appear to be an easy target, but in fact carried hidden armaments. A typical Q-ship might resemble a tramp steamer sailing alone in an area where a U-boat was reported to be operating.
Torpedoes were expensive, and a submarine only carried a limited number of them, ideally employed when the vessel is submerged and invisible to her target. Ammunition for a deck gun, oppositely, was inexpensive and plentiful in comparison. As a result, submarine captains preferred to surface and use their deck gun on easy or already weakened targets.
By seeming to be a suitable target for the U-boat's deck gun, a Q-ship was intended to lure a submarine into surfacing. Once the U-boat was vulnerable, perhaps even gulled further by pretence of some crew dressed as civilian mariners "abandoning ship" and taking to a boat, the Q-ship would drop its panels and immediately open fire with its deck guns. At the same time, the vessel would reveal her true colours by raising the
White Ensign
(
Royal Navy
flag). When successfully fooled, a U-boat could quickly become overwhelmed by several guns to its one, or defer from firing and try to submerge before it became mortally wounded.
The first Q-ship victory was on 23 June 1915, when the submarine
HMS
C24
, cooperating with the decoy vessel
Taranaki
, sank
U-40
off
Eyemouth
. The first victory by an unassisted Q-ship came on 24 July 1915 when
Prince Charles
sank
U-36
. The civilian crew of
Prince Charles
received a cash award. The following month an even smaller converted fishing trawler renamed
HM Armed Smack
Inverlyon
successfully destroyed
UB-4
near
Great Yarmouth
.
Inverlyon
was an unpowered sailing ship fitted with a small
3-pounder
(47 mm) gun. The British crew fired nine rounds from their 3-pounder into
UB-4
at close range, sinking her with the loss of all hands despite the attempt of
Inverlyon
'
s commander to rescue one surviving German submariner.
On 19 August 1915,
HMS
Baralong
sank
U-27
, which was preparing to attack the nearby merchant ship
Nicosian
. About a dozen of the U-boat sailors survived and swam towards the merchant ship. The commanding officer, allegedly fearing that they might
scuttle
her, ordered the survivors to be shot in the water and sent a
boarding
party to kill all who had made it aboard. This became known as the "
Baralong incident
".
HMS
Farnborough
(Q.5) sank
U-68
on 22 March 1916. Her commander,
Gordon Campbell
, was awarded the
Victoria Cross
(VC). New Zealanders Lieutenant Andrew Dougall Blair and Sub-Lieutenant
William Edward Sanders
faced three U-boats simultaneously in
Helgoland
(Q.17) while becalmed and without engines or wireless.
[6]
Forced to return fire early, they managed to sink one U-boat and avoid two torpedo attacks.
[7]
Sanders was promoted to lieutenant commander, eventually commanding the topsail schooner
HMS
Prize
in command of which he was awarded the Victoria Cross for an action on 30 April 1917 with
U-93
, which was severely damaged.
Helgoland
, while the ship sustained heavy shellfire, waited until the submarine was within 80 yards (73 m), whereupon he hoisted the
White Ensign
and
Prize
opened fire. The submarine appeared to sink and he claimed a victory. However, the badly damaged submarine managed to struggle back to port. With his ship accurately described by the survivors of
U-93
, Sanders and his crewmen were all killed in action when they attempted a surprise attack on
UB-48
on 14 August 1917.
According to
Warships of World War I
by H. M. LeFleming, the Royal Navy converted 58 from merchant ships (18 were sunk by U-boats), in addition to 40
Flower-class sloop
and 20
PC-boats
. However
Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1906?1921
quotes no fewer than 157 named submarine decoy vessels converted from other types of ship, in addition to another ten whose name was unknown. It agrees with LeFleming about the number of sloops and PC-boats. These ones were completed as Q-ships, disguised as coastal freighters and differed from regular service PC-boats. None were lost in the war. The Flower-class sloops were designed on merchant ship lines thus making them easily adaptable for conversion to Q-ships, 39 being completed as such while the other was converted after being torpedoed. These all had single
funnels
, and as the merchant ship silhouette was left to the builders. The "Flower-Q's" were employed mainly on convoy and anti-submarine work. Nine were lost during the war.
