GERMAN SUBMARINES VISIT THE AMERICAN COAST
It was in the summer of 1918 that the Germans made their only attempt at
what might be called an offensive against their American enemies.
Between the beginning of May and the end of October, 1918, five German
submarines crossed the Atlantic and torpedoed a few ships on our coast.
That submarines could make this long journey had long been known.
Singularly enough, however, the impression still prevails in this
country that the German U-boats were the first to accomplish the feat.
In the early autumn of 1916 the _U-53_--commanded by that submarine
officer, Hans Rose, who has been previously mentioned in these
pages--crossed the Atlantic, dropped in for a call at Newport, R.I.,
and, on the way back, sank a few merchant vessels off Nantucket. A few
months previous the so-called merchant submarine _Deutschland_ had made
its trip to Newport News. The Teutonic press, and even some
Germanophiles in this country, hailed these achievements as marking a
glorious page in the record of the German navy. Doubtless the real
purpose was to show the American people how easily these destructive
vessels could cross the Atlantic; and to impress upon their minds the
fate which awaited them in case they maintained their rights against the
Prussian bully. As a matter of fact, it had been proved, long before the
_Deutschland_ or the _U-53_ had made their voyages, that submarines
could cross the Atlantic. In 1915, not one but ten submarines had gone
from North America to Europe under their own power. Admiral Sir John
Fisher tells about this expedition in his recently published memoirs. In
1914, the British Admiralty had contracted for submarines with Charles M.
Schwab, president of the Bethlehem Steel Company. As international
law prohibited the construction of war vessels by a nation in wartime
for the use of a belligerent with which it was at peace, the parts of
ten submarines were sent to Canada, where they were put together. These
submarines then crossed the Atlantic under their own power, and were
sent from British ports to the Dardanelles, where they succeeded in
driving Turkish and German shipping out of the Sea of Marmora. Thus a
crossing of the Atlantic by American-built submarines manned by British
crews had been accomplished before the Germans made their voyages. It
was therefore not necessary for the two German submarines to cross the
Atlantic to prove that the thing could be done; but the Germans
doubtless believed that this demonstration of their ability to operate
on the American coast would serve as a warning to the American people.
We were never at all deceived as to what would be the purpose of such a
visit after our entrance into the war. In the early part of 1917 the
Allies believed that a few German U-boats might assail our coast, and I
so informed the Navy Department at Washington. My cables and letters of
1917 explained fully the reasons why Germany might indulge in such a
gesture. Strategically, as these despatches make clear, such attacks
would have no great military value. To have sent a sufficient number of
submarines to do any considerable damage on the American coast would
have been a great mistake. Germany's one chance of winning the war with
the submarine weapon was to destroy shipping to such an extent that the
communications of the Allies with the outside world, and especially with
the United States, would be cut. The only places where the submarine
warfare could be conducted with some chance of success were the ocean
passage routes which lead to European ports, especially in that area
south and south-west of Ireland in which were focussed the trade routes
for ships sailing from all parts of the world and destined for British
and French ports. With the number of submarines available, the Germans
could keep enough of their U-boats at work in these areas to destroy a
large number of merchant ships. Germany thus needed to concentrate all
of her available submarines at these points; she had an inadequate
number for her purpose; to send any considerable force three thousand
miles across the Atlantic would simply weaken her efforts in the real
scene of warfare and would make her submarine campaign a failure. The
cruises of submarines on the American coast would have been very much
longer and would have been a much more serious strain on the submarines
than were the shorter cruises in the inshore waters of Europe. As has
already been explained, the submarine did not differ from other craft in
its need for constant repairs and careful upkeep, except that perhaps it
was a more delicate instrument of warfare than any other naval craft,
and that it would require longer and more frequent periods of overhaul.
Any operations carried out three thousand miles from their bases, where
alone supplies, spare parts, and repair facilities were available, would
have soon reduced the submarine campaign to comparative uselessness;
each voyage would have resulted in sinking a relatively small amount of
shipping; a great number of submarines would be out of commission at all
times for repairs, or would be lost through accidents. The Germans had
no submarine bases in American waters and could establish none.
Possibly, as the newspaper writer has pointed out, they might have
seized a deserted island off the coast of Maine or in the Caribbean, and
cached there a reservoir of fuel and food; unless, however, they could
also have created at these places adequate facilities for repairing
submarines or supplying them with torpedoes and ammunition, such a place
would not have served the purpose of a base at all. Comparatively few of
the German submarines could have made the cruise to the American coast
and operated successfully there so far away from their bases for any
considerable time. In the time spent in such an enterprise, the same
submarine could make three or four trips in the waters about the British
Isles, or off the coast of France, and could sink four or five times the
tonnage which could be destroyed in the cruise on the Atlantic coast. In
the eastern Atlantic, the submarine could seek its victims in an area
comprising a comparatively few square miles, at points where shipping
was so dense that a submarine had only to take a station and lie in
wait, and be certain, within a short time, of encountering valuable
ships which it could attack successfully with its torpedoes. If the
U-boats should be sent to America, on the other hand, they would have to
patrol up and down three thousand miles of coast, looking for victims;
and even when they found them the ships that they could sink would
usually be those engaged in the coastwise traffic, which were of
infinitely less military importance than the transports which were
carrying food, munitions, and supplies to the Allies and which were
being sunk in the eastern Atlantic.
