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Book Review: U-Boat Warfare: The Evolution of the Wolf Pack

the doctrine, techniques, and tactics were developed that would subsequently be employed during the war for fleet and convoy defence against submarine attack. During these exercises, many of the tactics, including night surface attacks on convoys, which would later be used by the Germans, were anticipated; the strengths and limitations ofASDIC and depth charges were learned; and methods were worked out for the integration of aircraft into a war against submarines. Furthermore, by undertaking such measures as building prototypes in the years before the war, the British had made in essence the necessary arrangements to give themselves the capability, when the war began, to build large numbers of escorts quickly. Steps were also taken to enable the British to be able rapidly to institute an all-embracing system of convoys for merchant ships once war broke out. Franklin concedes that there were a number ofomissions in Britain's preparations for a war against submarines, of which the most important was a failure by the Royal Navy to disseminate a knowledge of anti-submarine warfare to all planners and commanders, owing to the novelty and unfashionable nature of the anti-submarine warfare branch within the service. Franklin also points out that British strategic planners, including those working on anti-submarine warfare, were planning for a war with Japan in the 1920s, and then, in the 1930s, for a war against Germany in which it was thought enemy submarines would be largely confined to the North Sea. Nobody, before the event, had actually anticipated the fall of France and the subsequent basing of U-boats on that country's Atlantic coast which enabled the Germans to undertake large-scale submarine operations in the MidAtlantic Ocean without first having to pass their vessels out of the North Sea and around the northern end of the British Isles. Nevertheless, George Franklin's thesis that the Royal Navy during the inter-war years did not ignore anti-submarine warfare and undertook, within the constraints of money, technology, and service ethos, the necessary preparations to successfully combat submarines during World War II is substantially correct. Britain's Anti-Submarine Capability 1919-1939 will therefore force an important reappraisal of our understanding of the Battle of the Atlantic.