[8]
After the war, it was concluded that Q-ships were greatly overrated, diverting skilled seamen from other duties without sinking enough U-boats to justify the strategy.
[9]
Estimates differ due to the uncertainty of the attribution of lost submarines, but in a total of approximately 150 engagements, British Q-ships destroyed or assisted in the loss of around 12-15 U-boats and damaged 60, at a cost of 27-38 Q-ships lost out of ~200.
[10]
Q-ships were thus responsible for under 10% of all U-boats sunk, ranking them well below the use of ordinary
minefields
in effectiveness. Around half of Q-ship successes took place in June to September 1915, after which the ships were much less effective. With the second round of unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917, Q-ships sunk only 3 submarines, dwarfed by the ~28 sunk by undisguised warships.
[11]
Imperial German Navy
[
edit
]
The Imperial German Navy commissioned six Q-boats during the Great War for the Baltic Sea into the
Handelsschutzflottille
. None
[12]
were successful in destroying enemy submarines. The German Q-ship
Schiff K
heavily damaged the Russian submarine
Gepard
of the
Bars
class
on 27 May 1916. The famous
Mowe
and
Wolf
were
merchant raiders
, vessels designed to disrupt enemy trade and sink merchantmen, rather than attack enemy warships.
Second World War
[
edit
]
Germany
[
edit
]
Germany employed at least 13 Q-ships, including the
Schurbeck
which sank the British submarine
HMS
Tarpon
. The German
Atlantis
, which sank a number of ships with a total tonnage of 145,960 t including the Norwegian tanker
Tirranna
on 10 June 1940, was more of a
merchant raider
.
United Kingdom
[
edit
]
Nine Q-ships were commissioned by the
Royal Navy
in September and October 1939 for work in the North Atlantic:
[13]
- 610-ton HMS
Chatsgrove
(X85) ex-Royal Navy
P-class sloop
PC-74 built 1918
- 5,072-ton HMS
Maunder
(X28) ex-
King Gruffyd
built 1919
- 4,443-ton HMS
Prunella
(X02) ex-
Cape Howe
built 1930
- 5,119-ton
HMS
Lambridge
(X15) ex-
Botlea
built 1917
- 4,702-ton HMS
Edgehill
(X39) ex-
Willamette Valley
built 1928
- 5,945-ton HMS
Brutus
(X96) ex-
City of Durban
built 1921
- 4,398-ton HMS
Cyprus
(X44) ex-
Cape Sable
built 1936
- 1,030-ton HMS
Looe
(X63) ex-
Beauty
built 1924
- 1,090-ton HMS
Antoine
(X72) ex-
Orchy
built 1930
Prunella
and
Edgehill
were torpedoed and sunk on 21 and 29 June 1940 without even sighting a U-boat. The rest of the vessels were paid off in March 1941 without successfully accomplishing any mission.
[14]
The last Royal Navy Q-ship, 2,456-ton
HMS
Fidelity
, was converted in September, 1940, to carry a torpedo defense net, four 4-inch (100 mm) guns, four torpedo tubes, two
OS2U Kingfisher
floatplanes, and
Motor Torpedo Boat
105.
Fidelity
sailed with a French crew, and was sunk by
U-435
on 30 December 1942 during the battle for
Convoy ON-154
.
[13]
United States
[
edit
]
By 12 January 1942, the British Admiralty's intelligence community had noted a "heavy concentration" of U-boats off the "North American seaboard from New York to Cape Race" and passed along this fact to the
United States Navy
. That day,
U-123
under
Kapitanleutnant
Reinhard Hardegen, torpedoed and sank the British steamship
Cyclops
, inaugurating
Paukenschlag
(literally, "a strike on the kettledrum" and sometimes referred to in English as "Operation Drumbeat").
U-boat
commanders found peacetime conditions prevailing along the coast: towns and cities were not blacked-out and navigational buoys remained lit; shipping followed normal routines and "carried the normal lights."
