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146-446: The word "battle" can also be used infrequently to refer to an entire operational campaign, although this usage greatly diverges from its conventional or customary meaning. Generally, the word "battle" is used for such campaigns if referring to a protracted combat encounter in which either one or both of the combatants had the same methods, resources, and strategic objectives throughout the encounter. Some prominent examples of this would be

292-425: A mission goal by use of military force. A victory in the battle is achieved when one of the opposing sides forces the other to abandon its mission and surrender its forces, routs the other (i.e., forces it to retreat or renders it militarily ineffective for further combat operations ) or annihilates the latter, resulting in their deaths or capture. A battle may end in a Pyrrhic victory , which ultimately favors

438-637: A German takeover. It was in these circumstances that Winston Churchill, who had become Prime Minister on 10 May 1940, first wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt to request the loan of fifty obsolescent US Navy destroyers. This eventually led to the " Destroyers for Bases Agreement " (effectively a sale but portrayed as a loan for political reasons), which operated in exchange for 99-year leases on certain British bases in Newfoundland , Bermuda and

584-550: A PTSD diagnosis requires a duration of symptoms over one month, which CSR does not. The most common stress reactions include: The ratio of stress casualties to battle casualties varies with the intensity of the fighting. With intense fighting, it can be as high as 1:1. In low-level conflicts, it can drop to 1:10 (or less). Modern warfare embodies the principles of continuous operations with an expectation of higher combat stress casualties. The World War II European Army rate of stress casualties of 1 in 10 (101:1,000) troops per annum

730-478: A combat stress reaction. The US Army uses the term/initialism COSR (combat stress reaction) in official medical reports. This term can be applied to any stress reaction in the military unit environment. Many reactions look like symptoms of mental illness (such as panic, extreme anxiety, depression, and hallucinations), but they are only transient reactions to the traumatic stress of combat and the cumulative stresses of military operations. In World War I , shell shock

876-624: A decisive battle can cause the losing side to surrender, while a Pyrrhic victory such as the Battle of Asculum can cause the winning side to reconsider its goals. Battles in civil wars have often decided the fate of monarchs or political factions. Famous examples include the Wars of the Roses , as well as the Jacobite risings . Battles affect the commitment of one side or the other to the continuance of

1022-432: A direct result of the trauma of war. Also known as "combat fatigue", "battle fatigue", "operational exhaustion", or "battle neurosis", it has some overlap with the diagnosis of acute stress reaction used in civilian psychiatry . It is historically linked to shell shock and can sometimes precurse post-traumatic stress disorder . Combat stress reaction is an acute reaction that includes a range of behaviors resulting from

1168-419: A disaster within days. On 14 September 1939, Britain's most modern carrier, HMS  Ark Royal , narrowly avoided being sunk when three torpedoes from U-39 exploded prematurely. U-39 was forced to surface and scuttle by the escorting destroyers, becoming the first U-boat loss of the war. Another carrier, HMS  Courageous , was sunk three days later by U-29 . German success in sinking Courageous

1314-1054: A flotilla of 27 Italian submarines operated from the BETASOM base in Bordeaux to attack Allied shipping in the Atlantic, initially under the command of Rear Admiral Angelo Parona , then of Rear Admiral Romolo Polacchini and finally of Ship-of-the-Line Captain Enzo Grossi . The Italian submarines had been designed to operate in a different way than U-boats, and they had a number of flaws that needed to be corrected (for example huge conning towers, slow speed when surfaced, lack of modern torpedo fire control), which meant that they were ill-suited for convoy attacks, and performed better when hunting down isolated merchantmen on distant seas, taking advantage of their superior range and living standards. While initial operation met with little success (only 65343 GRT sunk between August and December 1940),

1460-602: A major part of the naval history of World War II . At its core was the Allied naval blockade of Germany , announced the day after the declaration of war, and Germany's subsequent counter-blockade. The campaign peaked from mid-1940 through to the end of 1943. The Battle of the Atlantic pitted U-boats and other warships of the German Kriegsmarine (Navy) and aircraft of the Luftwaffe (Air Force) against

1606-564: A minor raid or a big offensive, nor is it likely that he anticipates the future course of the battle; few of the British infantry who went over the top on the first day on the Somme , 1 July 1916, would have anticipated that the battle would last five months. Some of the Allied infantry who had just dealt a crushing defeat to the French at the Battle of Waterloo fully expected to have to fight again

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1752-495: A new kind of spear, the iklwa . Forces with inferior weapons have still emerged victorious at times, for example in the Wars of Scottish Independence . Disciplined troops are often of greater importance; at the Battle of Alesia , the Romans were greatly outnumbered but won because of superior training. Battles can also be determined by terrain. Capturing high ground has been the main tactic in innumerable battles. An army that holds

1898-493: A new type of naval warfare. The ironclad , first used in the American Civil War , resistant to cannons, soon made the wooden ship obsolete. The invention of military submarines , during World War I , brought naval warfare to both above and below the surface. With the development of military aircraft during World War II , battles were fought in the sky as well as below the ocean. Aircraft carriers have since become

2044-467: A patrol line of U-boats searched for a convoy and when one was found all U-boats converged and attacked together at night on the surface. Neither aircraft nor early forms of Sonar , (called ASDIC by the British), were considered a serious threat at the time. ASDIC could not detect a surfaced submarine and its range was less than that of an electric torpedo , aircraft could not operate at night and, during

2190-434: A raider hunting for independently sailing ships, and to avoid combat with superior forces. The Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935 allowed Hitler to renounce the treaty of Versailles, and to build a fleet 35% the size of Britain's fleet. A building program for four battleships, two aircraft carriers, five heavy cruisers, destroyers and U-boats was immediately initiated. With the agreement, Hitler thought that conflict with

2336-511: A restless desire for pleasure . Many were easily moved to passion where they lost control of themselves, many were bitter in their speech, violent in opinion, frightening. One British writer between the wars wrote: There should be no excuse given for the establishment of a belief that a functional nervous disability constitutes a right to compensation. This is hard saying. It may seem cruel that those whose sufferings are real, whose illness has been brought on by enemy action and very likely in

2482-416: A theatre covering millions of square miles of ocean. The situation changed constantly, with one side or the other gaining advantage, as participating countries surrendered, joined and even changed sides in the war, and as new weapons, tactics, counter-measures and equipment were developed by both sides. The Allies gradually gained the upper hand, overcoming German surface-raiders by the end of 1942 and defeating

2628-458: A time ( Battle of Leipzig ) or operations ( Battle of Wuhan ). The space a battle occupies depends on the range of the weapons of the combatants. A "battle" in this broader sense may be of long duration and take place over a large area, as in the case of the Battle of Britain or the Battle of the Atlantic . Until the advent of artillery and aircraft , battles were fought with the two sides within sight, if not reach, of each other. The depth of

