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The entrance door to WATU. The crest was a relic from the destroyer HMS Tactician, decommissioned in 1931.. The Western Approaches Tactical Unit (WATU) was a unit of the British Royal Navy created in January 1942 to develop and disseminate new tactics to counter German submarine attacks on trans-Atlantic shipping convoys. [1]
Anti-submarine warfare (ASW, or in the older form A/S) is a branch of underwater warfare that uses surface warships, aircraft, submarines, or other platforms, to find, track, and deter, damage, or destroy enemy submarines.
The end around was a submarine tactic [1] used when the position of a submarine (relative to a potential target) did not allow the submarine to mount an immediate attack. The submarine's crew estimated the enemy's bearing, heading, and speed, remaining submerged until out of the enemy's visual range. The submarine then surfaced and proceeded at ...
By the time of World War II, anti-submarine weapons had been developed somewhat, but during that war, there was a renewal of all-out submarine warfare by Germany as well as widespread use of submarines by most of the other combatants. The effective use of depth charges required the combined resources and skills of many individuals during an attack.
An Escort Group consisted of several small warships organized and trained to operate together protecting trade convoys.Escort groups were a World War II tactical innovation in anti-submarine warfare by the Royal Navy to combat the threat of the Kriegsmarine ' s "wolfpack" tactics.
A submarine in this "blind spot" became effectively invisible to the sonar, allowing it to make evasive manoeuvres undetected. The solution was a weapon mounted on the foredeck that discharged the projectiles up and over the ship's bow while the submarine was still detectable by the sonar, entering the water some distance in front of the ship.
The Royal Navy initially used fleet carriers escorted by destroyers for hunter-killer groups. However as a result of Ark Royal being attacked unsuccessfully by U-39 on 14 September, followed by the loss of HMS Courageous by U-29, these incidents prompted the Royal Navy to withdraw its fleet carriers from anti-submarine patrols.
Convoy escorts and anti-submarine aircraft, November 1941 Although the wolfpacks proved a serious threat to Allied shipping, the Allies developed counter-measures. The expansion of the escort force, and the development of well-trained and well-organized escort groups, led to more and more successes as the campaign went on.