Anything resembling an attack in force on American harbours was
therefore improbable. Yet it seemed likely from the first that the
Germans would send an occasional submarine into our waters, as a measure
of propaganda rather than for the direct military result that would be
achieved. American destroyers and other vessels were essential to the
success of the whole anti-submarine campaign of the Allies. The sooner
they could all be sent into the critical European waters the sooner the
German campaign of terrorism would end. If these destroyers, or any
considerable part of them, could be kept indefinitely in American
waters, the Germans might win the war. Any manoeuvre which would have
as its result the keeping of these American vessels, so indispensable to
the Allies, out of the field of active warfare, would thus be more than
justified and, indeed, would indicate the highest wisdom on the part of
the German navy. The Napoleonic principle of dividing your enemy's
forces is just as valuable in naval as in land warfare. For many years
Admiral Mahan had been instructing American naval officers that the
first rule in warfare is not to divide your fighting forces, but always
to keep them together, so as to bring the whole weight at a given moment
against your adversary. Two of the fundamental principles of the science
of warfare, on land and sea alike, are contained in the maxims: Keep
your own forces concentrated, and always endeavour to divide those of
the enemy. Undoubtedly, the best method which Germany could use to keep
our destroyers in our own waters would be to make the American people
believe that their lives and property were in danger; they might
accomplish this by sending a submarine to attack our shipping off New
York and Boston and other Atlantic seaports, and possibly even to
bombard our harbours. The Germans doubtless believed that they might
create such alarm and arouse such public clamour in the United States
that our destroyers and other anti-submarine craft would be kept over
here by the Navy Department, in response to the popular agitation to
protect our own coast. This is the reason why American headquarters in
London, and the Allied admiralties, expected such a visitation. The
Germans obviously endeavoured to create the impression that such an
attack was likely to occur at any time. This was part of their war
propaganda. The press was full of reports that such attacks were about
to be made. German agents were continually circulating these reports.
Of course it was clear from the first, to the heads of the Allied navies
and to all naval authorities who were informed about the actual
conditions, that these attacks by German submarines on the American
coast would be in the nature of raids for moral effect only. It was also
quite clear from the first, as I pointed out in my despatches to the
Navy Department, that the best place to defend our coast was in the
critical submarine areas in the European Atlantic, through which the
submarines had to pass in setting out for our coast, and in which alone
they could have any hope of succeeding in the military object of the
undersea campaign. It was not necessary to keep our destroyers in
American waters, patrolling the vast expanse of our three thousand miles
of coastline, in a futile effort to find and destroy such enemy
submarines as might operate on the American coast. So long as these
attacks were only sporadic--and carried out by the type of submarine
which used its guns almost exclusively in sinking ships, and which
selected for its victims unarmed and unprotected ships--destroyers and
other anti-submarine craft would be of no possible use on the Atlantic
coast. The submarine could see these craft from a much greater distance
than it could itself be seen by them; and by diving and sailing
submerged it could easily avoid them and sink its victims without ever
being sighted or attacked by our own patrols, however numerous they
might have been. Even in the narrow waters of the English Channel, up to
the very end of the war, submarines were successfully attacking small
merchant craft by gunfire, although the density of patrol craft in this
area was naturally a thousand times greater than we could ever have
provided for the vast expanse of our own coast. Consequently, so long as
the submarine attacks on the American coast were only sporadic, it was
absolutely futile to maintain patrol craft in those waters, as this
could not provide any adequate defence against such scattered
demonstrations. If, on the other hand, the Germans had ever decided to
commit the military mistake of concentrating a considerable number of
submarines off our Atlantic ports, we could always have countered such
a step by sending back from the war zone an adequate number of craft to
protect convoys in and out of the Atlantic ports, in the same manner
that convoys were protected in the submarine danger zone in European
waters. This is a fact which even many naval men did not seem to grasp.
Yet I have already explained that we knew practically where every German
submarine was at any given time. We knew whenever one left a German
port; and we kept track of it day by day until it returned home. No
U-boat ever made a voyage across the Atlantic without our knowledge. The
submarine was a slow traveller, and required a minimum of thirty days
for such a trip; normally, the time would be much longer, for a
submarine on such a long voyage had to economize oil fuel for the return
trip and therefore seldom cruised at more than five knots an hour. Our
destroyers and anti-submarine craft, on the other hand, could easily
cross the Atlantic in ten days and refuel in their home ports. It is
therefore apparent that a flotilla of destroyers stationed in European
waters could protect the American coast from submarines almost as
successfully as if it were stationed at Hampton Roads or Newport. Such a
flotilla would be of no use at these American stations unless there were
submarines attacking shipping off the coast; but as soon as the Germans
started for America--a fact of which we could always be informed, and of
which, as I shall explain, we always were informed--we could send our
destroyers in advance of them. These agile vessels would reach home
waters about three weeks before the submarines arrived; they would thus
have plenty of time to refit and to welcome the uninvited guests. From
any conceivable point of view, therefore, there was no excuse for
keeping destroyers on the American side of the Atlantic for "home
defence." Moreover, the fact that we could keep this close track of
submarines in itself formed a great protection against them. I have
already explained how we routed convoys entering European waters in such
ways that they could sail around the U-boat and thus escape contact. I
think that this simple procedure saved more shipping than any other
method. In the same way we could keep these vessels sailing from
American ports outside of the area in which the submarines were known to
be operating in our own waters.