2774-448: A traditional manner were destroyed by an Anglo-Egyptian force equipped with Maxim machine guns and artillery. On some occasions, simple weapons employed in an unorthodox fashion have proven advantageous; Swiss pikemen gained many victories through their ability to transform a traditionally defensive weapon into an offensive one. Zulus in the early 19th century were victorious in battles against their rivals in part because they adopted

2920-564: A war, for example the Battle of Inchon and the Battle of Huế during the Tet Offensive . Battle of the Atlantic 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 Asia-Pacific Mediterranean and Middle East Other campaigns Coups The Battle of the Atlantic , the longest continuous military campaign in World War II , ran from 1939 to the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, covering

3066-536: Is a loanword from the Old French bataille , first attested in 1297, from Late Latin battualia , meaning "exercise of soldiers and gladiators in fighting and fencing", from Late Latin (taken from Germanic) battuere "beat", from which the English word battery is also derived via Middle English batri . The defining characteristic of the fight as a concept in military science has changed with

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3212-407: Is a common component of most modern military training. There are three steps to an effective stress exposure program. Soldiers with a knowledge of both the emotional and physical signs and symptoms of CSR are much less likely to have a critical event that reduces them below fighting capability. Instrumental information, such as breathing exercises that can reduce stress and suggestions not to look at

3358-408: Is defined as the combat between large components of the forces in a military campaign , used to achieve military objectives . Where the duration of the battle is longer than a week, it is often for reasons of planning called an operation. Battles can be planned, encountered or forced by one side when the other is unable to withdraw from combat. A battle always has as its purpose the reaching of

3504-449: Is difficult to measure the effectiveness of such a subjective term, soldiers who reported in a WWII study that they had a "higher than average" sense of camaraderie and pride in their unit were more likely to report themselves ready for combat and less likely to develop CSR or other stress disorders. Soldiers with a "lower than average" sense of cohesion with their unit were more susceptible to stress illness. Stress exposure training or SET

3650-407: Is no longer tied to the navy. A good example of an ancient naval battle is the Battle of Salamis . Most ancient naval battles were fought by fast ships using the battering ram to sink opposing fleets or steer close enough for boarding in hand-to-hand combat. Troops were often used to storm enemy ships as used by Romans and pirates . This tactic was usually used by civilizations that could not beat

3796-854: Is not effective in preventing PTSD. US services now use the more recently developed BICEPS principles: The British government produced a Report of the War Office Committee of Inquiry into "Shell-Shock" , which was published in 1922. Recommendations from this included: Part of the concern was that many British veterans were receiving pensions and had long-term disabilities. By 1939, some 120,000 British ex-servicemen had received final awards for primary psychiatric disability or were still drawing pensions – about 15% of all pensioned disabilities – and another 44,000 or so were getting pensions for 'soldier's heart' or effort syndrome . There is, though, much that statistics do not show, because in terms of psychiatric effects, pensioners were just

3942-782: Is significant controversy with the PIE and BICEPS principles. Throughout a number of wars, but notably during the Vietnam War, there has been a conflict among doctors about sending distressed soldiers back to combat. During the Vietnam War this reached a peak with much discussion about the ethics of this process. Proponents of the PIE and BICEPS principles argue that it leads to a reduction of long-term disability but opponents argue that combat stress reactions lead to long-term problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder. The use of psychiatric drugs to treat people with CSR has also attracted criticism, as some military psychiatrists have come to question

4088-461: Is skewed downward from both its norm and peak by data by low rates during the last years of the war. The following PIE principles were in place for the "not yet diagnosed nervous" (NYDN) cases: United States medical officer Thomas W. Salmon is often quoted as the originator of these PIE principles. However, his real strength came from going to Europe and learning from the Allies and then instituting

4234-662: The Battle of Britain and the Battle of Midway . Another important use of aircraft came with the development of the helicopter , which first became heavily used during the Vietnam War, and still continues to be widely used today to transport and augment ground forces. Today, direct engagements between aircraft are rare – the most modern fighter-interceptors carry much more extensive bombing payloads, and are used to bomb precision land targets, rather than to fight other aircraft. Anti-aircraft batteries are used much more extensively to defend against incoming aircraft than interceptors. Despite this, aircraft today are much more extensively used as

4380-475: The Battle of Gettysburg (1863) were exceptional in lasting three days.) This was mainly due to the difficulty of supplying armies in the field or conducting night operations . The means of prolonging a battle was typically with siege warfare . Improvements in transport and the sudden evolving of trench warfare , with its siege-like nature during the First World War in the 20th century, lengthened

4526-479: The Battle of the Atlantic , Battle of Britain , and the Battle of France , all in World War II. Wars and military campaigns are guided by military strategy , whereas battles take place on a level of planning and execution known as operational mobility . German strategist Carl von Clausewitz stated that "the employment of battles ... to achieve the object of war" was the essence of strategy . Battle

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4672-716: The First World War , countries tried to limit or abolish submarines. The effort failed. Instead, the London Naval Treaty required submarines to abide by " cruiser rules ", which demanded they surface, search and place ship crews in "a place of safety" (for which lifeboats did not qualify, except under particular circumstances) before sinking them, unless the ship in question showed "persistent refusal to stop...or active resistance to visit or search". These regulations did not prohibit arming merchantmen, but doing so, or having them report contact with submarines (or raiders ), made them de facto naval auxiliaries and removed

4818-636: The Italian invasion of September 1943 . The importance of unit cohesion and membership of a group as a protective factor emerged. John Appel found that the average American infantryman in Italy was "worn out" in 200 to 240 days and concluded that the American soldier "fights for his buddies or because his self respect won't let him quit". After several months in combat, the soldier lacked reasons to continue to fight because he had proven his bravery in battle and

4964-541: The Passchendaele , Pearl Harbor , the Alamo , Thermopylae and Waterloo . Military operations , many of which result in battle, are given codenames , which are not necessarily meaningful or indicative of the type or the location of the battle. Operation Market Garden and Operation Rolling Thunder are examples of battles known by their military codenames. When a battleground is the site of more than one battle in

5110-678: The Royal Navy , Royal Canadian Navy , United States Navy , and Allied merchant shipping. Convoys , coming mainly from North America and predominantly going to the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union , were protected for the most part by the British and Canadian navies and air forces. These forces were aided by ships and aircraft of the United States beginning September 13, 1941. The Germans were joined by submarines of

5256-497: The Spanish Civil War and especially World War II. Aircraft design began specializing, primarily into two types: bombers, which carried explosive payloads to bomb land targets or ships; and fighter-interceptors, which were used to either intercept incoming aircraft or to escort and protect bombers (engagements between fighter aircraft were known as dog fights ). Some of the more notable aerial battles in this period include

