Aircraft and Submarines
A mere plank is the gangway to the little vessel. As the commander, followed by his officers, comes aboard, a sailor hands to each a ball of cotton-waste, the sign and symbol of a submarine officer, which never leaves his hand. For the steel walls of his craft, the doors, and the companion-ladder all sweat oil, and at every touch the hands must be wiped dry. The doorways are narrow round holes. Through one of the holes aft the commander descends by a breakneck iron ladder into the black hole lit by electric glow-lamps. The air is heavy with the smell of oil, and to the unaccustomed longshoreman it is almost choking, though the hatches are off. The submarine man breathes this air as if it were the purest ozone. Here in the engine-room aft men must live and strain every nerve even if for days at a time every crack whereby the fresh air could get in is hermetically sealed. On their tense watchfulness thirty lives depend.
Here, too, are slung some hammocks, and in them one watch tries, and, what is more, succeeds in sleeping, though the men moving about bump them with head and elbows at every turn, and the low and narrow vault is full of the hum and purr of machinery. In length the vault is about ten feet, but if a man of normal stature stands in the middle and raises his arms to about half shoulder height his hands will touch the cold, moist steel walls on either side. A network of wires runs overhead, and there is a juggler's outfit of handles, levers, and instruments. The commander inspects everything minutely, then creeps through a hole into the central control station, where the chief engineer is at his post. With just about enough assistance to run a fairly simple machine ashore the chief engineer of a submarine is expected to control, correct, and, if necessary, repair at sea an infinitely complex machinery which must not break down for an instant if thirty men are to return alive to the hulk.
Forward is another narrow steel vault serving at once as engine-room and crew's quarters. Next to it is a place like a cupboard, where the cook has just room to stand in front of his doll's house galley-stove. It is electrically heated, that the already oppressive air may not be further vitiated by smoke or fumes. A German submarine in any case smells perpetually of coffee and cabbage. Two little cabins of the size of a decent clothes-chest take the deck and engine-room officers, four of them. Another box cabin is reserved for the commander – when he has time to occupy it.
At daybreak the commander comes on deck in coat and trousers of black leather lined with wool, a protection against oil, cold, and sea-water. The crew at their stations await the command to cast off.
"Machines clear," calls a voice from the control-station and "Clear ship," snaps the order from the bridge. Then "Cast-off!" The cables slap on to the landing-stage, the engines begin to purr, and U-47 slides away into open water.
A few cable-lengths away another submarine appears homeward bound. She is the U-20 returning from a long cruise in which she succeeded in sinking a ship bound with a cargo of frozen mutton for England.
"Good luck, old sheep-butcher," sings the commander of U-47 as the sister-ship passes within hail.
The seas are heavier now, and U-47 rolls unpleasantly as she makes the light-ship and answers the last salute from a friendly hand. The two officers on the bridge turn once to look at the light-ship already astern, then their eyes look seaward. It is rough, stormy weather. If the egg-shell goes ahead two or three days without a stop, the officers in charge will get no sleep for just that long. If it gets any rougher they will be tied to the bridge-rails to avoid being swept overboard. If they are hungry, plates of soup will be brought to them on the bridge, and the North Sea will attend to its salting for them.
Frequently this "meal" is interrupted by some announcement from the watch, such as: "Smoke on the horizon off the port bow." Then – so we are told:
The commander drops his plate, shouts a short, crisp command, and an electric alarm whirs inside the egg-shell. The ship buzzes like a hive. Then water begins to gurgle into the ballast-tanks, and U-47 sinks until only her periscope shows.
"The steamship is a Dutchman, sir," calls the watch officer. The commander inspects her with the aid of a periscope. She has no wireless and is bound for the Continent. So he can come up and is glad, because moving under the water consumes electricity, and the usefulness of a submarine is measured by her electric power.