Yet the enemy sent no submarines to our coast in 1917; why they did not
do so may seem difficult to understand, for that was just the period
when a campaign of this kind might have served their purpose. During
this time, however, we had repeated indications that the Germans did not
take the American entrance into the war very seriously; moreover,
looking forward to conditions after the peace, they perhaps hoped that
they might soon be able once again to establish friendly relations. In
1917 they therefore refrained from any acts which might arouse popular
hatred against them. We had more than one indication of this attitude.
Early in the summer of 1917 we obtained from one of the captured German
submarines a set of the orders issued to it by the German Admiralty
Staff. Among these was one dated May 8, 1917, in which the submarine
commanders were informed that Germany had not declared war upon the
United States, and that, until further instructions were received, the
submarines were to continue to look upon America and American shipping
as neutral. The submarine commanders were especially warned against
attacking or committing any overt act against such American war vessels
as might be encountered in European waters. The orders explained that no
official confirmation had been received by the German Government of the
news which had been published in the press that America had declared
war, and that, therefore, the Germans, officially, were ignoring our
belligerence. From their own standpoint such a policy of endeavouring
not to offend America, even after she became an enemy, may have seemed
politically wise; from a military point of view, their failure to
attempt the submarine demonstration off our coast in 1917 was a great
mistake; for when they finally started warfare on our coast, the United
States was deeply involved in hostilities, and had already begun the
transportation of the great army which produced such decisive results on
the Western Front. The time had passed, as experience soon showed, when
any demonstration on our coast would disturb the calm of the American
people or affect their will to victory.
In late April, 1918, I learned through secret-service channels that one
of the large submarines of the _Deutschland_ class had left its German
base on the 19th of April for a long cruise. On the 1st of May, 1918, I
therefore cabled to the Department that there were indications that this
submarine was bound for our own coast. A few days afterward I received
more specific information, through the interception of radio despatches
between Germany and the submarine; and therefore I cabled the
Department, this time informing them that the submarine was the _U-151_,
that it was now well on its way across the Atlantic, and that it could
be expected to begin operations off the American coast any time after
May 20th. I gave a complete description of the vessel, the probable
nature of her cruise, and her essential military characteristics. She
carried a supply of mines, and I therefore invited the attention of the
Department to the fact that the favourite areas for laying mines were
those places where the ships stopped to pick up pilots. Since at
Delaware Bay pilots for large ships were taken on just south of the Five
Fathom Bank Light, I suggested that it was not unlikely that the _U-151_
would attempt to lay mines in that vicinity. Now the fact is that we
knew that the _U-151_ intended to lay mines at this very place. We had
obtained this piece of information from the radio which we had
intercepted; as there was a possibility that our own cable might fall
into German hands, we did not care to give the news in the precise form
in which we had received it, as we did not intend that they should know
that we had means of keeping so accurately informed. As had been
predicted, the _U-151_ proceeded directly to the vicinity of this Five
Fathom Bank off Delaware Bay, laid her mines, and then, cruising
northward up the coast, began her demonstration on the 25th of May by
sinking two small wooden schooners. These had no radio apparatus, and it
was not until June 2nd that the Navy Department and the country received
the news that the first submarine was operating. On June 29th I informed
Washington that another U-boat was then coming down the west coast of
Ireland, bound for the United States, and that it would arrive some time
after July 15th. Complete reports of this vessel were sent from day to
day, as it made its slow progress across the ocean. On July 6th I cabled
that still another U-boat had started for our coast; and the progress of
this adventurer, with all details as to its character and probable area
of operations, were also forwarded regularly. From the end of May until
October there was nearly always one submarine operating off our coast.
The largest number active at any one time was in August, when for a week
or ten days three were more or less active in attacking coastwise
vessels. These three operated all the way from Cape Hatteras to
Newfoundland, attempting by these tactics to create the impression that
dozens of hostile U-boats were preying upon our commerce and threatening
our shores. These submarines, however, attacked almost exclusively
sailing vessels and small coastwise steamers, rarely, if ever, using
torpedoes. A number of mines were laid at different points off our
ports, on what the Germans believed to be the traffic routes; but the
information which we had concerning them made it possible to counter
successfully their efforts and, from a military point of view, the whole
of the submarine operations off our coast can be dismissed as one of the
minor incidents of the war, as the Secretary of the Navy described it in
his Annual Report. The five submarines sunk in all approximately 110,000
tons of shipping, but the vessels were, for the most part, small and of
no great military importance. The only real victory was the destruction
of the cruiser _San Diego_, which was sunk by a mine which had been laid
by the _U-156_ off Fire Island.