Q-Ships

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 WWI and by both the RN and the United States Navy during WWII, as a counter measure against German and Japanese submarines.

Q-SHIPS OF WWI

The advent of the U-boat called for
unique and daring ways to fight them.

The date was 30 April 1917. It looked so easy for Baron Karl von Spiegel. The crew of the schooner had taken to their lifeboats in blind terror at the sight of his submarine, the U-93, and he could save a badly-needed torpedo by sinking the abandoned vessel with his deck gun.
   But it was the Baron himself who made things too easy. He took the U-93 to within 80 yards and, in the next instant, it was the hunter who would become the hunted.
   “As the first shell just hit at the water line,” he would be fortunate to recall later for American journalist Lowell Thomas, “there was a loud whistle aboard the schooner.
   “The white war ensign of Great Britain ran up the mast and a movable gun platform slid into view.

   “A roar and a rattling, and 7.5 cm guns opened at us, and machine-guns, too. We offered a fair, broadside target. One shell put our fore gun crew out of commission and wounded several of our gun crew. Another shell crashed into our hull.”
   The Baron shouted for full speed ahead, but the engines had been hit and the U-93 was drifting helplessly. “Shells were striking the boat and exploding with savage pow-pows,” he was to relate to Thomas.
   The Baron and his crewmen desperately tried to work the deck gun. “A shell burst into our faces,” he told Thomas. “The petty officer of the gun crew fell back with his blown off.

   “Then I felt a cold sensation about my legs. A moment later, we were swimming in the Atlantic. The U-93 had sunk beneath us. I could see her black shadow vanish in the depths of the ocean.”
   Baron von Spiegel, as apparent sole survivor, was hauled aboard his intended victim, ironically named for him the Prize. He had become a casualty of the most secret, ingenious, but later controversial, weapon in the Royal Navy’s arsenal for its death struggle with the German submarines attempting to starve Great Britain into submission during World War I.

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