_Germany’s Submersible Fleet_
“_The submarine is the hunted to-day._”—SIR ERIC GEDDES.
In the first phase of the Underseas War torpedoes were the favourite
weapons of the U-boat. The work was done more effectively and quicker
than was possible with the comparatively small guns then mounted. Later,
the number of ships attacked by shellfire rapidly increased. This was
due to several reasons. The second method of attack was considerably
less expensive, for a torpedo costs anything from £750 to £1000.
Comparatively few merchant vessels had any means of defence, for ramming
was seldom practicable, and other dodges, such as obscuring the vessel
by voluminous smoke from the funnels, and steering stern on, thus
presenting a relatively small target, were equally uncertain. Altogether
the submarine had things very much her own way. She could carry an
augmented provision of ammunition, and the difficulties of supply were
more easily met. It takes longer to make a torpedo than to turn a shell;
to train a torpedo expert than a gunner. If no British patrol were at
hand, the German commander could safely risk waging war on the surface.
He did not have to return to his base so frequently for the purpose of
replenishing empty magazines, and he was saving money for the dear
Fatherland. With increasing range of action the necessity for conserving
torpedoes became more pronounced. The menace grew to such proportions in
the Mediterranean that it was found necessary to send vessels by the
long Cape route instead of _via_ the Suez Canal.
When slow-moving John Bull at last bestirred himself and decided to arm
merchantmen, the risks of an exposed U-boat were considerably increased.
The torpedo again came into her own. As Mr Winston Churchill told the
House of Commons,[19] “the effect of putting guns on a merchant ship is
to drive the submarine to abandon the use of the gun, to lose its
surface speed, and to fall back on the much slower speed under water and
the use of the torpedo. The torpedo, compared with the gun, is a weapon
of much more limited application.”
Germany’s maritime faith being based on the U-boat, despite the Kaiser’s
dictum that “our future lies on the water,” many keen scientific brains
there had a part in its recent evolution. Whereas in 1914 the latest
type, such as U 30, could travel 300 miles submerged or 3500 miles
entirely on the surface—the latter trip an impossibility, of course,
with the British Navy in being—at least 8800 miles were traversed by the
submarine which in 1918 bombarded Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, on
the west coast of Africa. This is assuming that she returned to her home
port in Europe.
The following table, in which round figures are used, will help us to
appraise Germany’s progress in the construction of U-boats previous to
the outbreak of hostilities. It is based on what is considered to be
reliable evidence, although the difficulty of obtaining accurate figures
will be appreciated. I shall refer to the larger types later.
U 1 (1905).—Submerged displacement, 236 tons. Surface engines, 250
H.P.; electric motors, 100 H.P. Speed, 10 knots on surface, 7 knots
submerged. Surface range, from 700 to 800 miles. Armament, one
torpedo-tube in bow. Complement, nine officers and men.
U 2–U 8 (1907–10).—Submerged displacement, 250 tons. Surface
engines, 400 H.P.; electric motors, 160 H.P. Speed, 12 knots on
surface, 8 knots submerged. Surface range, 1000 miles. Armament, two
torpedo-tubes in bow. Fitted with submarine signalling apparatus.
Complement, eleven officers and men.
U 9–U 18 (1910–12).—Submerged displacement, 300 tons. Surface
engines, 600 H.P. Speed, 13 knots on surface, 8 knots submerged.
Surface range, 1500 miles. Armament, two torpedo-tubes in bow, one
torpedo-tube in stern. With U 13 anti-aircraft weapons were
introduced.
U 19–U 20 (1912–13).—Submerged displacement, 450 tons. Surface
engines, 650 H.P.; electric motors, 300 H.P. Speed, 13½ knots on
surface, 8 knots submerged. Surface range, 2000 miles. Armament, two
torpedo-tubes in bow, one torpedo-tube in stern, two 14–pdr. Q.F.
guns. Complement, seventeen officers and men.
U 21–U 24 (1912–13).—Submerged displacement, 800 tons. Surface
engines, 1200 H.P.; electric motors, 500 H.P. Speed, 14 knots on
surface, 9 knots submerged. Surface range, 3000 miles. Armament, two
torpedo-tubes in bow, two torpedo-tubes in stern, one 14–pdr. Q.F.
gun, two 1–pdr. anti-aircraft guns. Complement, twenty-five officers
and men.
[Illustration:
The Interior of a German Submarine
Showing the internal combustion engines for surface work, and the
motor-generators for driving the propellers when submerged.
]
U 25–U 30 (1913–14).—Submerged displacement, 900 tons. Surface
engines, 2000 H.P.; electric motors, 900 H.P. Speed, 18 knots on
surface, 10 knots submerged. Surface range, 4000 miles. Submerged
range, 300 miles. Armament, two torpedo-tubes in bow, two
torpedo-tubes in stern, two 14–pdr. Q.F. guns, two 1–pdr.
anti-aircraft guns. Complement, thirty to thirty-five officers and
men. Upper works lightly armoured. Fitted with wireless.