5402-794: The West Indies , a financially advantageous bargain for the United States but militarily beneficial for Britain, since it effectively freed up British military assets to return to Europe. A significant percentage of the US population opposed entering the war, and some American politicians (including the US Ambassador to Britain, Joseph P. Kennedy ) believed that Britain and its allies might actually lose. The first of these destroyers were only taken over by their British and Canadian crews in September, and all needed to be rearmed and fitted with ASDIC. It

5548-458: The battlefield has also increased in modern warfare with inclusion of the supporting units in the rear areas; supply, artillery, medical personnel etc. often outnumber the front-line combat troops. Battles are made up of a multitude of individual combats, skirmishes and small engagements and the combatants will usually only experience a small part of the battle. To the infantryman , there may be little to distinguish between combat as part of

5694-443: The electromagnetic spectrum . Battles are decided by various factors, the number and quality of combatants and equipment, the skill of commanders and terrain are among the most prominent. Weapons and armour can be decisive; on many occasions armies have achieved victory through more advanced weapons than those of their opponents. An extreme example was in the Battle of Omdurman , in which a large army of Sudanese Mahdists armed in

5840-426: The metric bands , lacked target discrimination and range. Moreover, corvettes were too slow to catch a surfaced U-boat. Pack tactics were first used successfully in September and October 1940 to devastating effect, in a series of convoy battles. On September 21, convoy HX 72 of 42 merchantmen was attacked by a pack of four U-boats, which sank eleven ships and damaged two over the course of two nights. In October,

5986-571: The Allied convoys singly, U-boats were directed to work in wolf packs ( Rudel ) coordinated by radio. The boats spread out into a long patrol line that bisected the path of the Allied convoy routes. Once in position, the crew studied the horizon through binoculars looking for masts or smoke, or used hydrophones to pick up propeller noises. When one boat sighted a convoy, it would report the sighting to U-boat headquarters , shadowing and continuing to report as needed until other boats arrived, typically at night. Instead of being faced by single submarines,

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6132-469: The Atlantic were Carlo Fecia di Cossato , commander of the submarine Enrico Tazzoli , and Gianfranco Gazzana-Priaroggia , commander of Archimede and then of Leonardo da Vinci . Despite their success, U-boats were still not recognised as the foremost threat to the North Atlantic convoys. With the exception of men like Dönitz, most naval officers on both sides regarded surface warships as

6278-527: The Atlantic", which he compared to the Battle of France , fought the previous summer. The first meeting of the Cabinet's "Battle of the Atlantic Committee" was on March 19. Churchill claimed to have coined the phrase "Battle of the Atlantic" shortly before Alexander's speech, but there are several examples of earlier usage. Following the use of unrestricted submarine warfare by Germany in

6424-477: The Atlantic, the British were forced to provide battleship escorts to as many convoys as possible. This twice saved convoys from slaughter by the German battleships. In February, the old battleship HMS  Ramillies deterred an attack on HX 106 . A month later, SL 67 was saved by the presence of HMS  Malaya . Combat fatigue Combat stress reaction ( CSR ) is acute behavioral disorganization as

6570-454: The Atlantic. The power of a raider against a convoy was demonstrated by the fate of convoy HX 84 , attacked by the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer on 5 November 1940. Admiral Scheer quickly sank five ships and damaged several others as the convoy scattered. Only the sacrifice of the escorting armed merchant cruiser HMS  Jervis Bay (whose commander, Edward Fegen , was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross ) and failing light allowed

6716-532: The Axis attempt to stem the flow of merchant shipping that enabled Britain to keep fighting. Rationing in the United Kingdom was also used with the aim of reducing demand, by reducing wastage and increasing domestic production and equality of distribution. From 1942 onward, the Axis also sought to prevent the build-up of Allied supplies and equipment in the UK in preparation for the invasion of occupied Europe . The defeat of

6862-655: The Battle of the Atlantic from 1941 onwards. These were primarily Fw 200 Condors. The Condors also bombed convoys that were beyond land-based fighter cover and thus defenceless. Initially, the Condors were very successful, claiming 365,000 tons of shipping in early 1941. These aircraft were few in number, however, and directly under Luftwaffe control; in addition, the pilots had little specialised training for anti-shipping warfare, limiting their effectiveness. The Germans received help from their allies. From August 1940,

7008-551: The British Naval Cypher No. 3, allowing the Germans to estimate where and when convoys could be expected. In response, the British applied the techniques of operations research to the problem and came up with some counter-intuitive solutions for protecting convoys. They realised that the area of a convoy increased by the square of its perimeter, meaning the same number of ships, using the same number of escorts,

7154-399: The British admiralty failed to appreciate the limitations of ASDIC: range was limited, ASDIC worked only well if the speed of the operating vessel was below eight knots, ASDIC was hampered by rough weather and it took a very skilled operator to distinguish echoes from thermoclines , whales, shoals of fish and wrecks. Also, early versions could not look directly down, so contact was lost during

7300-522: The British and French immediately began a blockade of Germany , although this had little immediate effect on German industry. The Royal Navy quickly introduced a convoy system for the protection of trade that gradually extended out from the British Isles, eventually reaching as far as Panama , Bombay and Singapore . Convoys allowed the Royal Navy to concentrate its escorts near the one place

7446-474: The British. According to his calculations, a fleet of 300 medium Type VII U-boats could sink a million tons of ships a month and within a year sink enough of the about 3,000 British merchant ships (comprising 17,5 million tons) to strangle the British economy. In the first world war, U-boats had been defeated mainly by the convoy system, but Dönitz thought this could be overcome with the Rudeltaktik :

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7592-599: The Channel . This went firmly against the expectancy principle of PIE. Appel believed that British soldiers were able to continue to fight almost twice as long as their American counterparts because the British had better rotation schedules and because they, unlike the Americans, "fight for survival" – for the British soldiers, the threat from the Axis powers was much more real, given Britain's proximity to mainland Europe, and

7738-686: The Channel and along the east coast in defence of shipping lanes, and also offensive mine barrages on the German U-boat lanes toward the Atlantic Ocean. In 1939, the Kriegsmarine lacked the strength to challenge the combined British Royal Navy and French Navy ( Marine Nationale ) for command of the sea. Instead, German naval strategy relied on commerce raiding using capital ships , armed merchant cruisers , submarines and aircraft. Many German warships were already at sea when war

7884-640: The European population meant that the symptoms were common to the culture. In World War II it was determined by the US Army that the time it took for a soldier to experience combat fatigue while fighting on the front lines was somewhere between 60 and 240 days, depending on the intensity and frequency of combat. This condition isn't new among the combat soldiers and was something that soldiers also experienced in World War I as mentioned above, but this time around

