America’s U-boats: Terror Trophies of World War I

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By Chris  Dubbs

Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2014

Reviewed William F. Bundy

Originally presented in the Naval War College Review, Autumn 2015

Chris Dubbs, a Gannon University executive, followed a fascination with his discovery of a First World War German submarine wreck in Lake Michigan. He pursued meticulous research through collections of First World War U-boat accounts and recorded American attitudes on the war and the public fascination with submarines. Throughout the book, he grabs the attention of readers as he skillfully recounts the arrival of the German freighter submarine Deutschland in the United States to reopen trade with Germany, the horrors that U-boats caused during the war, and the end of the war, when the allies claimed U-boats as war prizes. His well-cited account of events in the United States, at sea, and in Europe between 1916 and 1920 entertains readers with riveting images of German submarines and crews, the perils of war at sea, and public reaction and debates on the war. 

Dubbs offers an informative and historically accurate description of the impact U-boats had on the evolution of warfare and the subsequent employment of submarines as offensive weapons in war. He concludes his book with a note on the entrance of the United States into the Second World War, when Admiral Harold Stark, Chief of Naval Operations, ordered U.S. submarines to commence unrestricted submarine warfare against Japan, thereby disregarding the moral outrage against sinking ships without warning. USS Swordfish (SS 193) consummated the intent of that order nine days after 7 December 1941 when it torpedoed a Japanese freighter. Swordfish, commissioned on 22 July 1939, was certainly designed and constructed based on exploited First World War U-boat technology.

Dubbs has never served in our Navy or been identified as a naval warfare analyst; however, his account of submarine technology and warfare describes in compelling detail the phases of a revolution in military affairs brought about by offensive employment of submarines.

Dubbs details capability/countercapability phases and the evolution of technology that began a revolution in military affairs. While this aspect of the book is not Dubbs’s main focus, it serves as a textbook lesson for naval innovators and strategists in understanding the narrative on submarines and submarine warfare that continues today in the form of the U.S. Navy’s undersea warfare dominance.

Dubbs offers details on how Germany, with the initial advantage of superior submarine technology, executed a strategy designed to intimidate the United States and then threaten American and allied shipping at sea and American cities along the Atlantic coast. Imagine a Chinese high-speed freighter submarine arriving at the Port of Los Angeles to deliver bulk consignments of rare earth minerals. Imagine there were no known accounts of the Chinese freighter submarine being constructed or warnings of its passage until it surfaced west of Santa Barbara Island. Imagine its arrival in Los Angekes, with fanfare, public fascination, and U.S. government mortification.

This hypothetical arrival of a Chinese freighter submarine today is comparable to Dubbs’s account of the 1916 prewar arrival of Deutschland. Deutschland commenced its surface transit through the Chesapeake Bay bound for a call on the Port of Baltimore on 9 July 1916. Deutschland delivered not only rare dyes from Germany but also strategic communications that the British blockade of Germany was ineffective against German submarines and that German combat U-boats could arrive undetected along the Atlantic coast.

U-boat Deutschland with a Tug Outside Baltimore Harbor

Deutschland’s technology and apparent ability to transit the Atlantic established the first phase of a revolution in military affairs. It demonstrated superior German U-boat operational and functional capabilities to wartime enemies and potential adversaries.

Other accounts of German U-boat capabilities strengthened the initial demonstration of a strategic capability that provided Germany with a means of achieving strategic ends. Dubbs’s detailed accounts of U-boat exploits, while compelling reading, also inform present-day arguments for operating forward with superior war-fighting capability.

Throughout the book, maritime warfare is recounted in deep detail including tactical maneuvers and operational effects that have strategic consequences in warfare. Phases of a classic revolution in military affairs are brought into focus as submarine operations versus antisubmarine warfare illustrates a response cycle to the introduction of unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic. Wartime incidents described by Dubbs are certainly significant revelations for some readers and provide persuasive details related to military-political affairs for strategists. Those narratives alone are well worth a serious reading of Dubbs’s wartime U-boat operations.

The revolution in military affairs created by U-boats in the First World War had a dramatic effect on the public, the conduct of the war, and the near attainment of German strategic aims. According to Dubbs, German U-boats were a major focus in negotiating the armistices that ended the war.

Dubbs chronicles the debate by American Navy leaders on the benefits of taking U-boats as war prizes. They had to be convinced that there were benefits to crewing U-boats with American submariners and crossing the Atlantic. Dubbs also introduces American submariners in his account of these events. Those officers would later emerge as leaders of the submarine force in the Second World War. Their efforts to inject First World War U-boat technology into U.S. submarines formed the basis for the U.S. Navy’s undersea warfare dominance today.

America’s U-boats is an important book for naval warfare professionals and submariners. It conveys a near-complete history of the origins of submarine warfare and the revolution in military affairs that submarines have delivered to maritime and strategic warfare then and now.

William F. Bundy