German Submarine Warfare in World War I by Lawrence Sondhaus

Author:Lawrence Sondhaus [Sondhaus, Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2017-07-12T00:00:00+00:00

More than any other wartime American president, Wilson allowed his generals and admirals to determine strategies and policies, requiring only that the United States must have a clear role in the Allied victory in order to ensure his own leading role in crafting the postwar peace settlement. British and French military and naval leaders who wanted US troops and ships committed piecemeal when they became available (to be amalgamated with their own forces, under their command) thus were at odds with their American counterparts, who could not square such demands with Wilson’s expectations. The commander of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), General John J. Pershing, insisted on deploying an American army on an American sector of the western front, even though a force of that size could not possibly be ready before the summer of 1918. Likewise, the commander of the US Atlantic Fleet, Admiral Henry T. Mayo, insisted that his forces had to stay together. In particular, Mayo rejected British appeals for American dreadnoughts to join the Grand Fleet as part of a series of battleship redeployments that would allow deactivation of the oldest British pre-dreadnoughts, freeing manpower to serve on antisubmarine patrols in 119 new destroyers then nearing completion. Mayo also declined to participate directly in the antisubmarine effort; in response to a request for the deployment to European waters of all available American destroyers, he promised a token force of just six of them.25

It was left to Rear Admiral William S. Sims, most recently head of the US Naval War College in Newport, to bridge the differences between the American and British navies. Wilson ordered Sims to London in late March on a secret mission to the Admiralty; the declaration of war came while he was en route, and after his arrival the president made him commander of American naval forces in European waters. Sims was uniquely positioned for the task at hand. As a former destroyer flotilla commander, he understood destroyers and antisubmarine warfare. As a former naval attaché in Paris and St. Petersburg, he was well suited to play a diplomatic role. His background was very similar to that of Admiral Sir Lewis Bayly (a fellow former war college head, destroyer flotilla commander, and naval attaché), with whom he would have to work closely to secure the Atlantic sea-lanes against the U-boat threat. Sims was also an old friend of Admiral Jellicoe, who had been appointed First Sea Lord in November 1916. They first met in 1900 in China, during the Boxer Rebellion, and Sims’s periodic prewar visits to Britain enabled them to maintain their relationship. A Canadian by birth, Sims was also the US Navy’s leading anglophile. In his capacity as American naval commander in Europe, he would serve the Allied cause by persuading his own navy to deploy the types and numbers of ships that were needed most, and by mediating between Jellicoe and Bayly, who did not get along well with one another.26

To avoid alarming the public, the British government had kept the record losses in shipping in February and March a closely guarded secret.

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