8030-804: The First World War, the British Battles Nomenclature Committee was formed to decide on standard names for all battles and subsidiary actions. To the soldiers who did the fighting, the distinction was usually academic; a soldier fighting at Beaumont Hamel on November 13, 1916, was probably unaware he was taking part in what the committee named the Battle of the Ancre . Many combats are too small to be battles; terms such as "action", "affair", "skirmish", "firefight", "raid", or "offensive patrol" are used to describe small military encounters. These combats often take place within

8176-461: The German U-boat torpedoes : both the impact pistol and the magnetic influence pistol (detonation mechanism) were defective, and the torpedoes did not run at the proper depth, often undershooting targets. Only one British warship was sunk by U-boats in more than 38 attacks. As the news spread through the U-boat fleet, it began to undermine morale . Since the effectiviness of the magnetic pistol

8322-477: The German tactics against the inadequate British anti-submarine methods. On 1 December, seven German and three Italian submarines caught HX 90 , sinking 10 ships and damaging three others. At the end of the year 1940, the Admiralty viewed the number of ships sunk with growing alarm. Damaged ships might survive but could be out of commission for long periods. Two million gross tons of merchant shipping—13% of

8468-565: The German war effort: Germany spent more money on producing naval vessels than it did every type of ground vehicle combined, including tanks. The Battle of the Atlantic has been called the "longest, largest, and most complex" naval battle in history. The campaign started immediately after the European war began, during the so-called " Phoney War ", and lasted more than five years, until the German surrender in May 1945. It involved thousands of ships in

8614-480: The Italian Regia Marina (Royal Navy) after Germany's Axis ally Italy entered the war on June 10, 1940. As an island country, the United Kingdom was highly dependent on imported goods. Britain required more than a million tons of imported material per week in order to survive and fight. In essence, the Battle of the Atlantic involved a tonnage war ; the Allied struggle to supply Britain, and

8760-483: The Italian intervention was not favourably regarded by Dönitz, who characterised Italians as "inadequately disciplined" and "unable to remain calm in the face of the enemy". They were unable to co-operate in wolf pack tactics or even reliably report contacts or weather conditions, and their area of operation was moved away from those of the Germans. Amongst the more successful Italian submarine commanders who operated in

8906-534: The Second World War, along with indirect combat through the use of aircraft and missiles which has come to constitute a large portion of wars in place of battles, where battles are now mostly reserved for capturing cities. One significant difference of modern naval battles, as opposed to earlier forms of combat is the use of marines , which introduced amphibious warfare. Today, a marine is actually an infantry regiment that sometimes fights solely on land and

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9052-638: The U-boat threat was a prerequisite for pushing back the Axis in Western Europe. The outcome of the battle was a strategic victory for the Allies—the German tonnage war failed—but at great cost: 3,500 merchant ships and 175 warships were sunk in the Atlantic for the loss of 783 U-boats and 47 German surface warships, including 4 battleships ( Bismarck , Scharnhorst , Gneisenau , and Tirpitz ), 9 cruisers, 7 raiders, and 27 destroyers. This front ended up being highly significant for

9198-617: The U-boats by mid-1943, though losses due to U-boats continued until the war's end. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill later wrote "The only thing that really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril. I was even more anxious about this battle than I had been about the glorious air fight called the ' Battle of Britain '." On 5 March 1941, the First Lord of the Admiralty , A. V. Alexander , asked Parliament for "many more ships and great numbers of men" to fight "the Battle of

9344-570: The U-boats were guaranteed to be found, the convoys. Each convoy consisted of between 30 and 70 mostly unarmed merchant ships. Some British naval officials, particularly the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill , sought a more 'offensive' strategy. The Royal Navy formed anti-submarine hunting groups based on aircraft carriers to patrol the shipping lanes in the Western Approaches and hunt for German U-boats. This strategy

9490-536: The UK was very unlikely and hence the fleet was designed for commerce raiding against the French rather than to try to challenge command of the sea. The commander of the German U-boats, Karl Dönitz, had his own opinions. In contrast with Hitler and Raeder, the chief of the German Navy, he judged that war with the UK was inevitable and that not a large surface fleet was needed, but that U-boats could defeat

9636-510: The Western World ) and B.H. Liddell Hart ( Decisive Wars of History ), among many others, have written books in the style of Creasy's work. There is an obvious difference in the way battles have been fought. Early battles were probably fought between rival hunting bands as unorganized crowds. During the Battle of Megiddo , the first reliably documented battle in the fifteenth century BC, both armies were organised and disciplined; during

9782-401: The abilities of themselves and the squad. As this training can actually induce some of the stress symptoms it seeks to prevent, stress levels should be increased incrementally as to allow the soldiers time to adapt. Narcosynthesis A technique that was used to treat PTSD disorders during World War II by using sodium pentothal was created by psychiatrists Roy Grinker and John Spiegel. During

9928-635: The boats needed to return to harbour to refuel, re-arm, re-stock supplies, and refit. The harsh winter of 1939–40, which froze over many of the Baltic ports, seriously hampered the German offensive by trapping several new U-boats in the ice. Hitler's plans to invade Norway and Denmark in the spring of 1940 led to the withdrawal of the fleet's surface warships and most of the ocean-going U-boats for fleet operations in Operation Weserübung . The resulting Norwegian campaign revealed serious flaws in

10074-492: The body from homeostasis and thereby deplete its resources and render it unable to normally function, sending it into the third stage of GAS: exhaustion. Sympathetic nervous activation remains in the exhaustion phase and reactions to stress are markedly sensitized as fight-or-flight symptoms return. If the body remains in a state of stress, then much more severe symptoms of CSR as cardiovascular and digestive involvement may present themselves. Extended exhaustion can permanently damage

10220-683: The body. The British Army treated Operational Stress Reaction according to the 7 Rs: Historically, screening programs that have attempted to preclude soldiers exhibiting personality traits thought to predispose them to CSR have been a total failure. Part of this failure stems from the inability to base CSR morbidity on one or two personality traits. Full psychological work-ups are expensive and inconclusive, while pen and paper tests are ineffective and easily faked. In addition, studies conducted following WWII screening programs showed that psychological disorders present during military training did not accurately predict stress disorders during combat. While it

10366-444: The central unit in naval warfare, acting as a mobile base for lethal aircraft. Although the use of aircraft has for the most part always been used as a supplement to land or naval engagements, since their first major military use in World War I aircraft have increasingly taken on larger roles in warfare. During World War I, the primary use was for reconnaissance, and small-scale bombardment. Aircraft began becoming much more prominent in

10512-427: The claims that proximal PIE or BICEPS treatment is generally effective at reducing the effects of combat stress reaction, other data suggests that long term PTSD effects may result from the hasty return of affected individuals to combat. Both PIE and BICEPS are meant to return as many soldiers as possible to combat, and may actually have adverse effects on the long-term health of service members who are rapidly returned to