Paukenschlag
had caught the United States unprepared.
Losses mounted rapidly. On January 20, 1942, Commander-in-Chief,
United States Fleet
(Cominch)
Earnest J. King
, sent a coded dispatch to Commander, Eastern Sea Frontier (CESF), requesting immediate consideration of the manning and fitting-out of "Queen" ships to be operated as an antisubmarine measure. The result was "Project LQ."
Five vessels were acquired and converted secretly at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Kittery, Maine:
[15]
The careers of all five ships were almost entirely unsuccessful and very short, with USS
Atik
sunk on its first patrol with all hands on 26 March 1942.
[5]
COMINCH
strongly criticized the program and all Q-ships patrols ended in 1943.
[10]
American Q-ships also operated in the Pacific Ocean. One was
USS
Anacapa
(AG-49)
formerly the lumber transport
Coos Bay
which was converted to Q-ship duty as project "Love William".
Anacapa
was not successful in engaging any enemy submarines, although she is believed to have damaged two friendly subs with depth charges when they were improperly operating in her vicinity.
Anacapa
was also withdrawn from Q-ship duty in 1943 and served out the remainder of World War II as an armed transport in the South Pacific and Aleutian Islands.
The US Navy did not use a consistent
hull classification symbol
for its Q-ships (AG, AK, AO, IX and PYc were all used). This and the unprecedented use of duplicate hull numbers for
Asterion
and
Atik
reflect the great secrecy attached to these ships.
Japan
[
edit
]
The
Imperial Japanese Navy
converted the 2,205-ton merchant ship,
Delhi Maru
, into a Q-ship. On 15 January 1944, she departed from Nagaura (now
Sodegaura
on
Tokyo Bay
) on her first mission in company with the
submarine chaser
Ch-50
and the
netlayer
Tatu Maru
. At 22:00 that evening, the vessels were detected by the submarine
USS
Swordfish
, which launched three torpedoes.
Delhi Maru
was hit by all three on her port bow; following a number of internal explosions, she broke in two, the forward section sinking immediately and the aft section sinking later in heavy seas. Although
Swordfish
was depth charged by
Ch-50
, she escaped unscathed.
[16]
Proposed use against modern pirates
[
edit
]
Attacks on merchant ships by
pirates originating on the Somalia coast
have brought suggestions from some security experts that Q-ships be used again to tempt pirates into attacking a well-defended ship.
[17]
Survivors
[
edit
]
A surviving example of the Q-ships is HMS
Saxifrage
, a Flower-class sloop of the
Anchusa
group
completed in 1918. She was renamed
HMS
President
in 1922 and served as the London Division RNR drill ship until 1988, when she was sold privately and remains moored at King's Reach on the
Thames
.
Q-ships in fiction
[
edit
]
The
Alfred Noyes
poem "Kilmeny" is about a Q-ship, a British trawler equipped with two deck guns, that destroys a German submarine during World War I.
In
Ernest Hemingway
's novel
Islands in the Stream
, the main character Thomas Hudson commands a Q-ship for the US Navy around Cuba as he hunts the survivors of a sunken German U-boat.
In
Edward L. Beach Jr.
's novel
Run Silent, Run Deep
, Japanese Q-ships make two appearances with one surprising the Walrus and the second being attacked by the
Eel
in the final battle of the story.
Malcolm Lowry
's novel
Under the Volcano
(1947) tells the story of Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic British
consul
in the small Mexican town of
Quauhnahuac
, on the
Day of the Dead
, 2 November 1938. Geoffrey Firmin reflects back to his time as a naval officer during
World War I
, when he was court-martialed and subsequently decorated for his actions aboard a Q-ship (the captured German officers disappeared and were allegedly burned alive in the boiler).
In the
Clive Cussler
book series
Oregon Files
, the main base of operations is a Q-ship, a converted lumber carrier. The crew are mercenaries and former US covert and military personnel who carry out missions around the world in support of US policy while earning their living performing mercenary operations.
