Hello

I've spent the morning at the Royal Navy Museum's Library at Portsmouth looking at an unpublished book sent across from the Royal Navy Historical Library proper. The latter library carries current classified material and is difficult to get into. 'The History of British Minelaying 1914-1918' by Captain Lockhart Leith may be little known and of interest to u-boat hunters.

Written in 1920 with only three copies made, Leith set out to list all the British mines and minefields laid during the war. With a very detailed appendix, the two-volume document covers some 530 bound foolscap pages. Sadly, an extra volume of charts which was added in 1932 is no longer attached and is suspected lost.

It may be that much of the constituent material is taken from other documents, and also out-of-date, but I suspect that the definitive accounts and numbers, dates and places of mines laid, and by which ships, is unique.

Why I raise the document in this forum is because of the large number of u-boats mentioned as being sunk or probably / possibly sunk by mines (detailed down to American / British mines), many of them with dates, recorded positions, minefields and background details.

Included under various categories are U 5, 11, 13, 20, 28, 59, 75, 86, 92, 102, 109, 113, 156; UB 12, 22, 31, 33, 38, 56, 55, 57, 58, 61, 62, 81, 103, 104, 109, 116, 127, 138; UC 1, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 21, 30, 32, 42, 44, 51, 62, 64, 78. I have cross-checked none of these against uboat.net. I also hope that my number transcriptions are correct. I have photographs of some pages; the library doesn't do copies.

The document also covers destroyers, torpedo boats, minesweeping vessels, barrier breakers, armed trawlers and larger vessels sunk or damaged.

Best wishes
Chris Heal