The German Experience in Submarine Warfare
Hersing would command 21 total war patrols in WW I, sinking 36 vessels. Through the loss of HMS PATHFINDER, the path of the submarine in warfare had been set. The path that would shortly lead submersibles and submarines to total dominion over the sea. They would carry with them the fate of empires.
22 September 1914, Kptlt. Otto Weddingen, commanding the first U-9 was patroling off the coast of Holland when he engaged three heavy British cruisers of 12,000 tons each. He would sink them all in scarcely more than an hour. A boat of 35 sailors sank fifty times its weight and killed over 1,400 enemy sailors in a single contest. The path was now cut in stone.
The arms race was on. From now on the worlds navies had to find a way to fight the submarine with surface vessels or abandon their fleets entirely. The Grand Fleet of the British Empire had maintained its supremacy of the seas since before Napolean. Now that era was in real danger of coming to an end. Over the following three decades, England's rule of the oceans would come to a close and her illegitimate sons from America would take over the prize and the burden. The German U-boat would lead directly to the exchange.
