![]() ![]() Instead, it straddles the strata of war and offers fresh insights into an episode of the South African military history uncommonly investigated by contemporary military historians. The study does not fall into the general ambit of a regimental, campaign or personal military history. The study investigates this inclusive topic through the aforementioned research objectives. This dissertation aims to provide a critical, comprehensive analysis of the Axis and Allied maritime operations around the coast of southern Africa between 19. The Axis maritime operations in southern African waters, the so-called maritime intelligence war, and the extended anti-submarine war waged in these waters are equally integral to the discussion. A key understanding of the maritime war is, in effect, incomplete without separate detailed discussions about the opposing Axis and Allied maritime strategies off the coast of southern Africa, the wartime shipping quandaries experienced by the Union of South Africa, and the South African coastal defences. The all-encompassing nature and extent of the maritime war waged off southern Africa during the Second World War have been far more extensive than suggested in traditional sources. The historical interrelated aspects of maritime insecurity evident in southern Africa during the war are largely cast aside by contemporary academics engaging with issues of maritime strategy and insecurity in southern Africa. The South African home front during the war, and in particular the Axis and Allied maritime war waged off the southern African coast, has, however, received scant historical attention from professional and amateur historians alike. Recently, there has been a renewed drive to study the South African participation from a more general war and society approach. The majority of academic and popular studies on the South African participation in the Second World War historically focus on the military operations of the Union Defence Force in East Africa, North Africa, Madagascar and Italy. Less well known is the contribution of the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) to the efforts to defeat the U-boats. The details of the events which followed, from skyrocketing merchant shipping loss rates to the introduction of convoy escort and the suppression, although not complete victory, over the U-boats is well known. Unrestricted submarine warfare, the submarine (U-boat) blockade of Britain's merchant shipping, was now resumed by Germany's naval leadership in the belief that their submarines represented the only means of defeating Britain in 1917. The Battle of Jutland, the only major encounter between dreadnought battle fleets between 1914-1918, decided the outcome of the conflict at sea so far as Germany's High Seas Fleet was concerned. ![]() Germany's unrestricted submarine offensive of 1917-1918 represented the greatest threat to Britain's command of the sea during the First World War. These operations are rarely considered in the literature on anti-submarine warfare, but form an integral component of the Royal Navy's holistic approach to defeating Germany's U-boats, and ultimately directly contributed to the allied victory in the First World War. During this crisis of the naval war, Britain's naval aviators carried out coastal air patrols, directly bombed Germany's submarine bases in Belgium, and flew aerial escort missions in support of merchant convoys. This paper examines the role of the Royal Naval Air Service in the anti-submarine warfare and convoy protection campaigns of 1917-1918. ![]()
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