STICKY ENDS OF L 43, U-C 1, AND U-B 20.
I.
James the One was awakened before daybreak on June 14 by the ringing of
his telephone bell.
The Duty Captain at the Admiralty informed him that the Little Woman at
Borkum said _Anna_ was at the Dogger Bank going south.
Consider the ringing of the bell the pebble dropped in the sleeping
pool, and observe how the ripples widened, and ever widened, until they
broke on the coast of Germany.
Number One rang up the Duty Officer, who slept, or rather did not
sleep, with a telephone for bedfellow, for James the One always
developed a thirst for information concerning station routine between
eleven o'clock at night and three o'clock in the morning.
The Duty Officer came into my cabin and turned me out. I pulled on my
woolly flying-boots, slipped into my shaggy fur coat, and jammed my
naval cap on my head. This early patrol costume was a perpetual offence
in the nostrils of Number One, and it must have looked odd to the
stolid and sleepy ratings when I danced with impatience on the slipway,
but it had the advantage of being warm and quick to get into.
I knocked at the door of Number One's cabin and entered, to find
him sitting up in bed examining a squared chart of the North Sea. A
squared chart is used when signalling secret information concerning our
own ships and aircraft or those of the enemy. I was informed of the
interesting peregrinations of _Anna_, and that twenty minutes before
she was at X.Y.B. centre.
Passing out through the mess I took a look at the recording barometer,
which was high and steady, and went out on the quarter-deck to look
at the weather. The stars were shining, a light east wind was barely
perceptible, and a thin mist shrouded the buildings of the station and
the ships in the harbour. But it looked as though the mist would lift,
so I crossed the quarter-deck to the ship's office, where I turned
out the Quartermaster, whom I found asleep, wrapped up in a blanket,
balanced in a perilous position on the edges of three chairs.
The Quartermaster, electric torch in hand, doubled over to the
officers' quarters, shook the Duty Steward, put a match to the
ready-laid galley fire, and called the Duty Pilots. He then turned out
the working party, the engineers, and the armourers, and warned the
wireless operator and the flying engineer.
By this time I was down in the dark seaplane shed, in which only a
single police light was burning, stumbling about among the monstrous
shapes of the sleeping flying-boats. The marine sentry, recognising me
by my language, turned on the roof electrics and flooded the shed with
light.
The working party filtered in stretching and yawning, and rolled back
the sixty-foot doors. They gathered round '77, which stood just inside
the doorway on her wheeled trolley. She was fitted with specially large
petrol tanks for the job in hand. At the word they pushed her out
sideways, jacked her up, removed the sideway wheels, turned her nose
towards the water, and handed her over to the engineers, who started
the engines.
The armourers fitted on the machine-guns and provided them with special
ammunition. The man told off for the purpose put on board a packet of
sandwiches, a bottle of water, the five days' emergency ration in case
the boat came down at sea, the Red Cross Box and the pigeons.
The oil in the engines being now warm, the engineers opened out one
engine at a time, the fierce slipstream from the propellers shaking
the whole tail of the boat and whirling up clouds of dust from the
concrete. A two-foot flame stood out from each exhaust pipe, and
particles of incandescent carbon, burning red, were blown backwards for
many yards. In daylight you cannot see the flame or carbon.
It was now just beginning to get light. An eight-knot easterly wind was
blowing, but a thick mist lay in the harbour, a mist too thick to take
off in. So the engines were shut off and I went up to the mess. Here I
found Billiken and Dickey devouring eggs and bacon, and joined them.
Billiken, a lad from Sault St Marie, Canada, was one of the best boat
pilots ever in the service.
There are only two kinds of boat pilots--the good and the bad. In the
spring of 1917 the good boat pilots could be counted on the fingers and
thumbs of two hands, and throughout the year there were probably never
more than twenty first-class men operating at the same time.
A good boat pilot is one who can handle his boat under any conditions,
a mist flier, a stout and determined fellow; one who can navigate and
trusts his own calculations; a tireless observer, who knows where and
what to look for; a possessor of sea sense and seamanship; a man of
physical stamina or nervous staying power; a man of quick and correct
thought and action, but, at the same time, one who could endure
monotony and wait for his opportunity.
