Antonio Martelli
Ed. The mill, Bologna 2015
pagg.377
The two world wars, the Atlantic, Germany, the U-Boote, without forgetting the courage and self-denial of the submariners, are the subject of this essay by Antonio Martelli, who was Professor of Strategy and Corporate Policy at the 'Bocconi University of Milan, as well as author of other books on naval history. However, he also describes the origins of underwater vehicles.
It was the 1620 when the Dutchman Cornelis Drebbel, who moved to England, where he became physician of Charles I, "built a submarine that sailed and which, it was said, had traveled the river (the Thames) for two miles, from Westminster to Greenwich. But the English Admiralty showed no interest in the new medium. " It was the 17 October 1864 when the Union cruiser Housatonic a Southern submarine submarine boat from Xunum, with 8 m diameter, without aeration, was sunk off Charleston in the United States, with no aeration, which was ensured in immersion by a tube sticking out of surface and equipped with a propeller moved by a crank shaft. It was the beginning of the underwater war waged by submarines. Their subsequent development had a fundamental impulse thanks to the advent of the torpedo in the 1,3 and saw as a tread in their construction France and the United States.
Even Italy, in the 1890, began to take an interest in the new weapon with the construction of the "Pullino" (name of the designer and officer of the Genio Navale Giacinto Pullino). However, received with coldness by the high ranks of the Regia Marina, in the 1895, the "Pullino" was laid up. In Germany instead, after the launch, in the 1903, of the Trout, the first German submarine, in August of 1906 the U-Boote saga began, with the launch of the U-1, which displaced 238 t and was armed with a torpedo tube and three torpedoes. His speed was of 10,8 knots on the surface and 8,7 knots under water. "The true creator of the modern German navy was however Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz", who found in Guglielmo II full support for his plans also because the Kaiser had been influenced by the theories of Admiral Afred T. Mahan. In his book The influence of maritime power in history Mahan argued that "those who control maritime communications also control their own destiny and are masters of the situation." And so "the Kaiser's overly fervent imagination immediately saw the image of a strong Germany on the sea as it was on land: and he found in Tirpitz the man who could realize these aspirations."
The first world war however, despite the underwater war launched by the Germans had made the allies take serious risks, it was lost. The Kaiserliche Marine had employed 373 U-Boote there, losing 178, with about 5.000 men between officer and sailors. [...] U-Boote had sunk over 5.000 merchant ships. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Germany presented itself with the strongest army and the strongest aircraft in Europe. The navy, on the other hand, was clearly inferior: it was not for nothing that Erich Reader, commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine, said that in the event of war on the fleet there would be nothing left but to die with dignity.
In the meantime there had been technical progress both in the submarine field, with the introduction of the periscope and the four-stroke Diesel engine instead of the paraffin engine, and in the "antisom" field, with the invention of the asdic, " an acoustic apparatus that could also locate submerged and perfectly silent submarines. " In the second world war the commander of the underwater weapon was the vessel captain Karl Dönitz. Firmly convinced of the strategic importance of the underwater struggle, he was perpetually opposed, in his strategy, by the Lutwaffe chief Herman Göring who, in fact, "swore on the bombs as the most suitable weapon against naval targets; the navy, on the other hand, was convinced that employing torpedoes were the best thing. When the war demonstrated the superiority of the torpedo it was too late. " Even Hitler himself considered the war on the sea against Great Britain of secondary importance and did not, therefore, give an adequate priority to the construction of the U-Boote. The Germans, apart from Dönitz who did not have the power to devote the necessary resources to them, understood the importance of the underwater war when there was nothing left to do. "More than a historian or commentator of the battle has written, a little jokingly and a bit no, that as for the underwater war the best collaborators of the Allies were Hitler, Göring ... and Reader." Despite this many were the successes of the U-Boote, thanks also to the assault technique "a pack of wolves", which consisted in a simultaneous attack of several submarines against naval convoys. But this was not enough. This war was also lost by Germany.
However, the honor of weapons must be granted to submariners who, whatever their political ideas, "fought with courage, abnegation and patriotism almost without limits. Virtue, especially the last one, [...] which are still among the best that crown the human soul. "
Gianlorenzo Capano
