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. The basic ethos of every Q-ship was to be a wolf in sheep's clothing.

They were used by the British Royal Navy (RN) during the First World War and by both the RN and the United States Navy during the Second World War (1939–1945), as a countermeasure against German U-boats and Japanese submarines.

First World War
Following the First Battle of the Atlantic, by 1915 Britain was in desperate need of a countermeasure against the U-boats that were strangling her sea-lanes. Convoys, which had proved effective in earlier times (and would again prove effective during the Second World War), were rejected by the resource-strapped Admiralty and the independent captains. Depth charges of the time were relatively primitive, and almost the only chance of sinking a submarine was by gunfire or by ramming while on the surface. The problem was luring the U-boat to the surface.

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. These became known by the Germans as a U-Boot-Falle ("U-boat trap"). A Q-ship would appear to be an easy target, but in fact carried hidden armaments. A typical Q-ship might resemble a tramp steamer sailing alone in an area where 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 might encourage the U-boat captain to make a surface attack rather than use one of his limited number of torpedoes. The Q-ships' cargoes were light wood (balsa or cork) or wooden caskets, and even if torpedoed they would remain afloat, encouraging the U-boat to surface and sink them with a deck gun. The crew might even pretend to "abandon ship". Once the U-boat was vulnerable, the Q-ship's panels would drop to reveal the deck guns, which would immediately open fire. At the same time, the White Ensign (Royal Navy flag) would be raised. With the element of surprise, a U-boat could be quickly overwhelmed.

The first Q-ship victory was on 23 June 1915, when U-40 was sunk off Eyemouth by the submarine HMS C24, cooperating with the decoy vessel Taranaki, commanded by Lieutenant Frederick Henry Taylor CBE DSC RN. The first victory by an unassisted Q-ship came on 24 July 1915 when the Prince Charles, commanded by Lt Mark-Wardlaw, DSO, sank U-36. The civilian crew of Prince Charles received a cash award. The following month, an even smaller converted fishing trawler renamed HM Armed Smack Inverlyon successfully destroyed SMS UB-4 near Great Yarmouth. Inverlyon was an unpowered sailing ship fitted with a small 3 pounder (47 mm) gun. The British crew fired 9 rounds from the 3 pounder into U-4 at close range, sinking her with the loss of all hands despite the attempt of Inverlyon's skipper to rescue one surviving German submariner.

On August 19, 1915, Lieutenant Godfrey Herbert RN of HMS Baralong sank U-27, which was preparing to attack a nearby merchant ship. About a dozen of the U-boat sailors survived and swam towards the merchant ship. Herbert, 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".

HMS Farnborough (Q-5) sank SM U-68 on 22 March 1916. Her commander, Gordon Campbell, was awarded the Victoria Cross (VC).

Lieutenant-Commander William Edward Sanders VC, DSO, a New Zealander commanding HMS Prize, was awarded the Victoria Cross for an action on 30 April 1917 with SMS U-93, which was severely damaged. Sanders waited, while his ship sustained heavy shellfire, until the submarine was within 80 yards, whereupon he hoisted the White Ensign and the 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 SMS U-43 (Germany) on 14 August 1917.

There may have been 366 Q-ships, of which 61 were lost. After the war, it was concluded that Q-ships were greatly overrated, diverting skilled seamen from other duties without sinking enough U-boats to justify the strategy. In a total of 150 engagements, British Q-ships destroyed 14 U-boats and damaged 60, at a cost of 27 Q-ships lost out of 200. Q-ships were responsible for about 10% of all U-boats sunk, ranking them well below the use of ordinary minefields in effectiveness.

The Imperial German Navy commissioned six Q-boats during the Great War for the Baltic Sea into the Handelsschutzflottille. Both were unsuccessful in destroying any enemy submarines. The famous Möwe and Wolf were merchant raiders.

A surviving example of the Q-ships is HMS Saxifrage, a Flower class sloop of the Anchusa group completed in 1918. She was renamed in 1922 as HMS President and served as the London Division RNR drill ship until 1988, when she was sold privately and remains moored at King's Reach.