After fifty-four hours of waking nerve tension, sleep becomes a necessity. So the ballast-tanks are filled and the nutshell sinks to the sandy bottom. This is the time for sleep aboard a submarine, because a sleeping man consumes less of the precious oxygen than one awake and busy. So a submarine man has three principal lessons to learn – to keep every faculty at tension when he is awake, to keep stern silence when he is ashore (there is a warning against talkativeness in all the German railway-carriages now), and to sleep instantly when he gets a legitimate opportunity. His sleep and the economy of oxygen may save the ship. However, the commander allows half an hour's grace for music. There is a gramophone, of course, and the "ship's band" performs on all manner of instruments. At worst, a comb with a bit of tissue paper is pressed into service.
Another American who suffered an enforced voyage on an unterseeboot made public later some of his experiences. His captor's craft was a good sized one – about 250 feet long, with a crew of 35 men and mounting two 4-½ inch guns. She could make 18 knots on the surface and 11 submerged and had a radius of 3200 miles of action. Her accommodations were not uncomfortable. Each officer had a separate cabin while the crew were bunked along either side of a narrow passage. The ventilation was excellent, and her officers declared that they could stand twenty-four hours continuous submergence without discomfort, after that for six hours it was uncomfortable, and thereafter intolerable because of the exudation of moisture – or sweating – from every part. At such times all below have to wear leather suits. The food was varied and cooked on an electric stove. The original stores included preserved pork and beef, vegetables, tinned soups, fruits, raisins, biscuits, butter, marmalade, milk, tea, and coffee. But the pleasures of the table depended greatly on the number of their prizes, for whenever possible they made every ship captured contribute heavily to their larder before sinking her. Of the tactics followed the observer writes:
It appears that 55 per cent., or more than half, of the torpedoes fired miss their mark, and with this average they seem satisfied. Once they let go at a ship two torpedoes at 3000 yards' range, and both missed, the range being too long but they did not care to come any nearer, as they believed the ship to be well armed.
They prefer to fire at 500 to 700 yards, which means that at this range the track or "wake" of a projectile would be discernible for, say, twenty-five to thirty seconds – not much time, indeed, for any ship to get out of the way. At 100 yards' range or less they do not care to fire unless compelled to, as the torpedo is nearly always discharged when the submarine is lying ahead of the object, i. e., to hit the ship coming up to it; it follows that a gun forward is more useful than one aft, the gun aft being of real service when a submarine starts shelling, which she will do for choice from aft the ship rather than from forward of her, where she would be in danger of being run over and rammed.
ЯCHAPTER XVI
SUBMARINE WARFARE
At the moment of writing these words the outcome of the greatest war the world has ever known is believed by many to hang upon the success with which the Allies can meet and defeat the campaign of the German submarines. The German people believe this absolutely. The Allies and their sympathizers grudgingly admit that they are only too fearful that it may be true.
To such a marvellous degree of military efficiency has the ingenuity of man brought these boats which so recently as our Civil War were still in the vaguest experimental stage and scarcely possessed of any offensive power whatsoever!
Nevertheless these machines had reached a degree of development, and had demonstrated their dangerous character so early in the war that it was amazing that the British were so slow in comprehending the use that might be made of them in cutting off British commerce. It is true that the first submarine actions redounded in their results entirely to British credit. In September of 1914 a British submarine ran gallantly into Heligoland Bay and sank the German light cruiser Hela at her moorings. Shortly after the Germans sought retaliation by attacking a British squadron, but the effort miscarried. The British cruiser Birmingham caught a glimpse of her wake and with a well-aimed shot destroyed her periscope. The submarine dived, but shortly afterwards came up again making what was called a porpoise dive – that is to say, she came up just long enough for the officer in the conning tower to locate the enemy, then submerged again. Brief, however, as had been the appearance of the conning tower, the British put a shell into it and in a few minutes the submarine and most of her crew were at the bottom of the sea.
