Wartime representations of the Royal Navy submarine service in the British press

Dr Rob James, Senior Lecturer and Course Lead for the MA Naval, Maritime and Coastal History, has recently published an article, co-written with one of the MA’s alumni students, Martin Backhouse, in the journal War in History.

The article, ‘Un-silencing “The Most Silent Section of ‘The Silent Service’’’: The Portrayal of Royal Navy Submarines and Submariners in the Illustrated London News, 1939-1945’, examines the portrayal of Royal Navy submarines and their crews in the world’s first weekly illustrated newspaper, the Illustrated London News, during the Second World War. It argues that the newspaper depicted Britain as having a technologically advanced and potent submarine service, whose personnel were part of an elite force of men.

‘Life in a Submarine: Men of the Royal Navy Whose Gallant Work is an Outstanding Feature of the War’, Illustrated London News, 27 June 1942. Used with the permission of the Mary Evans Picture Library.

Significantly, the Illustrated London News suggested to its readership that Britain had a distinct advantage over its enemies in submarine warfare, and was thus capable of winning the war. In that sense, while the messages provided in the newspaper performed an instructive role by educating and informing the British public about the service’s wartime conduct, they could have also served a much greater role in helping to boost civilian morale at a time when the country was engaged in a battle for national survival. In that way, the newspaper’s coverage could generate not only pride, but also confidence, in Britain’s submarine warfare capabilities.

The Illustrated London News thus followed a tradition of using popular media publications to inform the British public of the submarine service’s role in wartime. However, in keeping with the ‘People’s War’ ethos of the Second World War, greater attention was paid to the service’s personnel (see Image 1). Both submarine and submariner were thus adopted as ideal subjects for popular media representation to help bolster the war effort. In short, by un-silencing ‘the most silent section of the “silent service”’, the Illustrated London News helped to reinforce the status of the submarine service and its personnel at a crucial time in both the Royal Navy’s and country’s history.