Q-ships

The Oxford Companion to World War II | 2001 | 687 words | Copyright

Q-ships, disguised armed Allied merchantmen designed to lure Axis submarines into a surface attack so that they could be sunk by gunfire. They had been used with some success during the First World War and the US Navy commissioned several in 1942, but they never sank anything. One was torpedoed with the loss of 141 men—a quarter of the total personnel employed on Q-ships—so that statistically they proved to be more hazardous than any other branch of the US armed forces. The British, who called them decoy ships, fitted out eight between October 1939 and March 1940. None ever achieved anything: two were torpedoed and the remainder were withdrawn in December 1940.

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I. C. B. DEAR and M. R. D. FOOT. "Q-ships." The Oxford Companion to World War II. 2001. Encyclopedia.com. 27 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

I. C. B. DEAR and M. R. D. FOOT. "Q-ships." The Oxford Companion to World War II. 2001. Encyclopedia.com. (May 27, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O129-Qships.html

I. C. B. DEAR and M. R. D. FOOT. "Q-ships." The Oxford Companion to World War II. 2001. Retrieved May 27, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O129-Qships.html

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