10658-429: The commands of their leaders with conviction in its success invariably has a higher morale than an army that doubts its every move. The British in the naval Battle of Trafalgar owed its success to the reputation of Admiral Lord Nelson . Battles can be fought on land, at sea, and in the air. Naval battles have occurred since before the 5th century BC. Air battles have been far less common, due to their late conception,

10804-487: The convoy escorts then had to cope with groups of up to half a dozen U-boats attacking simultaneously. The most daring commanders, such as Kretschmer, penetrated the escort screen and attacked from within the columns of merchantmen. The escort vessels, which were too few in number and often lacking in endurance, had no answer to multiple submarines attacking on the surface at night, as their ASDIC worked well only against underwater targets. Early British marine radar, working in

10950-426: The course of patriotic service, should be treated with such apparent callousness. But there can be no doubt that in an overwhelming proportion of cases, these patients succumb to 'shock' because they get something out of it. To give them this reward is not ultimately a benefit to them because it encourages the weaker tendencies in their character. The nation cannot call on its citizens for courage and sacrifice and, at

11096-499: The date on which they took place, such as The Glorious First of June . In the Middle Ages it was considered important to settle on a suitable name for a battle which could be used by the chroniclers . After Henry V of England defeated a French army on October 25, 1415, he met with the senior French herald and they agreed to name the battle after the nearby castle and so it was called the Battle of Agincourt . In other cases,

11242-443: The day, an alert U-boat could dive before the aircraft attacked. Dönitz could not convince Raeder of his ideas, so each time the U-boat fleet was expanded, Raeder opted to build a mixture of coastal, medium and large submarines, even minelayers and U-cruisers. Even when in 1938 Hitler realised he would sooner or later have to oppose the UK and launched his Plan Z , only a minority of the planned 239 U-boats were medium U-boats. With

11388-404: The defeated party. If no resolution is reached in a battle, it can result in a stalemate . A conflict in which one side is unwilling to reach a decision by a direct battle using conventional warfare often becomes an insurgency . Until the 19th century the majority of battles were of short duration, many lasting a part of a day. (The Battle of Preston (1648) , the Battle of Nations (1813) and

11534-444: The duration of battles to days and weeks. This created the requirement for unit rotation to prevent combat fatigue , with troops preferably not remaining in a combat area of operations for more than a month. The use of the term "battle" in military history has led to its misuse when referring to almost any scale of combat, notably by strategic forces involving hundreds of thousands of troops that may be engaged in either one battle at

11680-543: The efficacy of such drugs on the long-term health of veterans. Concerns have been expressed as to the effect of pharmaceutical treatment on an already elevated substance abuse rate among former people with CSR. Recent research has caused an increasing number of scientists to believe that there may be a physical (i.e., neurocerebral damage) rather than psychological basis for blast trauma. As traumatic brain injury and combat stress reaction have very different causes yet result in similar neurologic symptoms, researchers emphasize

11826-485: The enemy with ranged weaponry. Another invention in the late Middle Ages was the use of Greek fire by the Byzantines, which was used to set enemy fleets on fire. Empty demolition ships utilized the tactic to crash into opposing ships and set it afire with an explosion. After the invention of cannons, naval warfare became useful as support units for land warfare. During the 19th century, the development of mines led to

11972-572: The faces of enemy dead, is also effective at reducing the chance of a breakdown. Cognitive control strategies can be taught to soldiers to help them recognize stressful and situationally detrimental thoughts and repress those thoughts in combat situations. Such skills have been shown to reduce anxiety and improve task performance. Soldiers who feel confident in their own abilities and those of their squad are far less likely to develop combat stress reaction. Training in stressful conditions that mimic those of an actual combat situation builds confidence in

12118-420: The fact that Germany was concurrently conducting air raids and bombarding British industrial cities. Like the Americans, British doctors believed that letters from home often needlessly damaged soldiers' morale. The Canadian Army recognized combat stress reaction as "Battle Exhaustion" during the Second World War and classified it as a separate type of combat wound. Historian Terry Copp has written extensively on

12264-443: The final stages of a depth charge attack. The basic set could detect range and bearing, but target depth could only be estimated from the range at which contact was lost. An escort swept its ASDIC beam in an arc from one side of its course to the other, stopping the transducer every few degrees to send out a signal. On detection of a submarine, the escort would close in at moderate speed and increase its speed to attack. The intention

12410-527: The first three months of war. The British and French formed a series of hunting groups including three  battlecruisers , three aircraft carriers, and 15 cruisers to seek the raider and her sister Deutschland , which was operating in the North Atlantic. These hunting groups had no success until Admiral Graf Spee was caught off the mouth of the River Plate between Argentina and Uruguay by an inferior British force. After suffering damage in

12556-627: The fleet available to the British—were under repair and unavailable, which had the same effect in slowing down cross-Atlantic supplies. Nor were the U-boats the only threat. Following some early experience in support of the war at sea during Operation Weserübung, the Luftwaffe began to take a toll of merchant ships. Martin Harlinghausen and his recently established command— Fliegerführer Atlantik —contributed small numbers of aircraft to

12702-446: The front-line after combat stress control treatment. Although the PIE principles were used extensively in the Vietnam War, the post traumatic stress disorder lifetime rate for Vietnam veterans was 30% in a 1989 US study and 21% in a 1996 Australian study. In a study of Israeli Veterans of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, 37% of veterans diagnosed with CSR during combat were later diagnosed with PTSD , compared with 14% of control veterans. There

12848-589: The high ground forces the enemy to climb and thus wear themselves down. Areas of jungle and forest, with dense vegetation act as force-multipliers, of benefit to inferior armies. Terrain may have lost importance in modern warfare, due to the advent of aircraft, though the terrain is still vital for camouflage, especially for guerrilla warfare . Generals and commanders also play an important role, Hannibal , Julius Caesar , Khalid ibn Walid , Subutai and Napoleon Bonaparte were all skilled generals and their armies were extremely successful at times. An army that can trust

12994-447: The human body responds to extended stress is known as general adaptation syndrome (GAS). After the initial fight-or-flight response, the body becomes more resistant to stress in an attempt to dampen the sympathetic nervous response and return to homeostasis. During this period of resistance, physical and mental symptoms of CSR may be drastically reduced as the body attempts to cope with the stress. Long combat involvement, however, may keep

13140-562: The introduction of ASDIC, the British Admiralty believed to have effectively neutralized the submarine threat. Hence the number of destroyers and convoy escorts was reduced and the anti-submarine branch was seen as third rate. Although destroyers were also equipped with ASDIC, it was expected that these ships would be used in fleet actions rather than anti-submarine warfare, so they were not extensively trained in their use. Trials with ASDIC were usually conducted in ideal conditions and