And Billiken, short, stocky, and with plenty of energy, possessed
most of these characteristics, and others equally as valuable. He was
modest, keen, and never given to swell-headedness or boasting, the
latter being unpleasant diseases which are apt to attack young boat
pilots, for there is an exhilaration in handling machines of great
horse power and in the flattery of, to use the term of an old naval
surgeon, the long-haired things. Or to quote a flying versifier--
"For I have known the freedom of the air,
Nor crawled on earth like some coarse, dull, fat slug."
And again--
"Such subtle poisons as sweet women brew
Have stuffed my veins with fire and my brain
With fantasy, making this cooling earth
Seem paradise."
Dickey was a little button of a chap, but what he lacked in size he
made up in bloodthirstiness. He was one of the best second pilots it is
possible for any first pilot to desire. He was a good shot, a capable
navigator, a fine observer, and always keen on going forward and loth
to turn back. He always gave his first pilot the comfortable feeling of
being absolutely trusted, and this is why I liked flying with him.
When his boat came down through engine trouble during a fight against
heavy odds off Terschelling in 1918, he shot down a Hun machine that
was attacking him while he was on the water. He then beached the boat,
burned it, and was interned. While walking in a quiet street of a
Dutch town just at dusk a huge German elbowed him into the roadway. He
seized the coat-tails of the Hun and demanded an apology. The Hun swore
in German--not a pretty exhibition.
Dickey was small, but he carried a big stick, and when the stick came
in contact with the skull of the German the latter fell senseless.
Informing the police that a man had been found unconscious in the
roadway, the little fire-eater obtained an ambulance and tenderly
removed his fallen foe to hospital.
Such was Dickey.
The quarry these two pilots were crossing the North Sea to hunt was a
Zeppelin, an airship over six hundred feet long. It carried a crew of
captain, second in command, a warrant officer who did the navigation,
a warrant officer engineer, two engineer ratings for each of the five
engines, a petrol man, and six other hands, of which two worked the
elevators, two steered, one attended to the wireless and signalling,
and one repaired the fabric.
All these men had received a highly specialised training at Nordholz,
the course lasting not less than six months. Also the deck-ratings and
the engine-room mechanics were trained in aerial gunnery, and when at
action stations the men not on watch were employed as machine-gunners.
Throughout this month there had been great Zeppelin activity over
the North Sea, for early in the year the German military craft had
been handed over to the German navy, and the best airships of the two
services had been concentrated near the German coast at Nordholz,
Wittmundshaven, Ahlhorn, and Tondern. Until May 1916 the Zeppelins
had carried out their patrols at a height of a thousand feet, looking
for our mine-fields and scouting for our naval forces, but in this
month L-7 was destroyed by gun-fire from a naval unit, and they were
now, excepting on rare occasions, carrying out their work at a great
altitude.
At four o'clock the mist began to lift; we went down to the shed, the
engines were started, the crew climbed on board, and at five o'clock
Billiken took the flying-boat off the harbour.
When he turned '77 out to sea and steadied on the course, Billiken saw
below him through the mist, within the encircling arm of the harbour,
the tall sheds of the station, the light cruisers and destroyers at
anchor, the submarines nestling close to their mother ships, and the
mine-sweepers disentangling themselves from their own particular
crowded dock preparatory to beginning the day's work.
[Illustration: '77 in the mist.]
He then glanced back down inside the hull of the boat, and saw Dickey
busy with note-book and wind-tables working out the allowances, the
wireless operator fingering his box of tricks as he tuned in with his
shore station, and the engineer going over his petrol-pumps. This was
the eighth time he had been out on a similar errand, but so far he had
not been successful.
As he passed out of the approaches to Harwich the mist shut in; so he
brought the boat down to five hundred feet, and fifteen minutes later
he passed the Shipwash. This was the last thing he was to see until he
sighted the Dutch Islands, and from this time on navigation was done by
compass, dead-reckoning, and inspiration.
To a land-machine pilot a compass is an instrument in which he has no
trust. It may show him the way over the lines and the way back, or it
may not. It may apparently go mad, and swing round and round, or the
north point may steady on anywhere but north.
