Sunken WWI U-Boats a Bonanza For Historians 161
schwit1 writes "Archaeologists have found the rusting remains of 44 submarines off the United Kingdom's coast, an oceanic graveyard made up mostly of vessels from the German Imperial Navy dating to World War I. Der Spiegel reports a quartet of divers are now at work probing the massive trove of 41 German U-boats, and a trio of English submarines, found at depths of up to 50 feet, off England's southern and eastern coasts. 'We owe it to these people to tell their story.' says archaeologist Mark Dunkley."
Re:UB 40 (Score:5, Insightful)
Sunk in the English Channel by a mine, you fucking dumb faggot.
Nope, my intellectually challenged friend, UB40 went down when Ali Campbell left the ship (I think 2008)
:p
Re:"Race against time" (Score:2, Insightful)
Things don't decay linearly. They visibly look okay for a long time, and then suddenly fall to pieces as the underlying structure finally gives up.
Iron ships sunk not very deep, especially.
Re: A few more (Score:4, Insightful)
World War I had nothing to do with countries being invaded and citizens being murdered. It was all about the aristocracy sending young boys to their death due to antiquated treaties signed by the same aristocrats. It carried on for years, with boys being shot, gassed and suffering terribly so those same SOBs could save face.
It had all to do with 40 years of nationalism, an assassination and automatic mobilization of ones military. With a base policy of self-reinforcing militarization and mobilization. If you don't have any idea what that last sentence means, it means that x country would deploy 5k troops, you'd deploy 10k, they'd deploy 15k, and and a destroyer. So you'd deploy another 20k and two destroyers and a dreadnaught. Then, you'd start building more ships, more guns, and so on.
Re:We can thank the code breakers (Score:5, Insightful)
3. play a substantial role in the war effort in WWI.
Re:we didn't had submarines in ancient Greece (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, you may be right - but exacly for that reason ("There are tons of words derived from Greek") maybe it would be better if the English language was i little more carefull with the meanings (many Greek words are used as synthetics in many English words, many times with very different meaning that leads English speakink people -and Greeks!- to confusion).
"English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." - James Nichol
Under those conditions, it would be unwise to expect too much precision as words move into English. Not to speak of the fact that over time, some English words change meanings. And the young whippersnappers think everything that happened before they were born is "ancient".
Besides, the original article was written by Germans.
There were invasions and murdered citizens ... (Score:5, Insightful)
World War I had nothing to do with countries being invaded and citizens being murdered.
The Kaiser's invaded France and Belgium and the atrocities committed against civilians are well documented. So for many French and Belgium volunteers the war was precisely about invasion and murder. You are not considering that the people who declare wars and the people who fight wars are entirely two different sets of people with entirely different motivations. Perhaps some of the Kaiser's troops were thinking about murdered princes and national honor but French troops were fighting on **French** soil, they had a very different set of motivations.
Its about specific boats and specific crews ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Surviving submarine commanders, and Admiral Doenitz who commanded them, wrote memoirs. There are plenty of first-hand accounts of submarine warfare from participants. They are in dead-tree media but still available. Also very interesting are accounts of commerce raiders and Q-ships in both wars.
Its not U-boat history in general that is being referred to. It is the specific history of these boats, the specific story of these crewman. I once visited the submariner's memorial at Pearl Harbor. It lists the U.S. submarines that fought in the Pacific during WW2. A bunch of submarines were lost. Some of these were marked as "sunk", some of these were marked as "overdue, presumed lost". To many people there is something unfinished, something sadder, about "overdue, presumed lost". Moving a ship and crew from the "overdue, presumed lost" list to the "sunk" list, giving a location, is meaningful. Especially to family members.
Re: A few more (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: A few more (Score:5, Insightful)
World War 1 set the stage for pretty much everything that happened in the 20th century. Europe was VASTLY different before WW1 than it was after. Before, Europe was mostly a collection of a few large "global players". Afterwards some of them (most noticeably Autria-Hungary) dissolved into a sizable amount of smaller countries. That tilted the balance of stability considerably, with all of the remaining imperial superpowers trying to gain a hold of the newly created smaller states.
France wanted to subdue Germany forever, but only managed to set the stage for the rise of Hitler and WW2 in the process by creating a lot of hatred and an urge to get revenge on the other side of the Rhine.
The fall of the czarist Empire in Russia and the rise of the Soviet Union would not have happened, or at the very least would not have happened so easily and quickly, without WW1. It's actually likely that some kind of revolution would have happened, but without WW1 the other conservative absolutist monarchies (notably Germany and Austria-Hungary) would probably have intervened at the side of the Czar, like it was the other way around in 1848 during the uprisings in those countries, containing the revolution.
The fall of the Ottoman Empire mostly led first to the "winners" splitting up those areas between them, which we still can see in the Middle East, and which still causes trouble to this day. Of course islamist organizations want to reestablish the rule of the Islam, I just kinda doubt that they'd be very happy with the Caliphate that ruled the Ottoman Empire in the end. The zeal seems more to be that those areas should be put back under Islam rule, no matter in what kind of state, as long as the Sharia is the law.
Another important aspect of WW1 is actually that the USA came out of its Monroe Doctrine, its self-declared isolation and its decision to avoid interfering with European politics. That is, IMO, one of the most often overlooked and actually one of the more important effects of WW1: The US decided to be a global force. Of course WW2 ended the idea that a country like the US could abstain from international politics for good, but WW1 certainly put the first crack into that shell.
I think WW1 and its effects is easily overlooked and it sure is overshadowed by WW2, its effects and atrocities, not to mention that WW2 is not only closer to today but also without doubt the war that the US was a lot more involved with, but the effects it had on Europe were quite on par with those WW2 had.