13286-402: The job, young, analytically trained psychiatrists were employed. Army doctors "appeared to have no conception of breakdown in war and its treatment, though many of them had served in the 1914–1918 war." The first Middle East Force psychiatric hospital was set up in 1942. With D-Day for the first month there was a policy of holding casualties for only 48 hours before they were sent back over

13432-536: The lessons of World War I. It was estimated that aerial bombardment would kill up to 35,000 a day, but the Blitz killed only 40,000 in total. The expected torrent of civilian mental breakdown did not occur. The Government turned to World War I doctors for advice on those who did have problems. The PIE principles were generally used. However, in the British Army , since most of the World War I doctors were too old for

13578-485: The lessons. By the end of the war, Salmon had set up a complete system of units and procedures that was then the "world's best practice". After the war, he maintained his efforts in educating society and the military. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for his contributions. Effectiveness of the PIE approach has not been confirmed by studies of CSR, and there is some evidence that it

13724-535: The many wars of the Roman Empire , barbarians continued to use mob tactics . As the Age of Enlightenment dawned, armies began to fight in highly disciplined lines. Each would follow the orders from their officers and fight as a unit instead of individuals. Armies were divided into regiments , battalions , companies and platoons . These armies would march, line up and fire in divisions. Native Americans , on

13870-447: The military medicine was gaining a better grasp and understanding of what exactly was causing it. What had been known in previous wars as "nostalgia", "old sergeant's disease", and "shell shock", became known as "combat fatigue". Combat stress reaction symptoms align with the symptoms also found in psychological trauma , which is closely related to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). CSR differs from PTSD (among other things) in that

14016-400: The most prominent being the Battle of Britain in 1940. Since the Second World War, land or sea battles have come to rely on air support. During the Battle of Midway , five aircraft carriers were sunk without either fleet coming into direct contact. Battles are usually hybrids of different types listed above. A decisive battle is one with political effects, determining the course of

14162-450: The next day (at the Battle of Wavre ). Battlespace is a unified strategic concept to integrate and combine armed forces for the military theatre of operations , including air , information , land , sea and space . It includes the environment, factors and conditions that must be understood to apply combat power, protect the force or complete the mission, comprising enemy and friendly armed forces ; facilities; weather; terrain; and

14308-556: The number of U-boats on patrol in the Atlantic began to increase, the number of escorts available for the convoys was greatly reduced. The only consolation for the British was that the large merchant fleets of occupied countries like Norway and the Netherlands came under British control. After the German occupation of Denmark and Norway, Britain occupied Iceland and the Faroe Islands , establishing bases there and preventing

14454-487: The other hand, did not fight in lines, using guerrilla tactics. American colonists and European forces continued using disciplined lines into the American Civil War . A new style arose from the 1850s to the First World War, known as trench warfare , which also led to tactical radio . Chemical warfare also began in 1915. By the Second World War, the use of the smaller divisions, platoons and companies became much more important as precise operations became vital. Instead of

14600-601: The other merchantmen to escape. The British now suspended North Atlantic convoys, and the Home Fleet put to sea to try to intercept Admiral Scheer . The search failed and Admiral Scheer disappeared into the South Atlantic. She reappeared in the Indian Ocean the following month. Other German surface raiders now began to make their presence felt. On Christmas Day 1940, the cruiser Admiral Hipper attacked

14746-564: The other navies of the world combined. Similarly the role of aircraft had been neglected; the Royal Air Force had organised a Coastal Command to support the Royal Navy, but it possessed insufficient aircraft, had no long range aircraft nor were aircraft crew trained in anti-submarine warfare. The only weapon against submarines was inadequate bombs. Finally, it was not forgotten that in World War I, mines had sunk more U-boats than any other weapon. Plans were drafted for mine fields in

14892-435: The political actors. Personal effects of battle range from mild psychological issues to permanent and crippling injuries. Some battle-survivors have nightmares about the conditions they encountered or abnormal reactions to certain sights or sounds and some experience flashbacks . Physical effects of battle can include scars, amputations, lesions, loss of bodily functions, blindness, paralysis and death. Battles affect politics ;

15038-415: The pre-Nazi Freikorps paramilitary organizations, Vanguard of Nazism , historian Robert G. L. Waite describes some of the emotional effects of World War I on German troops, and refers to a phrase he attributes to Göring : men who could not become "de-brutalized". In an interview, Dr Rudolf Brickenstein stated that: ... he believed that there were no important problems due to stress breakdown since it

15184-480: The primary tools for both army and navy, as evidenced by the prominent use of helicopters to transport and support troops, the use of aerial bombardment as the "first strike" in many engagements, and the replacement of the battleship with the aircraft carrier as the center of most modern navies. Battles are usually named after some feature of the battlefield geography , such as a town, forest or river, commonly prefixed "Battle of...". Occasionally battles are named after

15330-529: The protection of the cruiser rules. The Treaty of Versailles forbade the Germans to operate U-boats and reduced the German surface fleet to a few obsolete ships. When three of these obsolete ships had to be replaced, the Germans opted to construct the Deutschland-class of panzerschiffe (armoured ships) or "pocket battleships" as they were nicknamed by foreign navies. These ships were designed for commerce raiding on distant seas, to operate as

15476-578: The rapid conquest of the Low Countries and France in May and June, and the Italian entry into the war on the Axis side in June transformed the war at sea in general and the Atlantic campaign in particular in three main ways: The completion of Hitler's campaign in Western Europe meant U-boats withdrawn from the Atlantic for the Norwegian campaign now returned to the war on trade. So at the very time

15622-416: The roles for which soldiers are trained. Causes include witnessing or experiencing the following: Many of the symptoms initially experienced by people with CSR are effects of an extended activation of the human body's fight-or-flight response . The fight-or-flight response involves a general sympathetic nervous system discharge in reaction to a perceived stressor and prepares the body to fight or run from

15768-646: The same battle entered the popular culture, such as the First Battle of Bull Run and the Second Battle of Bull Run , which are also referred to as the First and Second Battles of Manassas. Sometimes in desert warfare, there is no nearby town name to use; map coordinates gave the name to the Battle of 73 Easting in the First Gulf War . Some place names have become synonymous with battles, such as

15914-466: The same conflict, the instances are distinguished by ordinal number , such as the First and Second Battles of Bull Run. An extreme case are the twelve Battles of the Isonzo — First to Twelfth —between Italy and Austria-Hungary during the First World War. Some battles are named for the convenience of military historians so that periods of combat can be neatly distinguished from one another. Following