But the flying-boat pilot has to rely on his compass. He uses a big
one, and puts it in a place where it will not be affected by iron or
steel; or if it is, and he cannot correct the error, he marks the
errors on a card and sets it up where it can be seen. He understands
variation, which is the difference between the true and magnetic
bearing, and which varies all over the world, and at any one place,
from year to year. And he can steer a course within two degrees.
When Billiken was over a big mine-field well out in the No Man's
Land of the North Sea, the mist thickened, and, just to make it more
difficult, the sun, large and red of face as if with the exertion of
climbing above the horizon, was on a level with his eyes, and made it
hard for him to see his instruments.
After they had plugged along for two hours and fifteen minutes,
frequently coming down to two hundred feet to pass under a particularly
heavy bank of mist, Dickey, through a rift, saw the flat shores of the
island of Vlieland.
Here course was altered, and at half-past seven they were off the
island of Ameland. Now, sweeping in a twenty-mile circle, they headed
back down the coast homeward bound. The mist was lifting in patches. At
half-past eight they were off Vlieland again.
Dickey suddenly saw a Zeppelin.
It was five miles on the starboard beam, at a height of only fifteen
hundred feet.
Billiken swung the bow of '77 towards the airship. He opened out his
engines. He climbed straight for the Zeppelin.
Dickey was at the bow gun, the wireless operator was at the midships
gun, and the engineer was at the stern guns. The Zeppelin was barely
moving. Her propellers were merely ticking over.
They were now at two thousand feet, a thousand yards away from the
airship, and above her. Now the look-out on the Zeppelin saw the
flying-boat. The propellers vanished as the engines were speeded up.
She moved forward. She swung away on a new course. Two men raced to the
gun on the tail and the gun amidships on top.
Billiken dived on the Zeppelin's tail at a screaming hundred and forty
miles an hour. He passed diagonally across her from starboard to port.
When one hundred feet above and two hundred feet away Dickey got in two
bursts from his machine-gun.
He used only fifteen cartridges.
As he cleared the Zeppelin, Billiken made a sharp right-hand turn, and
found himself slightly below and heading straight for the enemy. He
read her number, L 43. Her immense size staggered him.
Then he saw that she was on fire.
Little spurts of flame stabbed out where the explosive bullets had torn
the fabric, and the incendiary bullets had set alight the escaping
hydrogen.
Pulling back his controls, he lifted the boat over the airship, and
just in time. With a tremendous burst of flame--a flame so hot that all
on board the flying-boat felt the heat--the millions of cubic feet of
hydrogen were set off. She broke in half. Each part, burning furiously,
fell towards the water.
The top gunner rolled into the flames and vanished.
Three men fell out of the gondolas. Turning over and over they struck
the water in advance of the wreckage.
The remnants of the Zeppelin fell into the sea, and a heavy pillar of
black smoke reared itself to the sky.
The crew of the flying-boat fell on each other's necks. Everybody
crowded into the control cockpit. During the demonstration Billiken
got the heavy boat into extraordinary positions.
Just in nice time for luncheon, at fifteen minutes after eleven
o'clock, having completed a flight of nearly four hundred miles,
Billiken brought '77 into the harbour, Dickey firing Very's lights
and the handkerchiefs of the crew fluttering from the barrels of the
machine-guns.
II.
That night the staff-room was full to overflowing when Dixie brought in
the brass tray covered with cocktails.
The staff-room at this time was a small narrow place, so narrow that
when anybody sat down everybody else fell over his feet. It was just
big enough to hold, with a little packing, the heads of departments who
were permanently attached to the station, and it had become their room
by an unwritten law. But now all hands were crowded in.
Everybody was standing, there was no room to do anything else, and a
fine of half a crown fell on anybody who sat on the arm of a chair, a
rule enforced to preserve the integrity of the furniture.
The noise was prodigious. All were talking, nobody listening. A lad
from up North had just finished telling me a yarn.
"The Orks are the limit," he said. "A Fritz ran ashore at half tide on
a small island just outside Kirkwall in the Orkneys. The crew got busy
and took all their ammunition and heavy gear ashore to lighten her and
got her off next tide. It's a desolate place, the butt-end of nowhere,
but an Ork saw them. He was sent for by the S.N.O.