Second World War


Nine Q-ships were commissioned by the Royal Navy in September and October 1939 for work in the North Atlantic: Prunella and Edgehill were torpedoed and sunk 21 and 29 June 1940 without even sighting a U-Boat. The rest of the vessels were paid off in March 1941 without successfully accomplishing any mission.
 * 610-ton HMS Chatsgrove (X85) ex-Royal Navy PC-74 built 1918
 * 5,072-ton HMS Maunder (X28) ex-King Gruffyd built 1919
 * 4,443-ton HMS Prunella (X02) ex-Cape Howe built 1930
 * 5,119-ton HMS Lambridge (X15) ex-Botlea built 1917
 * 4,702-ton HMS Edgehill (X39) ex-Willamette Valley built 1928
 * 5,945-ton HMS Brutus (X96) ex-City of Durban built 1921
 * 4,398-ton HMS Cyprus (X44) ex-Cape Sable built 1936
 * 1,030-ton HMS Looe (X63) ex-Beauty built 1924
 * 1,090-ton HMS Antoine (X72) ex-Orchy built 1930

The last Royal Navy Q-ship, 2,456-ton HMS Fidelity (D57), was converted in September, 1940, to carry a torpedo defense net, four 4-inch (10-cm) guns, four torpedo tubes, two OS2U Kingfisher float planes, and Motor Torpedo Boat 105. Fidelity sailed with a French crew, and was sunk by U-435 on 30 December 1942 during the battle for Convoy ON-154.

By January 12, 1942, the British Admiralty's intelligence community had noted a "heavy concentration" of U-boats off the "North American seaboard from New York to Cape Race" and passed along this fact to the United States Navy. That day, U-123 under Kapitänleutnant Reinhard Hardegen, torpedoed and sank the British steamship Cyclops, inaugurating Paukenschlag (literally, "a strike on the kettledrum" and sometimes referred to in English as "Operation Drumbeat"). U-boat commanders found peacetime conditions prevailing along the coast: towns and cities were not blacked-out and navigational buoys remained lighted; shipping followed normal routines and "carried the normal lights." Paukenschlag had caught the United States unaware.

Losses mounted rapidly. On January 20, 1942, Commander-in-Chief, United States Fleet (Cominch), sent a coded dispatch to Commander, Eastern Sea Frontier (CESF), requesting immediate consideration of the manning and fitting-out of "Queen" ships to be operated as an antisubmarine measure. The result was "Project LQ."

Five vessels were acquired and converted secretly in Portsmouth, New Hampshire:
 * the Boston beam trawler MS Wave, which briefly became the auxiliary minesweeper USS Eagle (AM-132) before becoming USS Captor (PYC-40),
 * SS Evelyn and Carolyn, identical cargo vessels that became USS Asterion (AK-100) and USS Atik (AK-101) respectively,
 * the tanker SS Gulf Dawn, which became USS Big Horn, and
 * the schooner Irene Myrtle, which became USS Irene Forsyte (IX-93).

The careers of all five ships were almost entirely unsuccessful and very short, with USS Atik sunk on its first patrol; all Q-ships patrols ended in 1943.

American Q-ships also operated in the Pacific Ocean. One was USS Anacapa (AG-49) formerly the lumber transport Coos Bay which was converted to Q-ship duty as project "Love William". Anacapa was not successful in engaging any enemy submarines, although she is believed to have damaged two friendly subs with depth charges when they were improperly operating in her vicinity. Anacapa was also withdrawn from Q-ship duty in 1943 and served out the remainder of WWII as an armed transport in the South Pacific and Aleutian Islands.

Use against modern pirates
Attacks on merchant ships by pirates originating on the Somalia coast have brought suggestions from some security experts that Q-ships  be used again to tempt pirates into attacking a well defended ship.

Q-ships in fiction
In Ernest Hemingway's novel Islands in the Stream the main character Thomas Hudson captains a Q-ship for the US Navy around Cuba as he hunts the survivors of a sunken German U-boat.

Q-ships feature prominently in David Weber's Honor Harrington series of books. Harrington destroys a Q-ship in the first novel, On Basilisk Station, and commands a squadron of Q-ships in the sixth novel, Honor Among Enemies. Harrington's snotty cruise captain, Thomas Bachfisch, commands a pair of privately owned Q-ships in the tenth in the series, War of Honor.