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In the early hours of September 22, 1914, the German Navy's submarine U-9 was cruising along the Strait of Dover.

The U-9 boat was already very backward at that time, and actually used dangerous kerosene engines, with a maximum speed of 14 knots on the surface and only 8 knots underwater, and a maximum depth of 50 meters.

Armament: two guns (one each for 50 mm and 37 mm caliber guns) and 6 450 mm torpedoes (2 in the front and rear, for a total of 4 450 mm torpedo tubes, 2 spare torpedoes), only 6 pieces!

A month before sailing, the U-9 welcomed a new captain, Lieutenant Weidigan, a handsome little lieutenant who was considered a disaster at the time.

As soon as it went to sea, the U-9 boat broke the compass, which is an important navigational device used to indicate the course.

On the first day, a big storm blew in the North Sea, and the U-9, with a surface displacement of 493 tons, had to lurk at the bottom of the sea to avoid the wind and waves, and the whole boat No. 30 vomited and was very tired.

At about 6 o'clock in the morning, when the wind and waves were a little lighter, the U-9 boat hurriedly came up to breathe, and at that time the submarine did not have advanced reconnaissance means, and generally relied on the crew to stand on the hull and use binoculars to conduct a human flesh search.

At 6 o'clock in the morning of the 23rd, three large warships under the control of lights came from afar, and these three ships sailed at a speed of 10 knots and a distance of 1,800 meters.

These three ships are actually sisters, and they are the Royal Navy's Cressie-class armored cruisers "Hogg", "Abuko" and "Cressy" in order.

The Cressy class is 144 meters long, 22 meters wide, has a maximum speed of 21 knots, a displacement of 12,000 tons, and is equipped with more than 20 guns of various types and two underwater torpedo tubes, with a maximum caliber of 233 mm (19.2 inches), not counting the caliber, the number of guns is more than 30 times that of the U-9.

Yesterday's wind and waves were so strong that the escort destroyers had to return to the harbor first to take shelter from the storm, and at this time the three ships had no escort ships at all, although the British ships did not find the German submarine at that time.

However, lookout posts were still arranged, and a secondary gun crew was kept on duty at the gun position on the left and right sides of each ship.

Wei Digen did not hesitate and decisively commanded the U-9 boat to occupy a favorable launch position in the strong wind and waves.

At 6:20 a.m., at a distance of about 450 meters, U-9 fired a torpedo and hit the starboard side of the "Abuko", which thought it had hit a mine and notified the two sister ships to come to the rescue.

At 6:55, the "Abuko" flipped and sank. Nelson, the captain of the "Hogg", who turned back to the rescue, thought of the submarine attack, and approached the rescue while informing the "Cressie" to pay attention.

The sailors of the "Hogg" threw everything on the deck that could float into the water, helping the "Abuko" who fell into the water.

If they could think of their fate in a few minutes, maybe they would throw more.

But who can predict the future? People can't do it, machines can't do it, some things are predestined.

Not far from the water, the bloodthirsty U-9 did not leave, the wolf's eyes fell on the next prey, and seeing the "Hogg" slow down, the U-9 immediately fired two torpedoes in a salvo at the "Hog".

The two salvos threw the U-9 off its balance and at one point surfaced, making it a conspicuous target.

The secondary gun of the "Hogg" immediately opened fire, but unfortunately did not hit.

U-9 quickly re-dived underwater and escaped.

At 7:05, two torpedoes hit the Hogg, which lasted only 10 minutes and sank at 7:15.

The "Cressie" tried unsuccessfully to ram the U-9 boat with its bow, and while searching for it, it threw itself into the rescue, and the U-9 boat, which was evading the distance, turned the bow of the boat and fired two torpedoes at the "Cressie" with two torpedo tubes in the stern.

At 7:20, one torpedo hit the "Crecy", and Weidigan maneuvered the U-9 boat into a suitable position.

At a distance of 500 meters, the only 1 remaining torpedo delivered a fatal blow to the wounded "Crecy".

At 7:30, the last torpedo hit the port side of the "Cressie", tore open several boilers, and threw the people in the cabin into the air, and even if they were not killed, they had to be thrown to death!

At 7:55, the "Cressie" also sank. In more than 1 hour, the small lieutenant Weidigan gave full play to the advantages of the U-9 boat, 6 450-mm torpedoes were fired 5 times, sank 3 British armored cruisers, and killed 62 officers and 1397 sailors of the British ship.