"'Did you know they were Germans?' he was asked.
"'I thought they werena talking English,' the Ork replied cautiously.
"'Why did you not warn the coastguard at the telephone?'
"'They might ha' shot at me.'
"'Did you know you would have got a big reward?'
"'Reward! Hoo much?'
"'A hundred pound.'
"'A hunder poonds! If I'd knawn that I'd have rin like h----!'
"I saw him the other day," concluded the pilot, "and he hasn't yet
recovered from his loss."
Number One, who had just entered, was saying to Billiken: "Well, young
Hobbs, I suppose you are proud of yourself...." Dickey was over in the
corner telling Pat, Jumbo, and the Padre all the horrible details. Pat
was interjecting at intervals: "And the gun did not jam." The Padre was
saying under his breath: "Poor souls. Poor souls."
Leslie, Tiny, Spring-heel Jack and the rest were talking at a rate of
knots, discussing whether Zepps would give us any further chances, or
if they would now fly high. As a matter of fact they did fly high from
that time on, airships which could not get above ten thousand feet
being withdrawn from the operations in the North Sea.
Every few minutes a signalman would wedge himself into the room
bringing a signal of congratulation.
Then the Chief Steward entered and announced to Number One: "Dinner is
served, sir."
The mess was a long room running the full width of the building. The
rafters and roof were painted a light grey, and the walls green, a
shade of green which could only be conceived by a naval rating and
mixed in a ship's paint-room. A long table ran the full length of the
mess, crossed at each end by a short table, and the Chief Steward had
contrived a specially fine display of flowers and decorated the table
with large mats having navy-blue borders, the centres embroidered with
gold eagles, the noble bird which is the emblem of the flying service.
Number One rapped on the table with a little mahogany mallet made from
the wood of a flying-boat. A sharp silence. And then the padre said
grace, "Thank God."
The dinner was good, our cook had been a _chef_ at the Ritz before
getting into uniform. Out on the verandah the ship's band played airs,
ancient and modern. The members of the band were the only men in the
ship's company that Number One did not begrudge letting off attendance
at divisions.
The port and sherry decanters circulated. Two sharp raps on the table,
and the King's health was drunk sitting, navy fashion.
A telegram of congratulations from Admiral Jellicoe was read, followed
by a long list from friends of the station; and then somebody sang
out, "At 'em, Tiny," and the portly one in another second was on his
feet saying--
"Mr President, I beg to propose the health of Sub-Lieut. Hobbs and
Sub-Lieut. Dickey...."
* * * * *
Immediately after the King's health six sad officers left the table and
went to their cabins. They were the Duty Pilots who had to turn out an
hour before daybreak next morning to go on patrol.
* * * * *
Spring-heel Jack told me during dinner that throughout the entire day
the German wireless stations had been calling frantically to L 43.
III.
We were very proud of our new flying office in No. 2 Shed.
It was just inside the big sliding doors opening out on the slipway. It
had glass windows on three sides which kept out the dust and some of
the noise. It contained a sound-proof cabinet complete with telephone,
a desk at which writing could be done, and with drawers in which to
keep papers, and a blackboard on the wall for notices. The inside was
painted white to reflect all the light possible, and the outside grey
to prevent it looking dirty. It was exceedingly smart.
Also a pigeoner's caboosh was put up.
The pigeoner was a busy man--he seemed to do everything but look after
the pigeons. There were several of him, for he had to be on duty before
patrols went out in the morning and after they came back at night.
If you mislaid your life-belt you asked the pigeoner. He kept them.
They were air-bags worn like a waistcoat, and were blown up by pressing
a handle which punctured a cap in a small compressed-air bottle.
Everybody out on patrol wore one. It was good joss.
He kept the leather jackets and trousers for the ratings, for the War
Flight was short of kit and it had to be passed on from man to man.
The engineers drew from him their flying-tool kits, small wooden boxes
fitted with all tools that could be used at sea, packed into the
smallest space and totalling the least possible weight.