Soon after followed the attack upon and sinking of the three cruisers by the submarine under the command of Lieutenant Commander Otto von Weddigen, the narrative of which we have already told. But while after that attacks upon British armed ships were many, successes were few. There were no German ships at sea for the British to attack in turn, but some very gallant work was done by their submarines against Austrian and Turkish warships in the Mediterranean and the Dardanelles. All this time the Germans were preparing for that warfare upon the merchant shipping of all countries which at the end they came to believe would force the conclusion of the war. It seems curious that during this early period the Allies were able to devise no method of meeting this form of attack. When the United States entered the war more than three years later they looked to us for the instant invention of some effective anti-submarine weapon. If they were disappointed at our failure at once to produce one, they should have remembered at least that they too were baffled by the situation although it was presented to them long before it became part of our problems.
About no feature of the war have the belligerents thrown more of mystery than about the circumstances attending submarine attacks upon battleships and armed transports and the method employed of meeting them. Even when later in the war the Germans apparently driven to frenzy made special efforts to sink hospital and Red Cross ships the facts were concealed by the censors, and accounts of the efforts made to balk such inhuman and unchristian practices diligently suppressed. In the end it seemed that the British, who of course led all naval activities, had reached the conclusion that only by the maintenance of an enormous fleet of patrol boats could the submarines be kept in check. This method they have applied unremittingly. Alfred Noyes in a publication authorized by the British government has thus picturesquely told some of the incidents connected with this service:
It is difficult to convey in words the wide sweep and subtle co-ordination of this ocean hunting; for the beginning of any tale may be known only to an admiral in a London office, the middle of it only to a commander at Kirkwall, and the end of it only to a trawler skipper off the coast of Ireland. But here and there it is possible to piece the fragments together into a complete adventure, as in the following record of a successful chase, where the glorious facts outrun all the imaginations of the wildest melodrama.
There were suspicious vessels at anchor, one moonless night, in a small bay near the Mumbles. They lay there like shadows, but before long they knew that the night was alive for a hundred miles with silent talk about them. At dawn His Majesty's trawlers Golden Feather and Peggy Nutten foamed up, but the shadows had disappeared.
The trawlers were ordered to search the coast thoroughly for any submarine stores that might have been left there. "Thoroughly" in this war means a great deal. It means that even the bottom of the sea must be searched. This was done by grapnels; but the bottom was rocky and seemed unfit for a base. Nothing was found but a battered old lobster pot, crammed with seaweed and little green crabs.
Probably these appearances were more than usually deceitful; for shortly afterward watchers on the coast reported a strange fishing boat, with patched brown sails, heading for the suspected bay. Before the patrols came up, however, she seemed to be alarmed. The brown sails were suddenly taken in; the disguised conning tower was revealed, and this innocent fishing boat, gracefully submerging, left only the smiling and spotless April seas to the bewildered eyes of the coast guard.
In the meantime signals were pulsing and flashing on land and sea, and the U-boat had hardly dipped when, over the smooth green swell, a great sea hawk came whirring up to join the hunt, a hawk with light yellow wings and a body of service grey – the latest type of seaplane. It was one of those oily seas in which a watcher from the air may follow a submarine for miles, as an olive green shadow under the lighter green. The U-boat doubled twice; but it was half an hour before her sunken shadow was lost to sight under choppy blue waters, and long before that time she was evidently at ease in her mind and pursuing a steady course. For the moment her trail was then lost, and the hawk, having reported her course, dropped out of the tale.
The next morning in the direction indicated by that report several patrol boats heard the sound of gunfire and overhauled a steamer which had been attacked by a submarine. They gave chase by "starring" to all the points of the compass, but could not locate the enemy. A little later, however, another trawler observed the wash of a submarine crossing her stern about two hundred yards away. The trawler star-boarded, got into the wake of the submarine and tried to ram her at full speed. She failed to do this, as the U-boat was at too great a depth. The enemy disappeared, and again the trawlers gathered and "starred."
In the meantime, certain nets had been shot, and, though the inclosed waters were very wide, it was quite certain that the submarine was contained within them. Some hours later another trawler heard firing and rushed toward the sound. About sunset she sighted a submarine which was just dipping. The trawler opened fire at once without result. The light was very bad and it was very difficult to trace the enemy, but the trawler continued the search, and about midnight she observed a small light close to the water. She steamed within a few yards of it and hailed, thinking it was a small boat. There was a considerable amount of wreckage about, which was afterward proved to be the remains of a patrol vessel sunk by the submarine. There was no reply to the hail, and the light instantly disappeared. For the third time the patrols gathered and "starred" from this new point.
