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Concept
Q-ship
Summary
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 use of Q-ships contributed to the abandonment of cruiser rules restricting attacks on unarmed merchant ships and to the shift to unrestricted submarine warfare in the 20th century.
They were used by the British Royal Navy and the German Kaiserliche Marine during the First World War and by the Royal Navy, the Kriegsmarine, the Imperial Japanese Navy, and the United States Navy during the Second World War (1939–45).
Short for Queenstown in Ireland, as Haulbowline Dockyard in Cork Harbour was responsible for the conversion of many mercantile steamers to armed decoy ships in World War One, although the majority appear to have been converted in larger navy yards such as Devonport.
In the 1670s, was specially designed to counter the attacks of Algerian corsairs or pirates in the Mediterranean by masquerading as a merchantman, hiding her armament behind false bulkheads. She was also provided with various means of changing her appearance.
During the French Revolutionary Wars, a French brig disguised as a merchantman, with hidden guns and most of her crew below decks, was beaten back by the privateer lugger Vulture out of Jersey.
In 1915, during the First Battle of the Atlantic, Britain was in desperate need of a countermeasure against the U-boats that were strangling its sea-lanes. Convoys, which had proved effective in earlier times (and would again prove effective during the Second World War), were rejected by the resource-strapped Admiralty and the independent captains. Depth charges of the time were relatively primitive, and almost the only chance of sinking a submarine was by gunfire or by ramming while on the surface. The problem was how to lure the U-boat to the surface.
A solution to this was the creation of the Q-ship, one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war.
Official source
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