16060-529: The same time, state by implication that an unconscious cowardice or an unconscious dishonesty will be rewarded. At the outbreak of World War II , most in the United States military had forgotten the treatment lessons of World War I. Screening of applicants was initially rigorous, but experience eventually showed it to lack great predictive power. The US entered the war in December 1941. Only in November 1943

16206-736: The sides adopted different names for the same battle, such as the Battle of Gallipoli which is known in Turkey as the Battle of Çanakkale . During the American Civil War, the Union tended to name the battles after the nearest watercourse, such as the Battle of Wilsons Creek and the Battle of Stones River, whereas the Confederates favoured the nearby towns, as in the Battles of Chancellorsville and Murfreesboro. Occasionally both names for

16352-500: The situation improved gradually over time, and up to August 1943 the 32 Italian submarines that operated there sank 109 ships of 593,864 tons, for 17 subs lost in return, giving them a subs-lost-to-tonnage sunk ratio similar to Germany's in the same period, and higher overall. The Italians were also successful with their use of " human torpedo " chariots, disabling several British ships in Gibraltar. Despite these successes,

16498-419: The slow convoy SC 7 , with an escort of two sloops and two corvettes, was overwhelmed, losing 59% of its ships. The battle for HX 79 in the following days was in many ways worse for the escorts than for SC 7. The loss of a quarter of the convoy without any loss to the U-boats, despite a very strong escort (two destroyers, four corvettes, three trawlers, and a minesweeper) demonstrated the effectiveness of

16644-650: The soldier's ego was nurtured, and the soldier was encouraged to abreact his trauma. Figures from the 1982 Lebanon war showed that with proximal treatment, 90% of CSR casualties returned to their unit, usually within 72 hours. With rearward treatment, only 40% returned to their unit. It was also found that treatment efficacy went up with the application of a variety of front line treatment principles versus just one treatment. In Korea, similar statistics were seen, with 85% of US battle fatigue casualties returned to duty within three days and 10% returned to limited duties after several weeks. Though these numbers seem to promote

16790-452: The stress of battle that decrease the combatant's fighting efficiency. The most common symptoms are fatigue, slower reaction times, indecision, disconnection from one's surroundings, and the inability to prioritize. Combat stress reaction is generally short-term and should not be confused with acute stress disorder , post-traumatic stress disorder , or other long-term disorders attributable to combat stress, although any of these may commence as

16936-406: The subject. In Normandy, "The infantry units engaged in the battle also experienced a rapid rise in the number of battle exhaustion cases with several hundred men evacuated due to the stress of combat. Regimental Medical Officers were learning that neither elaborate selection methods nor extensive training could prevent a considerable number of combat soldiers from breaking down." In his history of

17082-429: The subsequent action, she took shelter in neutral Montevideo harbour and was scuttled on 17 December 1939. After this initial burst of activity, the Atlantic campaign quietened down. Admiral Karl Dönitz , commander of the U-boat fleet, had planned a maximum submarine effort for the first month of the war, with almost all the available U-boats out on patrol in September. That level of deployment could not be sustained;

17228-399: The threat causing the stress. Catecholamine hormones, such as adrenaline or noradrenaline , facilitate immediate physical reactions associated with a preparation for violent muscular action. Although the flight-or-fight-response normally ends with the removal of the threat, the constant mortal danger in combat zones likewise constantly and acutely stresses soldiers. The process whereby

17374-550: The threat of war became more clear it was realised that Britain could not rely on the London Naval Treaty that outlawed unrestricted submarine warfare. The organisational infrastructure for convoys had been maintained since World War I, with a thorough and systematic upgrade in the second half of the 1930s, but not enough escorts were available for convoy escorting, and a crash program for building Tree-class trawlers , Flower-class corvettes and Hunt-class destroyers

17520-426: The time and space of a battle and while they may have an objective, they are not necessarily "decisive". Sometimes the soldiers are unable to immediately gauge the significance of the combat; in the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo , some British officers were in doubt as to whether the day's events merited the title of "battle" or would be called an "action". Battles affect the individuals who take part, as well as

17666-436: The tip of a huge iceberg." War correspondent Philip Gibbs wrote: Something was wrong. They put on civilian clothes again and looked to their mothers and wives very much like the young men who had gone to business in the peaceful days before August 1914. But they had not come back the same men. Something had altered in them. They were subject to sudden moods, and queer tempers, fits of profound depression alternating with

17812-424: The treatment, they offered soldiers an opportunity to abreact their trauma by re-experiencing it in a hospital environment in the presence of supportive, protective, and understanding therapists. The therapists induced a dream state or twilight sleep by injecting sodium pentothal, after which most soldiers spontaneously started to express their anxiety. While the psychiatrist fulfilled the soldier's need for protection,

17958-502: The trench stalemate of 1915–1917, in the Second World War, battles developed where small groups encountered other platoons. As a result, elite squads became much more recognized and distinguishable. Maneuver warfare also returned with an astonishing pace with the advent of the tank , replacing the cannon of the Enlightenment Age. Artillery has since gradually replaced the use of frontal troops. Modern battles resemble those of

18104-483: The troop convoy WS 5A, but was driven off by the escorting cruisers. Admiral Hipper had more success two months later, on 12 February 1941, when she found the unescorted convoy SLS 64 of 19 ships and sank seven of them. In January 1941, the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau put to sea from Germany to raid the shipping lanes in Operation Berlin . With so many German raiders at large in

18250-522: The ultimate commerce destroyers. For the first half of 1940, there were no German surface raiders in the Atlantic because the German Fleet had been concentrated for the invasion of Norway. The sole pocket battleship raider, Admiral Graf Spee , had been stopped at the Battle of the River Plate by an inferior and outgunned British squadron. From the summer of 1940 a small but steady stream of warships and armed merchant raiders set sail from Germany for

18396-410: The variations in the organisation, employment and technology of military forces. The English military historian John Keegan suggested an ideal definition of battle as "something which happens between two armies leading to the moral then physical disintegration of one or the other of them" but the origins and outcomes of battles can rarely be summarized so neatly. Battle in the 20th and 21st centuries

18542-491: The war such as the Battle of Smolensk or bringing hostilities to an end, such as the Battle of Hastings or the Battle of Hattin . A decisive battle can change the balance of power or boundaries between countries. The concept of the decisive battle became popular with the publication in 1851 of Edward Creasy 's The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World . British military historians J.F.C. Fuller ( The Decisive Battles of

18688-517: The war that during the last two years, about a third of all hospitalizations at Ensen were due to war neurosis. It is probable that there was both less of a true problem and less perception of a problem. The Finnish attitudes to "war neurosis" were especially tough. Psychiatrist Harry Federley, who was the head of the Military Medicine, considered shell shock as a sign of weak character and lack of moral fibre. His treatment for war neurosis