German U-boats are really submersibles. That is to say, the outer shell
conforms to the shape of an ordinary ship, with a broad deck, whereas
British submarines resemble a fat cigar. Internally they are
cylindrical, the space intervening between the compartments and the
shell affording accommodation for the ballast tanks. The theory is that
vessels built to this design are more seaworthy and easier to handle.
U 36, which was building when war broke out, was divided into ten
compartments, below which were the steel cylinders containing compressed
air for freshening the atmosphere, oil fuel, lubricating oil, and
water-ballast tanks, and the accumulators for driving the dynamos when
travelling beneath the surface. The officers’ combined ward-room and
sleeping quarters were for’ard, immediately behind the bow torpedo
compartment. Adjoining were the crew’s quarters, divided by a steel
bulkhead from the control chamber, situated below the conning-tower. In
the control chamber the steering wheel, periscope, projection table on
which a surface view was thrown after the manner of a camera obscura,
water-pressure dial, and other delicate and necessary instruments for
the safety and navigation of the ship were distributed. Proceeding
toward the stern, the petty officers’ quarters, the machine-room with
its heavy oil engines for surface work and electric motors for
progression when submerged, and the stern torpedo compartment were to be
found. U 36 was one of the “new Super-Dreadnought submarines,” to quote
an American correspondent who saw them under construction at Kiel. On
these, he added, “the Germans appear to be banking.”
The autumn of 1915 witnessed the introduction of mine-laying
submersibles. The trotyl-filled cylinders were dropped on recognized
trade routes without the slightest regard for the rights of neutrals.
The mines were kept in a special chamber, ingeniously contrived so that
it could be flooded without the water entering elsewhere, and released
through a trap-door. Thus another weapon was added to the submarine’s
armoury. It answered all too well. “They can follow your mine-sweeper,”
said Sir Edward Carson, “and as quickly as you sweep up mines they can
lay new ones without your knowing or suspecting.” In 1914 the enemy had
only one means of sowing these canisters of death, namely, by surface
vessels. It will be recollected that the _Königin Luise_ was sunk in the
North Sea on the morning of the 5th August while on this hazardous duty.
Germany’s opportunity for hurting us in this manner was of short
duration. The British Navy asserted itself, with the result that the
enemy was perforce compelled to find a new method. He resorted to the
use of specially fitted submarines.
In due course 4.1–in. guns, mounted on disappearing platforms, made
their _début_, followed by U-boats provided with two 5.9–in. guns. With
increase of gun-power came a necessary increase in size, and with both
several distinct advantages and disadvantages. The boats were less easy
to manœuvre, required augmented crews, and offered a larger area for
attack. Against these minus qualities must be set those of increase of
cruising range, and the possibility of spoil, the sole excuse of the
old-time pirate. Hitherto his more scientific successor could only sink
his victim. Now, given favourable conditions, he might carry off goods
useful to the Fatherland. One German U-boat secured twenty-two tons of
copper from merchantmen destroyed during a 5000–mile cruise.
Germany waxed particularly enthusiastic over her diving cruisers. These
boats displaced 5000 tons, were from 350 feet to 400 feet long, had a
much accelerated submerged and surface speed, were protected by an
armour belt of tough steel plate, and mounted a couple of 5.9–in. guns.
Some of these submersibles seem to have been driven by steam when in
surface trim, others by the usual Diesel engines. On the 11th May, 1918,
a British Atlantic escort submarine came across one of these fine
fellows travelling awash, likely enough anxious to have a shot at the
merchant convoy which the representative of His Majesty’s Navy was on
her way to pick up. A heavy sea was running at the time, but at
intervals between the waves the periscope revealed the position of his
rival to the British commander. One torpedo sufficed. The _Tauchkreuzer_
went down, carrying with her the sixty or seventy men who constituted
her company. There were no survivors. She had the distinction of being
the first of the type to be destroyed.
Germany’s merchant service, prizes of war, or driven off the seven seas
and growing barnacles in neutral or home ports, virtually ceased to
exist at the outbreak of hostilities. The mammoth liners which formerly
competed with our own no longer sailed the seas with their holds full of
cheap goods and their saloons alive with travellers bent on ‘peaceful
penetration’—and other things. It rankled in the bosoms of her shipping
magnates that the much-vaunted High Sea Fleet was impotent to prevent
Britain ‘carrying on’ commercially while conducting campaigns in all
parts of the world. It was true that Germany’s U-boats were making
inroads on the maritime resources of her enemy, that when hostilities
were over they might compete on more than even terms because of these
losses, but to-day rankled though to-morrow was full of hope. Likewise
the Economic Conference in Paris had declared its firm intention to
impose special conditions on German shipping after the war. _After_ the
war! The Director-General of the North German Lloyd Line said that the
English were not so unpractical as to reject a favourable freightage or
passage.
