Q-ship
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.
Though legally recognised as an acceptable tactic of military deception, they have attracted much controversy, enjoying only marginal success.
Etymology
Q-ship is short for Queenstown in Ireland, as Haulbowline Dockyard, in Cork Harbour, was responsible for the conversion of many mercantile steamers to armed decoy ships during the First World War, although the majority appear to have been converted in larger navy yards such as Devonport.Early uses of the concept
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, which is used both defensively and offensively.Examples of the tactic used against commerce raiders are 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.
First World War
Royal Navy
In 1915, during the First Battle of the Atlantic, Britain was in need of a countermeasure against the U-boats that were harassing its sea lanes. Convoys, which had proved effective in earlier times, were rejected by the resource-strapped Admiralty and the independent captains. Depth charges would start to become available only in early 1916 and so almost the only chance of sinking a submarine was by gunfire or by ramming while on the surface.Submarines could attack by torpedo or by deck gun. Torpedoes can be used while the vessel is submerged and invisible to her target, and deck guns are used on the surface. Torpedoes were expensive, unreliable, and a submarine only carried a limited number of them. 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 most targets. However, when encountering a warship, submarine commanders could recognise the threat they posed and use a torpedo, or simply not engage.
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. They became known by the Germans as a U-Boot-Falle. A Q-ship would appear to be an unarmed merchant ship and so an easy target but in fact was a warship that carried hidden armaments. A typical Q-ship might resemble a tramp steamer sailing alone in an area that a U-boat was reported to be operating.
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 to attack. 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. 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, cooperating with the decoy vessel Taranaki, sank off Eyemouth. The first victory by an unassisted Q-ship came on 24 July 1915 when sank. The civilian crew of Prince Charles received a cash award. The following month an even smaller converted fishing trawler renamed successfully destroyed near Great Yarmouth. Inverlyon was an unpowered sailing ship fitted with a small 3-pounder 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 Inverlyons commander to rescue one surviving German submariner.
On 19 August 1915, sank, 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".
sank on 22 March 1916. Her commander, Gordon Campbell, was awarded the Victoria Cross. New Zealanders Lieutenant Andrew Dougall Blair and Sub-Lieutenant William Edward Sanders faced three U-boats simultaneously in Helgoland while becalmed and without engines or wireless. Forced to return fire early, they managed to sink one U-boat and avoid two torpedo attacks. Sanders was promoted to lieutenant commander, eventually commanding the topsail schooner in command of which he was awarded the Victoria Cross for an action on 30 April 1917 with, which was severely damaged. Helgoland, while the ship sustained heavy shellfire, waited until the submarine was within, 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 on 14 August 1917.
According to Warships of World War I by H. M. LeFleming, the Royal Navy converted 58 from merchant ships, in addition to 40 s and 20 PC-boats. However Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1906–1921 claims that 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 was 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 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.
After the war, it was concluded that the effectiveness of the Q-ship initiative had been greatly overrated by diverting skilled seamen from other duties without sinking enough U-boats to justify the strategy. Estimates differ because of 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 to 15 U-boats and damaged 60, at a cost of 27 to 38 Q-ships lost out of about 200. 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.
Imperial German Navy
The Imperial German Navy commissioned six Q-boats during the Great War for the Baltic Sea into the Handelsschutzflottille. None was successful in destroying enemy submarines. The German Q-ship Schiff K heavily damaged the Russian submarine Gepard of the on 27 May 1916. The famous Möwe and Wolf were merchant raiders, vessels designed to disrupt enemy trade and sink merchantmen, rather than attack enemy warships.Second World War
Germany
Germany employed at least 13 Q-ships, including the Schürbeck which sank the British submarine. The German, 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.Japan
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 on her first mission in company with the submarine chaser Ch-50 and the netlayer Tatu Maru. At 22:00, the vessels were detected by the submarine, 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.United Kingdom
Nine Q-ships were commissioned by the Royal Navy in September and October 1939 for work in the North Atlantic:- 610-ton HMS Chatsgrove ex-Royal Navy PC-74 built 1918
- 5,072-ton HMS Maunder ex-King Gruffyd built 1919
- 4,443-ton HMS Prunella ex-Cape Howe built 1930
- 5,119-ton HMS Lambridge ex-Botlea built 1917
- 4,702-ton HMS Edgehill ex-Willamette Valley built 1928
- 5,945-ton HMS Brutus ex-City of Durban built 1921
- 4,398-ton HMS Cyprus ex-Cape Sable built 1936
- 1,030-ton HMS Looe ex-Beauty built 1924
- 1,090-ton HMS Antoine ex-Orchy built 1930