18834-631: The war, "It might have been wise to have had a nation-wide educational course in letter writing to soldiers", and Edward Strecker criticized "moms" (as opposed to mothers) who, after failing to "wean" their sons, damaged morale through letters. Airmen flew far more often in the Southwest Pacific than in Europe, and although rest time in Australia was scheduled, there was no fixed number of missions that would produce transfer out of combat, as

18980-508: Was a psychiatrist added to the table of organization of each division, and this policy was not implemented in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations until March 1944. By 1943, the US Army was using the term "exhaustion" as the initial diagnosis of psychiatric cases, and the general principles of military psychiatry were being used. General Patton's slapping incident was in part the spur to institute forward treatment for

19126-434: Was a converted civilian airliner—a stop-gap solution for Fliegerführer Atlantik . Due to ongoing friction between the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine , the primary source of convoy sightings was the U-boats themselves. Since a submarine's bridge was very close to the water, their range of visual detection was quite limited. The best source proved to be the codebreakers of B-Dienst who had succeeded in deciphering

19272-537: Was already reduced by the degaussing of Allied ships, Dönitz decided to use new contact pistols, which were copied from British torpedoes found in the captured British submarine HMS  Seal . The depth setting mechanism was improved but only in January 1942 were the last complications with that mechanism discovered and fixed, making the torpedo a more reliable weapon. The German occupation of Norway in April 1940,

19418-443: Was better protected in one convoy than in two. A large convoy was as difficult to locate as a small one. Moreover, reduced frequency also reduced the chances of detection, as fewer large convoys could carry the same amount of cargo, while large convoys take longer to assemble. Therefore, a few large convoys with apparently few escorts were safer than many small convoys with a higher ratio of escorts to merchantmen. Instead of attacking

19564-557: Was considered a psychiatric illness resulting from injury to the nerves during combat. The nature of trench warfare meant that about 10% of the fighting soldiers were killed (compared to 4.5% during World War II ) and the total proportion of troops who became casualties (killed or wounded) was about 57%. Whether a person with shell-shock was considered "wounded" or "sick" depended on the circumstances. Soldiers were personally faulted for their mental breakdown rather than their war experience. The large proportion of World War I veterans in

19710-472: Was declared in September 1939, including most of the available U-boats and the "pocket battleships" Deutschland and Admiral Graf Spee which had sortied into the Atlantic in August. These ships immediately attacked British and French shipping. U-30 sank the ocean liner SS  Athenia within hours of the declaration of war—in breach of her orders not to sink passenger ships. The U-boat fleet, which

19856-435: Was deeply flawed because a U-boat, with its tiny silhouette, was always likely to spot the surface warships and submerge long before it was sighted. The carrier aircraft were little help; although they could spot submarines on the surface, at this stage of the war they had no adequate weapons to attack them, and any submarine found by an aircraft was long gone by the time surface warships arrived. The hunting group strategy proved

20002-463: Was initiated. Merchant ships that were either too fast or too slow for convoys, were to be equipped with a self-defence gun against surfaced submarine attacks, thus forcing an attacking U-boat to spend its precious torpedoes. This, however, removed these ships from the protection of the cruiser rules under the prize law . Nevertheless, despite this lack of readiness, in 1939 the Royal Navy probably had as many ASDIC equipped warships in service as all

20148-550: Was no longer with most of the fellow soldiers he trained with. Appel helped implement a 180-day limit for soldiers in active combat and suggested that the war be made more meaningful, emphasizing their enemies' plans to conquer the United States, encouraging soldiers to fight to prevent what they had seen happen in other countries happen to their families. Other psychiatrists believed that letters from home discouraged soldiers by increasing nostalgia and needlessly mentioning problems soldiers could not solve. William Menninger said after

20294-470: Was prevented by the high quality of leadership. But, he added, that if a soldier did break down and could not continue fighting, it was a leadership problem, not one for medical personnel or psychiatrists. Breakdown (he said) usually took the form of unwillingness to fight or cowardice. However, as World War II progressed there was a profound rise in stress casualties from 1% of hospitalizations in 1935 to 6% in 1942. Another German psychiatrist reported after

20440-511: Was referred to by U-boat crews as "the Happy Time" (" Die Glückliche Zeit "). Churchill would later write: "...the only thing that ever frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril". The biggest challenge for the U-boats was to find the convoys in the vastness of the ocean. The Germans had a handful of very long-range Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor aircraft based at Bordeaux and Stavanger , which were used for reconnaissance. The Condor

20586-788: Was simple: the patients were to be bullied and harassed until they returned to front line service. Earlier, during the Winter War , several Finnish machine gun operators on the Karelian Isthmus theatre became mentally unstable after repelling several unsuccessful Soviet human wave assaults on fortified Finnish positions. Simplicity was added to the PIE principles by the Israelis: in their view, treatment should be brief, supportive, and could be provided by those without sophisticated training. Peacekeeping provides its own stresses because its emphasis on rules of engagement contains

20732-529: Was surpassed a month later when Günther Prien in U-47 penetrated the British base at Scapa Flow and sank the old battleship HMS  Royal Oak at anchor, immediately becoming a hero in Germany. In the South Atlantic, British forces were stretched by the cruise of Admiral Graf Spee , which sank nine merchant ships of 50,000  gross register tons  (GRT) in the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean during

20878-412: Was the case in Europe. Coupled with the monotonous, hot, sickly environment, the result was bad morale that jaded veterans quickly passed along to newcomers. After a few months, epidemics of combat fatigue would drastically reduce the efficiency of units. Flight surgeons reported that the men who had been at jungle airfields longest were in bad shape: Unlike the Americans, the British leaders firmly held

21024-498: Was to be many months before these ships contributed to the campaign. The early U-boat operations from the French bases were spectacularly successful. This was the heyday of the great U-boat aces like Günther Prien of U-47 , Otto Kretschmer ( U-99 ), Joachim Schepke ( U-100 ), Engelbert Endrass ( U-46 ), Victor Oehrn ( U-37 ) and Heinrich Bleichrodt ( U-48 ). U-boat crews became heroes in Germany. From June until October 1940, over 270 Allied ships were sunk; this period

21170-403: Was to dominate so much of the Battle of the Atlantic, was small at the beginning of the war; many of the 57 available U-boats were the small and short-range Type IIs , useful primarily for minelaying and operations in British coastal waters. Much of the early German anti-shipping activity involved minelaying by destroyers , aircraft and U-boats off British ports. With the outbreak of war,

21316-416: Was to pass over the submarine, rolling depth charges from chutes at the stern, while throwers fired further charges to either side, laying a pattern of depth charges. To effectively disable a submarine, a depth charge had to explode within about 20 ft (6.1 m). Since early ASDIC equipment was poor at determining depth, it was usual to vary the depth settings on part of the pattern. When in spring 1939

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