And here the tale was taken up by a sailor who was in command of another trawler at the time. I give it, so far as possible, in his own words.
"About 4 o'clock in the morning I was called by Deckhand William Brown to come on deck and see if an object sighted was a submarine. I did so, and saw a submarine about a mile distant on the port bow. I gave the order, 'Hard a-starboard.' The ship was turned until the gun was able to bear on the submarine, and it was kept bearing. At the same time I ordered hands to station, and about ten minutes afterward I gave the order to fire. The submarine immediately altered her course from W. to N. N. W., and went away from us very fast. I burned lights to attract the attention of the drifters, and we followed at our utmost speed, making about eight knots and shipping light sprays. We fired another shot about two minutes later, but it was breaking dawn, and we were unable to see the fall of the shots. After the second shot the submarine submerged. I hoisted warning signals and about half an hour later I saw a large steamer turning round, distant between two and three miles on our starboard beam. I headed toward her, keeping the gun trained on her, as I expected, judging by her action, that she had smelt the submarine. When we were about a mile and a half from the steamer I saw the submarine half a mile astern of her. We opened fire again, and gave her four shots, with about two minutes between 'em. The submarine then dodged behind the off quarter of the steamer."
He paused to light his pipe, and added, quite gravely, "When she had disappeared behind the steamer I gave the order 'Cease fire,' to avoid hitting the larger vessel."
I made a mental note of his thoughtfulness; but, not for worlds would I have shown any doubt of his power to blast his way, if necessary, through all the wood and iron in the universe; and I was glad that the blue clouds of our smoke mingled for a moment between us.
"I saw two white boats off the port quarter," he continued. "But I paid no attention to them. I ordered the helm to be star-boarded a bit more, and told the gunner to train his gun on the bow of the steamer; for I expected the submarine to show there next. A few minutes later she did so, and when she drew ahead I gave the order to fire. I should say we were about a mile and a quarter away. We gave him two more shots and they dropped very close, as the spray rose over his conning tower. He altered his course directly away from us, and we continued to fire. The third shot smothered his conning tower with spray. I did not see the fourth and fifth shots pitch. There was no splash visible, although it was then broad daylight; so I believe they must have hit him. A few moments after this the submarine disappeared.
"I turned, then, toward the two white boats and hailed them. The chief officer of the steamer was in charge of one. They were returning to their ship, and told me that we had hit the submarine. We escorted them through the nets and parted very good friends."
"But how did you get the scalp of this U-boat?" I asked.
"We signalled to the admiral, and sent the Daffy to investigate. She found the place, all right. It was a choppy sea, but there was one smooth patch in it, just where we told 'em the submarine had disappeared; a big patch of water like wavy satin, two or three hundred yards of it, coloured like the stripes on mackerel, all blue and green with oil. They took a specimen of the oil."
"Did it satisfy the Admiralty?"
"No. Nothing satisfies the Admiralty but certainties. They count the minimum losses of the enemy, and the maximum of their own. Very proper, too. Then you know where you are. But, mind you, I don't believe we finished him off that morning. Oil don't prove that. It only proves we hit him. I believe it was the 'Maggie and Rose' that killed him, or the 'Hawthorn.' No; it wasn't either. It was the 'Loch Awe.'"
"How was that?"
"Well, as Commander White was telling you, we'd shot out nets to the north and south of him. There were two or three hundred miles, perhaps, in which he might wriggle about; but he couldn't get out of the trap, even if he knew where to look for the danger. He tried to run for home, and that's what finished him. They'll tell you all about that on the 'Loch Awe.'"
