WW1: Britain's Submarine Strategy

Warfare

History Hit

History

4.5 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 14 May 2021

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

From 1914 until 1917, submariners from Britain and Russia fought against the German Imperial Navy for control of the sea lanes in the icy Baltic. Their endeavors have been buried beneath the stories of Second World War U-boats, but with a serendipitous mistake in Kew Archives, a water damaged, blood stained submarine log landed in front of Dr Ian Johnson. Thus began a mission to uncover the story of British submarine strategy in the First World War. Ian is Professor of Military History at the University of Notre Dame. In this episode he shares the story of the British submariners, the role of the Russian revolution in the Baltic and how this theatre of the First World War impacted upon the Second.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone welcome back to the history hit warfare podcast I'm your host James Rogers and in this episode
0:04.4	we have an old friend of the podcast Dr Ian Johnson from Notre Dame University in the US
0:10.0	now Ian has been on the podcast many many times he's been on this one he's been on Dan's
0:13.7	podcast and he's fantastic so we've got to get him back on again he's the author of the
0:18.1	brand new book the Faustian bargain you got to go out and buy it is It is truly a bargain. But in this episode, he's taking us through his latest research findings.
0:27.2	He's a kind of guy who has the most amazing research fall on his lap. In this case, well it literally did. He was in the
0:35.4	archives at Q and he requested the wrong thing. As you do, for me that's usually a
0:40.7	load of boring old foreign office documents. For him it was the water
0:45.1	sodden blood-stained logbook of a British submarine from the First World War.
0:51.6	This history has everything. It has cooperation between the British and the
0:55.6	Russian submarine fleets in the ice-ridden Baltic during the First World War. I'll stop there.
1:02.0	I don't want to give too much away, but here he is.
1:05.2	Dr Ian Johnson on British submarine warfare. Hi in the
1:23.7	in welcome back on the warfare podcast how you doing great great to be back James how
1:28.8	many times have you been on history here now leave this is my third appearance
1:31.9	in the last year and a half third appearance in the last year and a half.
1:33.4	Third appearance in the last year and a half.
1:36.6	Well it's no surprise because you are a hit and everything you seem to touch in the archives I'm going to say is is gold.
1:46.4	I don't know where you find this stuff but we've spoken about in the past and it sounds like a lot of it is
1:52.1	chances like the history is drawn to you and today is no different.
1:57.6	Before you tell us what this history is, tell us about how you found this history or how this history found you.
2:04.1	So this project started when I was working on my dissertation and my first book looking at
	...

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