Afterwards, Weidigan won the "Blue Max" medal and became a national hero of Germany, and the limelight was very strong, until the later baron in red Richhossofen came out to suppress it, and it is normal for a new generation to replace the old.

In just ten weeks of the war, five surface ships of the Royal Navy had been sunk by U-boats, and the losses of merchant ships were growing.

At this time, the British discovered that there were only two anti-submarine means they could use: naval guns and bows, and they could only attack submarines sailing on the surface, so what to do against submarines underwater?

Cold! No way!

At that time, sailors were even encouraged to practice wrench throwing skills, wanting to use this kind of readily available thing to smash the periscope of the submarine, the periscope is the eye of the submarine, and the German submarine that is blind will become a dead fish, the effect, everyone can guess, zero!.

In February 1915, the British Admiralty convened experts from all walks of life and set up a National Science Committee in London to openly solicit methods and means of anti-submarine warfare from all over the country, and to screen and adopt the proposals put forward by the public.

The British people were very patriotic, and all kinds of "home remedies" came one after another, filling up the mailbox of the National Science Council, from drawing talismans and chanting spells to sonar deep playing.

According to incomplete statistics, by the end of the war, the experts had dealt with more than 42,000 suggestions of various kinds, so there were these anti-submarine artifacts below.

For example, broom bombs.

The accurate translation of the broom bomb is the hand-held knight lance bomb, which is the earliest anti-submarine artifact derived from the wrench, and should be the originator of the anti-submarine rocket deep bomb.

I came up with the name of the broom because the shape is very similar, and it is very easy to make:

Take a 5-inch cannonball weighing about 7 pounds, a sturdy wooden stick more than ten feet long, and a number of ropes, tied into the shape shown above, the materials are all at the fingertips of warships, the price is cheap and sufficient, and the early British have been using it.

The "broom bomb" is not a pole mine, and the British did not have the feeling of dying with the U-boat with the bomb, and the "broom bomb" was to be thrown out.

The usage is roughly as follows: the grenadiers on selected ships who excel with their brawn strength practice repeatedly, and during the war, they wield the bomb in their hands and swung it several times overhead, throwing it at the U-boat, with a range of about 20 to 30 meters.

According to the official British test results, the best score was about 63 meters (70 yards), and the broom bomb would sink underwater and be detonated by a trigger fuse, which should destroy the German submarine.

However, the range of the broom shell was pitiful, and no German submarine would be stupid enough to get close enough to be beaten, so it did not achieve official results, and then it was forgotten.

How do you find a submarine underwater? The British public during the First World War was as clever as some of the experts of later generations, and they used fishing nets!

The idea of using fishing nets to catch submarines filled the mailboxes of the Royal Navy's Committee of Experts.

After careful study and full demonstration, the experts overcame all kinds of technical difficulties to improve it, and the submarine net was born.

The first is two 100-foot-wide diving nets, with thick ropes on the sides of the nets, and metal sheets on both sides that generate about 100 pounds of tension, which are opened by the action of the current, and the hollow glass balls on which are difficult to see with the naked eye act as floats.

The net is about half a mile to 1 mile long and is placed about 50 feet under water, plus counterweights.

The essence of the submarine net is the container containing the chemical agent, when a submarine is caught underwater, the chemical container is pulled, and the flame signal is emitted at night and smoke signal is released during the day.

The nets are made of lightweight, strong fibers, and nylon has not yet been invented, otherwise it would be more exciting.

The diameter of the mesh is quite large, about a few feet, and multiple nets can be connected together, and once the underwater submarine is caught by this kind of net, it can be considered a bad luck.

The chemical container signals flames at night and smoke during the day, attracting anti-submarine ships or boats, and potentially entangled propellers and welcoming depth charges.

Since the introduction of submarine nets, the deterrent effect has been remarkable, and German submarines have indeed been much less frequent off the coast of England, and they have become cautious when taking narrow waterways, lest they be fished out as fish.

However, there are advantages and disadvantages of any weapon, the problem of submarine nets is that they are not easy to recover, they are often damaged in strong winds and waves, and the bigger problem is that they have to be watched by boats.

The Germans saw from afar that someone was on duty, but in fact they did not come.

The nets were put into use, but with no success.

The British launched version 2.0 on the basis of the submarine nets - "mine nets".

It was to hang mines on the submarine nets, and this design was very successful, but hanging bombs was a fatal task, and no one wanted to do it.

Bomb-mounted submarine nets also posed a great threat to British and neutral ships, and had to be carefully tended and marked, which invisibly served as a wake-up call for German submarines, so the effect was not significant.

