Mark Lardas, U-Boat vs Royal Navy Capital Ship (Osprey, 2026)
In World War II, German U-boats sank two Royal Navy battleships and three fleet carriers. They also damaged battleships in twenty-four different engagements. They did all that for the loss of only two submarines. Mark Lardas thinks that is a story worth telling, and he is right, but there was more to this startling statistic than meets the eye.
Lardas draws his readers into his story with the dramatic sinking of HMS Barham in November 1941. After that tease, he provides a strategic overview of the post-WWI naval competition between Germany and Britain when the British allowed the Germans to keep their U-boats, believing they were obsolete. They were correct in the long term, notes Lardas, but not initially because when the war broke out, the British were not ready. Fortunately for them, neither were the Germans. Lardas expands on that, examining the design and development of the U-boats, battleships, and carriers that would play out this cat-and-mouse warfare from Norway to the Mediterranean. Lardas also surveys the technical aspects of the boats and ships, including weaponry and detection methods. He then compares the respective crews, including box-out texts on tragic heroes Günther Prien and William Tofield Makeig-Jones, both of whom went down with their ships.
With the scene set, Lardas moves on to narrate the fleeting but momentous encounters between U-boats and their intended Royal Navy targets. That follows a chronological format, tracing U-boat attacks through the war. They include the attempt on HMS Ark Royal in September 1939 and the sinking of HMS Courageous three days later. Then came the infamous sinking of HMS Royal Oak at ‘safe’ anchor in Scapa Flow. April 1940 operations around Narvik, in Norway, proved frustrating for the U-boats despite their best efforts to hit RN capital ships. Lardas follows the action into the Atlantic from June 1940 to October 1941, then we move into the Mediterranean and the losses of HMS Ark Royal and HMS Eagle. The final attack on a capital ship came in November 1942. Lardas attributes that to improved anti-submarine warfare tactics, Allied control over the North African coast, and the reduced Allied emphasis on naval warfare. The attacks, he concludes, ‘simply stopped’. Lardas closes with statistics and analysis of the various encounters between U-boats and RN capital ships.
Despite its unsexy title, U-Boat vs Royal Navy Capital Ship is an interesting delve into a combat scenario that wasn’t meant to happen: capital ships were supposed to be shielded from U-boats, but when that failed, the results could be spectacular. Mark Lardas’s book explains how that happened, tracing the roots of maritime disaster back to the pre-war period and flawed designs and planning. He could have devoted more space to the combat narratives, but that may be unfair given the format restrictions. Lardas’s engaging text is well supported by Osprey’s excellent illustrations, graphic artwork, and selection of photographs. World War II naval enthusiasts will enjoy this book, but it will appeal to any military history student.
