Secret Men of War

While there many ship battles between the Q and U boats, unfortunately due to everyone’s disappointment, many of the Q ships were sunk without a trace. In the South West, ships of various shapes and sizes were transformed into trawlers, steamers, schooners and cargo ships. These would have been secretly transformed into men of war. These ships were given the nickname of Q ships. The original story goes back to the original ‘Q’ numbers that were being given to some of these special service decoy vessels. They decided to hide the weaponry under dummy lifeboats or if that didn’t work, they hide them under fake funnels and awnings. But the most effective process they used was painting the weaponry so that they could hide their cache. The whole concept behind these ideas was to lure the U boats into attacking the decoy ships, which would unleash their hidden weaponry. The men’s courageous story’s were little known to the public as their considered their missions as being secret.