Besides all this he looked after the emergency rations, the ordinary
rations, the Red Cross boxes, the spare sea-anchors, the jerseys for
the ratings supplied by the R.N.A.S. Comforts Fund, the cameras; and
in his spare time he acted as messenger, being summoned to the Flight
Office by one tap of the ship's bell. A lazy Duty Officer had fitted up
a string, whereby, sitting at the desk inside the office, he could ring
the bell outside.
He also looked after the pigeons. Large wicker baskets were brought
down each morning from the military loft in Felixstowe town. While on
the station the birds were watered but not fed. When a boat was going
out the pigeoner put two of them in a basket with two compartments and
two lids and placed them on board, well up from the bottom, as petrol
fumes made them stupid. Each pigeon had a tiny aluminium receptacle
clipped to its leg to hold the message, and a ring with its number, so
that it could be identified if it came back without a signal. The naval
Huns usually released the pigeons without messages when they captured
one of our seaplanes, sometimes turning the holder upside down.
Pigeons cannot fly in mist or when it is dark, and have to be specially
trained to fly over the sea, two squeakers, as the young birds are
called, being taken out in each boat for training. And sometimes they
refused to fly in daytime, perching when released on some part of
the machine. When they did return punishment quickly followed. Birds
which refused to do their duty had their commissions cancelled and were
killed and eaten.
But they did great service.
An aeroplane and a flying-boat crossed from Yarmouth to Terschelling.
The aeroplane tried to attack a Zeppelin and received a bullet in
the radiator, whereupon it had to land in the sea. The flying-boat
rescued the crew, but was damaged in doing so and could not get into
the air again. Two pigeons were released. One perished. The other, a
great-hearted bird, battled home against a head wind and fell dead with
exhaustion on the slipway. The message it carried saved the lives of
the seven men who had been out in the disabled boat for four days.
During May, beside bringing down the L 43, the War Flight sighted eight
enemy submarines and bombed three.
Morrish and Young, driven off their course by heavy rain-squalls and
low clouds on the 9th, passed over an enemy submarine on the Schouen
Bank, but as they did not know where they were at the time and could
not identify it, they passed on, making the English coast near Dover.
Two days later Gordon and Thompson presented one of our new two hundred
and thirty pound bombs to a Fritz.
On the same day Dickey and myself, when peacefully booming out to the
North Hinder, ran into six winged Huns. Much to the disgust of Dickey,
who wanted to eat 'em alive, I dodged the enemy in the mist and carried
out the patrol.
But now our activities were curtailed and the War Flight came in for a
tremendous strafing.
A Senior Naval Officer from another area on a visit to the station
asked to be taken out on patrol. He was boomed out on the Spider Web by
Tiny, surprised a submarine on the surface, and dumped on it four one
hundred pound bombs before it could submerge.
The Naval Officer arrived back in the harbour safely and departed to
his own place, well pleased.
But that night the telephone bell rang and we were informed that one of
the Harwich submarines, which was due, had not returned. Tiny's hoodoo
was apparently on the job again. He was sent for and carpeted, and
straffed for taking out a Naval Officer from another area, and while
doing so, bombing and sinking one of our own submarines.
The War Flight was straffed and forbidden to search the Spider Web, and
was given instead the task of flying up and down the shipping channel
within smelling distance of the land. The pilots were tremendously
bored.
And then five days later the E boat came limping in between the
guardships at the boom. She was damaged, but not damaged by bombs. She
had not been anywhere near where the bombs had been dropped, but had
found trouble while poking her inquisitive nose into some of Germany's
secret affairs.
But for some days the flying-boats flopped up and down the shipping
channel, seeing nothing and accomplished nothing, until June the 28th.
Their release was celebrated by Mackenzie and Dickey bombing a Fritz
from four hundred feet ten miles west of the North Hinder.
[Illustration: Bombs bursting over Submarine.]
IV.
The U-C 1 pushed out from Zeebrugge harbour on July 23.
She was dirty as to paint, rust streaks disfigured her sides, and she
was not a pretty object to look at in the bright sunshine.
But she was not really a wicked submarine, as she did not sink
passenger liners or hospital ships with torpedoes or gun fire, but only
laid mines, which is a legitimate act of war.
She was a hundred and eleven feet long, and was the sole survivor,
but one, of fifteen similar boats. She carried twelve mines in four
vertical tubes forward of her conning-tower.
