Naval mine ship, HMHS "Britannic", which was the sister ship of the RMS "Titanic." During World War II, the U-boat fleet, which dominated much of the battle of the Atlantic, was small at the beginning of the war and much of the early action by German forces involved mining convoy routes and ports around Britain. German submarines also operated in the Mediterranean Sea, in the Caribbean Sea, and along the U.S. coast. Initially, contact mines (requiring a ship to physically strike a mine to detonate it) were employed, usually tethered at the end of a cable just below the surface of the
A- and B-class destroyer July 1940. was sunk by a mine off the Isle of Wight on 17 December 1940. was sunk by two large German heavy cruisers, and "Lützow". was so badly damaged when the ammunition ship blew up on 4 August 1943 at Algiers that she could not be repaired and was towed to Taranto and paid off. "Skeena" was wrecked in a storm off Iceland on 25 October 1944. "Saguenay" was heavily damaged in a collision with the merchant ship "Azara" and was consigned to the role of a training ship after being repaired. The surviving ships were worn out from