The 1951 movie
Operation Pacific
features a battle with a Q-Ship by the fictional submarine USS
Thunderfish
, inspired by an encounter with an enemy ship by the
USS
Growler
.
In science fiction
[
edit
]
As with other naval concepts, the idea of a Q-ship has also been applied to space vessels in fictional works:
Q-ships feature prominently in
David Weber
's
Honor Harrington
series of books. Harrington destroys a Q-ship in the first novel,
On Basilisk Station
, and commands a squadron of Q-ships in the sixth novel,
Honor Among Enemies
. In the tenth book in the series,
War of Honor
, Thomas Bachfisch commands a pair of privately owned Q-ships.
[18]
In the Jan/Feb 2020 issue of
Analog Science Fiction and Fact
, Joel Richards has a short story titled "Q-ship Militant".
In DC Comics Star Spangled War Stories #71 (reprinted in DC Comics Weird War #1) the story "The End of the Sea Wolf!" is a postwar "flashback" story of a U-boat commander engaging a Q-ship in WWII.
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"Anti-submarine warfare"
.
navymuseum.co.nz
. 30 November 2012
. Retrieved
2024-03-25
.
- ^
a
b
Hank Whipple (2015). "
"Sailing Under False Colours": An historic Ruse De Guerre".
Coriolis
.
5
.
- ^
"The Queenstown Q Ships of WW1"
.
- ^
Jamieson, A.G. (1986).
A people of the sea
. Methuen.
ISBN
0-416-40540-1
.
- ^
a
b
Beyer, Kenneth M.:
Q-Ships versus U-Boats. America's Secret Project
. Naval Institute Press. Annapolis, Maryland, USA. 1999.
ISBN
1-55750-044-4
- ^
"Helgoland Q17 ? Remembering War ? Tauranga Memories"
.
Tauranga.kete.net.nz
. Retrieved
2017-06-30
.
- ^
"Captain Andrew Dougall Blair (1872-1955) ? Remembering War ? Tauranga Memories"
.
Tauranga.kete.net.nz
. Retrieved
2017-06-30
.
- ^
McMullen, Chris (2001).
"Royal Navy 'Q' Ships"
. Retrieved
14 December
2011
.
- ^
Preston, Anthonu (1982).
Submarines
. London: Bison Books. p. 58.
ISBN
0-86124-043-X
.
- ^
a
b
Langenberg, William H.
"Q-Ships in World War II"
. Retrieved
11 April
2024
.
- ^
"U-boat Losses 1914-1918"
. Retrieved
11 April
2024
.
- ^
Lutz Bengelsdorf:
Der Seekrieg in der Ostsee 1914-1918
Hauschild, Bremen 2008, p. 94-98, 106-108.
ISBN
978-3-89757-404-5
.
- ^
a
b
Lenton, H.T. and Colledge, J.J.:
British and Dominion Warships of World War II
, 1968, p. 279
- ^
Marder, Arthur (November 1972). "The Influence of History on Sea Power: The Royal Navy and the Lessons of 1914?1918".
The Pacific Historical Review
.
41
(4): 413?443.
doi
:
10.2307/3638394
.
JSTOR
3638394
.
- ^
New Hampshire v. Maine, 426 U.S. 363 (1977)
- ^
Howard, Ed.
"The Short Life of the First Japanese Q-Ship"
.
www.subsowespac.org
. Archived from
the original
on 23 September 2016
. Retrieved
22 September
2016
.
- ^
"Use Q ships against pirates?"
.
Safety at Sea International
. Lloyd's Register. 9 April 2009
. Retrieved
2009-04-11
.
- ^
"Chapter Four"
. Archived from
the original
on 2012-07-09.
Bibliography
[
edit
]
- Beyer, Edward F. & Beyer, Kenneth M. (1991). "U. S. Navy Mystery Ships".
Warship International
.
XXVIII
(4). International Naval Research Organization: 322?372.
ISSN
0043-0374
.
External links
[
edit
]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to
Q-ships
.
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