Anti-Submarine Warfare in the Pre-First World War Royal Navy: A Cultural Failure?

Abstract

In August 1914 the Royal Navy entered the First World War without a clear sense of how it was going to undertake anti-submarine warfare (ASW). In part this was a technical issue; fundamentally the requirements of ASW were at the very edge of what was then possible. This article will, however, argue that the problem ran deeper, and stemmed from cultural assumptions about what the role of the Royal Navy was, and how it should seek to address the challenge posed by submarines.