Her Commander passed the North Hinder and pushed on towards England,
running on the surface across our deep mine-field. When in sight of the
shipping channel he dived and worked his way right into the approaches
to Harwich. He was a bit early, for it was still daylight, and he liked
to lay his mines at high water, as this gave him a greater depth for
diving.
He loafed along at two knots, thirty feet under the surface, with
his periscope twelve inches above water, keeping a sharp look-out for
trouble. Presently he saw a fleet of mine-sweepers working in the
distance, and creeping cautiously closer, observed that they were
sweeping in an area between four bright-green buoys, marking off the
corners of a large parallelogram. Consulting the chart supplied by his
intelligence department, he saw that the trawlers were sweeping in the
emergency war channel.
The mine-sweepers were working in pairs, travelling abreast and some
distance apart. Each trawler towed a kite at the end of a wire cable.
The heavy wooden kite was V-shaped and sank under the surface to the
required depth when towed. Between the two kites was a wire rope.
It had chains attached to it, so that it dragged on the bottom, and
rollers, so that it would not foul. In the bight of the wire was a
serrated portion. The idea was to catch the mooring cable of any mine
on the wire and saw it in two on the serrations. The mine would then
rise to the surface and could be destroyed by rifle fire.
The Commander of U-C 1 told his second in command that these
preparations clearly meant that the Harwich Light Forces were going to
take a burst out to sea, and that he intended to lay a line of mines
across their path.
At dusk the trawlers packed up and boiled off for home at top speed.
The German Commander watching them said: "It is easy to see that they
are burning Government coal."
Just before high tide the U-C 1 entered the parallelogram inside the
four green buoys, still under water. She was a third of the way across
when a sharp order was given, a lever was pulled, and a mine left one
of the tubes.
The complete mine consisted of two parts, the war-head and the sinker.
As it left the submarine it slowly sank to the bottom and rested on its
sinker, for in the war-head was an air chamber which kept it right end
up.
A slow spring, automatically released when the mine left the tube,
began to move a lever, and at the end of five minutes it pulled back a
catch and released the war-head from the sinker.
The air chamber in the war-head caused it to rise. As it rose it
unwound the mooring cable from a reel in the sinker. It rose to within
eight feet of the surface and then stopped. A hydrostatic valve had
operated a catch which stopped the reel unwinding. The valve could be
set to hold the war-head at any depth under the surface required.
The pull of the war-head on the mooring cable closed an electric
switch, and the mine was ready for business.
In accordance with The Hague Convention a switch was fitted to the
mine, which would open, rendering it harmless, if the war-head broke
away from the cable; but it had been carefully put out of action before
the mine had been put in its tube.
The Commander of the U-C 1 crossed the parallelogram and laid all his
mines at close intervals. His work finished, he slipped off toward the
open sea, thinking with satisfaction of his row of mines with their
ugly warty heads swaying to the tide below the surface of the water.
He pictured the Harwich flotilla coming out in line ahead, a light
cruiser leading, her four hundred and thirty-six feet of slim grey
length driven through the water by her forty-thousand horse power.
He thought of her 3-inch protective plating, but this he knew only
went two and a half feet below her water-line. He gloated over her
armament--two 6-inch guns, six 4-inch guns, and one 4-inch high angle
anti-aircraft gun--all useless when pitted against his mines.
He saw her in his mind's eye touch a mine. It rolled along her side.
The soft metal protruding horns were bent. The glass tubes inside them
were broken. The liquid in the tubes fell into cups in which were two
solid elements of an electric battery. A current was generated. The
exploder was detonated, and the charge of high explosive went off with
a chattering crash.
But all that would happen to-morrow. He was well pleased with himself
as he slipped along.
How could he know that the emergency war-channel had been shifted,
that the four green buoys had been laid there for his special benefit,
that the mine-sweeping was a bluff, and that his successor to the job
of minelayer-in-extraordinary to the Harwich Light Forces would in his
turn discover the green buoys, blunder into the mines intended for the
light cruiser, and so depart this life.
Next morning he brought his boat to the surface this side of the North
Hinder, and started for home. There was a light mist, no wind, and
everything appeared ormolu.