I cannot give you the name of the man or woman who first suggested the
possibilities of the submarine for business purposes. The idea was
certainly not a particularly novel one. All I can say definitely is that
the concern which owned the pioneer vessels was called the Ocean
Navigation Company, and that the president was Herr Alfred Lohmann. If
British merchantmen could use American ports, why not German commercial
submarines? The _Deutschland_ was built with this object in view.
Officially she was described as “a vessel engaged in the freight trade
between Bremen and Boston and other Eastern Atlantic ports.”
She left Heligoland on the 23rd June, 1916, and arrived at Norfolk News,
Virginia, seventeen days later. The German Press quite naturally went
into ecstasies over the achievement. Yet it was not quite such a unique
event as they imagined. Ten submarines built in Montreal had crossed the
Atlantic nine months before. The _Deutschland_ duly discharged her
cargo, stayed three weeks or so, and returned to Germany. The Kaiser
showed his pleasure by conferring decorations on Herr Lohmann and the
crew. Germany was again a maritime nation—of sorts.
The submersible had travelled no fewer than 8500 nautical miles. She
made a second voyage to America in October. This time her port of
arrival was New London, Connecticut. When starting on her return journey
she managed to get in collision with one of the escorting tugs, which
sank with the loss of seven of her crew. The _Deutschland_ was the
pioneer of seven similar boats said to be in course of construction. A
sister vessel, the _Bremen_, was launched and started on a voyage. She
is now some two years overdue.
Official Germany revealed no great faith in the possibilities of the
commercial submarine, though this does not necessarily mean that the
autocrats of the Wilhelmstrasse showed their real belief. It sometimes
suited them to lie. According to the _Frankfurter Zeitung_, £15,000,000
per annum was earmarked for the fostering of Germany’s moribund merchant
service in the next decade.
In October 1916 the depredations of U 53 off the American coast were
hailed by the population of Berlin and other German towns as a sure
prelude to peace. She was the first armed U-boat to cross the Atlantic,
but the German nation saw her multiplied by scores, if not by hundreds.
Many optimistic folk held the belief, based on the wonderful tales that
were told of huge Allied shipping losses, that the war would be over
before the dawn of a new year. Britons are not the only people who have
hugged delusions. After having put in at Newport News for a few hours
and been visited by various notabilities, U 53 took up a position off
the Nantucket Lightship, so well known to all Atlantic voyagers. She
then calmly proceeded to sink half a dozen ships—British, Dutch, and
Norwegian—under the nose of U.S. destroyers. According to accounts that
were published in American newspapers at the time, the submersible had
four torpedo-tubes, one 4–in. gun forward and one 3–in. gun aft, three
periscopes, wireless apparatus, and engines of 1200 h.p. that enabled
her to travel on the surface at eighteen knots. Her submerged speed was
understood to be some four knots less.
U-boats were built at the Vulkan and Blohm and Voss shipyards of
Hamburg; at Hoboken, in the former yards of the Société John
Cockerill;[20] at Puers, near Termonde; and at the great naval bases of
Kiel and Wilhelmshaven. Here the parts were assembled, for it is fairly
evident that the thousand and one units of a modern submersible were
constructed on many lathes in many parts of the Fatherland. For example,
it is believed that UC 5, the small mine-layer of 200 tons displacement
captured by the British Navy and exhibited off the Thames Embankment,
was brought in sections to Zeebrugge and put together there.
When German liners were compelled to keep in American ports owing to the
pressure of British sea-power, there seemed not the slightest likelihood
that the United States would become an active participant in the war. In
1917 these selfsame steamers were traversing 3000 miles of ocean with
armed tourists bound for Germany, giving the lie direct to the Imperial
Chancellor’s hopeful message that Uncle Sam could not “send and maintain
an army in Europe without injuring the transport and supply of the
existing Entente armies and jeopardizing the feeding of the Entente
people.” The mercantile marine of the United States is small, but with
the aid of former German vessels and British ships her troops defied the
submarine menace and were landed by the hundred thousand in France as
America’s splendid contribution toward the liberation of the world. The
spectacular appearance of the _Deutschland_ and U 53 fade into
insignificance before this amazing triumph.
Speaking at a luncheon given in London[21] in honour of American Press
representatives visiting England, Vice-Admiral Sims remarked that some
of his countrymen regarded it as a miracle of their Navy that it had got
a million and a half troops across the Atlantic in a few months and had
protected them on the way. “We didn’t do that,” he avowed. “Great
Britain did. She brought over two-thirds of them and escorted a half. We
escort only one-third of the merchant vessels that come here.”
America has been most generous in her appreciation of the part played by
Britain in the war.