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
Italian hospital ship Ramb IV Italian hospital ship Ramb IV Ramb IV was an Italian hospital ship, built at Monfalcone by the United Yards of the Adriatic ("Cantieri Riuniti dell'Adriatico", CRDA) in 1938. "Ramb IV" was the last of four sister ships all built to the same design. The other ships were the , , and the . The four ships were built for the Royal Banana Monopoly Business ("Regia Azienda Monopolio Banane"). These ships were originally devised as "banana boats" for transporting refrigerated bananas from Somaliland and Eritrea in Italian East Africa. In the event of war, the design of "Ramb IV" allowed it