But behind him at Felixstowe Commander Porte, who was back on the
station for a short time, had determined to lead out a patrol of
five flying-boats--a greater number than had ever been out together.
It strained the resources of the War Flight, but five machines were
finally shoved down the slipway into the water. Commander Porte was
leading in F 2 C, his latest experimental boat, piloted by Queenie
Cooper, the test pilot.
The five boats fluttered around in the water, each getting into its
correct position in the formation, and then, at the signal from the
leading machine, all had their engines opened out at the same time.
They boiled down the harbour, leaving five white streaks behind them,
got into the air and pushed off for the Spider Web. Many times later on
flights of an equal number of boats were got away easily, but this was
the first time, and a sigh of relief and admiration went up from all
hands on the slipway. It was a fine sight.
The formation passed the Shipwash, passed the North Hinder, and then,
at ten minutes to eleven o'clock, the Commander of U-C 1 tried to dive.
He was too late.
Ginger Newton and Trumble dropped two two hundred and thirty-five bombs
on him from five hundred feet. Commander Porte and Queenie dropped two
similar bombs. Cuckney and Clayton dropped one bomb. And the other two
boats stood by ready.
But the career of U-C 1 was ended.
There was oil on the surface and a little white spot on the water,
where a long string of silver bubbles, coming up and up, were breaking
gently.
The water was twenty-four fathoms deep.
A fathom is six feet.
One of the boat pilots, curious to see what the bubbles looked like at
close quarters, landed, but was unable to find the spot. Once in the
air again he could see the bubbles easily.
But the whole of July was a good month. The pilots flew on eighty-nine
patrols, and did sixteen thousand four hundred and thirty sea miles.
Twenty-five patrols were carried out, drawing blank, and then Puff
Mackenzie and Dickey met up with a Zeppelin.
It was just after sighting twelve German destroyers, navigating along
in close formation, that they saw the airship. Her crew saw the
flying-boat coming at the same time. She altered course and went up
through the clouds like an express elevator.
Holding on the same course as the Zeppelin, and climbing through the
clouds for twenty minutes, Mackenzie burst up into the sunshine above
and found the enemy still ahead of and slightly above him. There
was great activity in the gondolas of the airship; and presently
sand-ballast began to pour out, and she got to a height of eleven
thousand feet when the flying-boat was at nine thousand. She had gained
a bit of distance while climbing.
But now the coast had been crossed.
All sorts of odds and ends were thrown out of the gondolas, and the
airship finally got to thirteen thousand five hundred feet. The
flying-boat was at eleven thousand, just behind her; but it could climb
no higher, being heavily laden with petrol for the return journey.
They were now thirty miles inland, and over two hundred miles from
home, so the chase was broken off. As the boat turned round the
disappointed engineer fired a few bursts from his stern guns, but the
tracer bullets were seen to fall short.
Passing out over the coast the hostile destroyers were sighted again,
and shortly afterwards Mackenzie had to land because of petrol pump
trouble. The package of sandwiches was found and the thermos flask
opened, and while the crew had a snack the petrol pumps were repaired.
Twenty minutes later the boat was in the air again.
At half-past two Harwich harbour was reached, the crew having been in
the air for six hours and twenty minutes.
Dickey, the small and bloodthirsty, would not be comforted for some
time for not getting the Zeppelin, although it was pointed out to him
that for one so small he had given the Germans a big fright.
Beyond shoving out a Beef Trip and the ordinary patrols, things were
quiet until the 21st, when Perham and Cuckney in one boat, and Hodgson
and Ramsden in the second, met up with a Fritz on the surface five
miles south of the North Hinder.
She was lying in wait to sink the beef and beer, for a Beef Trip was on
for next day.
Two bombs were dropped by the first boat. The submarine dived. It came
to the surface seventeen minutes later. The second boat was getting
into position, when it again submerged and was no more seen.
It is probable that this submarine was damaged, as she came to the
surface so quickly after being bombed.
On the following day seven patrols were boomed into the air for the
Beef Trip, the greatest number up to this time put out in one day.
Owing to the number of machines being overhauled two of the boats had
to be sent out twice, each doing five hundred and forty miles.
It was quick work.