So the next day I heard the end of the yarn from a sandy-haired skipper in a trawler whose old romantic name was dark with new significance. He was terribly logical. In his cabin – a comfortable room with a fine big stove – he had a picture of his wife and daughters, all very rigid and uncomfortable. He also had three books. They included neither Burns nor Scott. One was the Bible, thumbed by his grandfather and his father till the paper had worn yellow and thin at the sides. The second, I am sorry to say, was called The Beautiful White Devil. The third was an odd volume of Froude in the Everyman edition. It dealt with the Armada.
"I was towin' my nets wi' the rest o' my group," he said, "till about 3 o'clock i' the mornin' on yon occasion. It was fine weather wi' a kind o' haar. All at once, my ship gaed six points aff her coorse, frae S. E. to E. N. E., and I jaloused that the nets had been fouled by some muckle movin' body. I gave orders to pit the wheel hard a-port, but she wouldna answer. Suddenly the strain on the nets stoppit.
"I needna tell you what had happened. Of course, it was preceesely what the Admiralty had arranged tae happen when gentlemen in undersea boats try to cut their way through our nets. Mind ye, thae nets are verra expensive."
A different situation, however, has lately developed in the more unequal fight between submarines and merchant vessels. There the submarine unquestionably has gained and maintained supremacy. Two factors are primarily responsible for this: lack of speed and lack of armament on the part of the merchantman. Of course, recently the latter condition has been changed and apparently with good success. But even at best, an armed merchantman has a rather slim chance at escape. Neither space nor available equipment permits a general arming of merchantmen to a sufficient degree to make it possible for the latter to attack a submarine from any considerable distance. Then, too, what chance has a merchant vessel unprotected by patrol boats to escape the torpedo of a hidden submarine? How successfully this question will finally be solved, the future only will show. At present it bids fair to become one of the deciding factors in determining the final issue of this war.
The first authentically known case of an attack without warning by a German submarine against an allied merchantman was the torpedoing of the French steamship Amiral Ganteaume on October 26, 1914, in the English Channel. The steamer was sunk and thirty of its passengers and crew were lost. A number of other attacks followed during the remainder of 1914 and in January, 1915. Then came on February 3, 1915, the now famous pronouncement of the German Government declaring "all the waters around Great Britain and Ireland, including the whole of the English Channel, a war zone," and announcing that on and after Feb. 18th, Germany "will attempt to destroy every enemy ship found in that war zone, without its being always possible to avoid the danger that will thus threaten neutral persons and ships." Germany gave warning that "it cannot be responsible hereafter for the safety of crews, passengers, and cargoes of such ships," and it furthermore "calls the attention of neutrals to the fact that it would be well for their ships to avoid entering this zone, for, although the German naval forces are instructed to avoid all violence to neutral ships, in so far as these can be recognized, the order given by the British Government to hoist neutral flags and the contingencies of naval warfare might be the cause of these ships becoming the victims of an attack directed against the vessels of the enemy."
This was the beginning of the submarine controversy between Germany and the United States and resulted in a note from the United States Government in which it was stated that the latter viewed the possibilities created by the German note
with such grave concern, that it feels it to be its privilege, and, indeed, its duty, in the circumstances to request the Imperial German Government to consider before action is taken the critical situation in respect of the relation between this country and Germany which might arise were the German naval forces, in carrying out the policy foreshadowed in the Admiralty's proclamation, to destroy any merchant vessel of the United States or cause the death of American citizens: – To declare and exercise a right to attack and destroy any vessel entering a prescribed area of the high seas without first certainly determining its belligerent nationality and the contraband character of its cargo would be an act so unprecedented in naval warfare that this Government is reluctant to believe that the Imperial Government of Germany in this case contemplates it as possible.
After stating that the destruction of American ships or American lives on the high seas would be difficult to reconcile with the friendly relations existing between the two Governments, the note adds that the United States "would be constrained to hold the Imperial Government of Germany to a strict accountability for such acts of their naval authorities, and to take any steps it might feel necessary to take to safeguard American lives and property and to secure to American citizens the full enjoyment of their acknowledged rights on the high seas."