Later, there was a submarine noose, which was more clever than a submarine net, and this anti-submarine device was a bit like a lasso, but with a lot of bombs.

In the first two years of World War I, it was heavily equipped and widely used.

The submarine lasso is towed behind by a surface ship and is used to strike a submarine sitting on the bottom of the sea, and if it scrapes an underwater object such as a submarine, it can trigger a bomb or detonate a bomb by a surface ship.

However, like the previous equipment, it is still the same sentence, the ideal is very plump, the reality is very skinny, and there is only one case of the results that can be confirmed by the submarine fishing lasso, compared with the previous anti-submarine means, a breakthrough of zero has finally been achieved.

The submarine fishing lasso is an active anti-submarine means, and the anti-submarine trip mine is a passive fixed anti-submarine device.

The anti-submarine tripping thunder is placed at the entrance of the bay and uses magnetic field detection, once the underwater magnetic field is found to be abnormal, and there is no ship on the surface, you can use the wire to detonate the underwater sinking mine and sink the German submarine.

Anti-submarine tripping lightning was definitely a high-tech existence during the First World War, when electric lights were not popular.

As we all know, high technology has high risks, and when it comes to overcoming difficulties and moving towards practicality, World War I is almost over.

But I was lucky to get the result.

At 21:21 on October 28, 1918, the hydrophones placed by the British in the Hawkes channel detected an abnormal underwater sound, and two hours later, at 23:32, the magnetic sensor of the anti-submarine tripping thunder also received a signal and blew him up.

The British decisively detonated nearby mines and sank a submarine, which was later found to be the German Navy's UB-116 submarine.

In fact, most of the anti-submarine artifacts are not reliable, but they are the kind of anti-submarine means that look inconspicuous, but play the greatest role - the ship group plus the smoke canister.

Here you can first do an experiment, sprinkle sesame seeds on a vacant lot, then put ants, and calculate the time to eat up the sesame seeds.

Then make the same amount of sesame seeds into a ball, apply glue, and calculate the time it takes for the ants to eat all the sesame seeds.

And then you'll be surprised how much longer it takes.

In fact, the same is true of the ship group, the German submarines are evenly distributed across the ocean, and if several ships are concentrated together and sail in, plus escort ships, the probability of encountering German submarines is much smaller.

In the third year of the war, after waging unrestricted submarine warfare in Germany and sinking a large number of merchant ships, the British thought of this means of huddling together for warmth, and equipped themselves with smoke canisters in large quantities.

The effect was significant, and after a few months, the probability of a merchant ship being sunk by a U-boat plummeted from 25% to 1%!

The German captain suddenly discovered that the British merchant ships had disappeared from the sea as if by magic, and even if the group encountered individual German submarines, the frigates began to use smoke canisters when they shelled the German submarines.

At that time, almost all merchant ships and escort ships were equipped with smoke canisters, and after the escort ships discovered the wake of German submarines or torpedoes, the escort ships on both sides of the formation immediately accelerated between the ship group and the submarine, and dropped the smoke canisters in sequence.

The smoke canisters raised a smoke screen between the German submarine and the merchant ship, and at the same time, all the merchant ships turned their backs to the submarine and accelerated, leaving the U-boat with a back in the smoke.

At that time, submarines could not catch up with merchant ships when navigating underwater, and the smoke made it difficult for the submarine's periscope to observe, and it was impossible to accurately measure the distance and speed, and the U-boat was usually reluctant to blindly fire torpedoes.

The escort formation plus smoke grenades is simple but very effective, which has troubled the U-boats for many years, and has also cleaned up some U-boats that fight alone.

At that time, a U-boat captain did not believe in this evil, and commanded the UB-68 submarine to storm the ship group in the Mediterranean, and hit a nose of dust, the boat was sunk, and the captain was captured by the British.

The captain squatted in the prisoner of war camp and gnawed on his nest to figure out how to deal with the boat regiment, thinking and thinking, and when he came up with a way, the battle was over.

Twenty years later, when World War II broke out, the captain became the commander and applied the tricks he had come up with when he was gnawing his head to submarine warfare, with great success.

The captain was Karl Murphy, who had been the leader of Germany for 10 days. Feng. Marshal Dönitz, the submarine tactic he invented was called the "wolf pack tactic".

I've also introduced it before, so I won't go into detail for the time being, anyway, once the battle starts, there are always all kinds of strange tactics emerging, don't be surprised, in order to win the war, what is the hidden mine in the crotch?