Between trips the boats were taken out of the water, cleaned and filled
with two hundred and forty gallons of petrol. The four machine-guns
were stripped, cleaned, and assembled. All control wires and the
structure were examined. And the engines were checked and tested.
When coming in from the first patrol on one of these boats there was a
splintering crash. I thought we had been hit by a shell from a pom-pom.
But a tray of ammunition had blown off the front Lewis gun and gone
into the port propeller. The brass-tipped mahogany blades were turning
at twelve hundred revolutions a minute, for the propellers are geared
down, and do not turn as fast as the engines. The tray shattered one
blade, the splinters shooting through the top of the boat, but the crew
were uninjured, except for a few scratches. The engine had to be shut
off, and I flew the boat home thirty miles on one engine.
Flying-boats can fly on one engine if the total weight is not too
great. It is a question of weight for horse-power available. To enable
the pilot to keep the boat flying in a straight line without undue
strain, a heavy rubber cord is fitted on the rudder wires, which can be
tightened as requisite.
During the Beef Trip Hodgson and Ramsden sighted a U-boat, which dived.
It torpedoed a small Dutch steamer seven miles north of the North
Hinder, which was seen in trouble by Hallinan and Brown. They saw two
boats put out, the crew tumble into them, and the ship sink.
Shoving off to the Beef Trip, for she was not part of the convoy, they
flashed the position by Aldis lamp, and the two boats were picked up by
a destroyer.
Next day Bath and Keesey, and Tiny and Moody, made a presentation of
four bombs to a Fritz in the Spider Web, and two days later Perham and
Barker, on the way in from the North Hinder, surprised a U-boat near
the Outer Gabbard buoys, and followed the good example.
The end of July coincided with the end of U-B 20.
She was on her way south--about to the approaches to Ireland, where her
Commander intended to destroy merchant ships.
For this purpose he carried a 4·1-inch gun and five torpedo tubes, four
in the bow and one in the stern. He had ten torpedoes.
His boat had a double hull, and was a hundred and eighty feet long.
She could do thirteen knots on the surface. Therefore he was able to
overhaul ordinary merchantmen and sink them by gun-fire. He liked to do
this, because he could carry more shells than torpedoes.
The U-B 20 was designed to dive very quickly. But this time she did not
dive quickly enough.
Puff and Ball in one boat, and Young and Barker in another, met up with
her ten miles this side of the North Hinder. Apparently the Commander
never saw the flying-boats coming, as he made no attempt to change
course or submerge.
Puff passed over him at eight hundred feet, and Ball dropped one bomb.
It was a long slim bomb, with an armour-piercing nose, and weighed two
hundred and thirty pounds.
Ball leaned out of the cockpit and watched it all the way down.
Unconsciously he held his breath, and time seemed to stop. And then he
saw it crash into the stern of the submarine.
On the explosion the stern went down and the bow rose out of the water.
It smacked down a moment later with a wide-flung splash.
Close behind the leading boat came Young. Barker dropped two one
hundred pound bombs. They detonated just in front of the submarine. He
saw that the bow hydroplanes were damaged.
The U-B 20 was now out of control.
She did figure eights.
She dived and came up again.
And then, after seven minutes of such evolutions, her twin propellers
stopped, and she began to sink by the stern.
The pilots were now circling above their quarry at a height of four
hundred feet. Puff and Ball obtained a second direct hit just in front
of the conning-tower, and Young and Barker straddled her with two bombs.
She was much down by the stern.
Suddenly she stood on end, remained poised there for a perceptible
fraction of time, and then slid down backwards and disappeared in a
smother of white water.
The pilots were back in harbour in time to dress for dinner.
But U-B 20, her wicked hopes frustrated, lay at the bottom of the North
Sea in twenty-two fathoms.
She had been killed dead.
August was a cold miserable month. Mist and fog shrouded the southern
portion of the North Sea, and when there was no mist and fog, heavy
clouds hung like palls low over the surface, or there were heavy
rain-squalls and high winds.
Only two submarines were sighted, neither being bombed.
But it was a welcome stand-easy for the pilots and ratings who had been
working double tides for four months.
[Illustration: Lifting 230-lb. bomb into place.]
[Illustration]