THE SUBMARINE IN ACTION
“Hit and hard hit! The blow went home
The muffled knocking stroke,
The steam that overrides the foam,
The foam that thins to smoke,
The smoke that cloaks the deep aboil,
The deep that chokes her throes,
Till, streaked with ash and sleeked with oil,
The lukewarm whirlpools close!”
--KIPLING.
The first submarine in history to sink a hostile warship without also
sinking herself is the _E-9_ of the British navy. Together with most
of her consorts, she was sent, at the outbreak of the present war, to
explore and reconnoiter off the German coast and the island fortress
of Heligoland to find where the enemy’s ships were lying, how they
were protected and how they might be attacked. After six weeks of
such work, the _E-9_ entered Heligoland Bight on September 13, 1914,
and discharged two torpedoes at the German light cruiser _Hela_. One
exploded against her bow and the other amidships, and the cruiser went
down almost immediately, drowning many of her crew.
[Illustration:
Copyright, London Sphere & N. Y. Herald.
English Submarine Rescuing English Sailors.]
Another British submarine had already appeared in action off Heligoland
but as a saver instead of a destroyer of human life. On the 28th
of August a number of German torpedo-craft and light cruisers
were decoyed out to sea by the appearance and pretended flight of
some English destroyers. (It has been declared but not officially
confirmed that the “bait” consisted not of destroyers but two British
submarines, which rose to the surface where one of them pretended to
be disabled and was slowly towed away by the other till their pursuers
were almost within range, when the line was cast off and both boats
dived to safety.) The Germans found themselves attacked by a larger
British flotilla and a confused sort of battle followed. During the
mêlée, an English cruiser lowered a whaleboat that picked up several
survivors of a sunken German vessel. The cruiser was then driven away
by a more powerful German ship, and the crew of the whaleboat found
themselves left in the enemy’s waters without arms, food, or navigating
instruments. Suddenly a periscope rose out of the water alongside,
followed by the conning-tower and hull of the British submarine _E-4_,
which took the Englishmen on board and left the Germans the whaleboat,
after which both parties went home rejoicing.
Shortly after this, the German submarine _U-15_ boldly attacked a
British squadron, but revealed herself by the white wake of her
periscope as it cut through the calm water. A beautifully aimed shot
from the cruiser _Birmingham_ smashed the periscope. The submarine
dived, temporarily safe but blinded, for she was an old-fashioned craft
with only one observation instrument. Her commander now essayed a swift
“porpoise dive” up to the surface and down again, exposing only the
conning-tower for a very few seconds. But a broadside blazed from the
_Birmingham_, a shell struck squarely against the conning-tower, and
the sea poured in through the ragged death-wound in the deck of the
_U-15_.
[Illustration: Copyright, London Sphere & N. Y. Herald.
Engagement between the _Birmingham_ and the _U-15_.
1. Submarine’s periscope shot away.
2. Submarine dives, temporarily safe but blinded.
3. Submarine exposes conning-tower.
4. Conning-tower shot away, _U-15_ sinking.
]
But these early affairs were now overshadowed as completely as the
first Union victories in West Virginia were overshadowed by Bull Run.
Another British squadron encountered another German submarine and this
time the periscope was not detected. Lieutenant-Commander Otto von
Weddigen had had ample time to take up an ideal position beside the
path of his enemies, who passed in slow and stately procession before
the bow torpedo-tubes of the _U-9_. The German officer pressed a button
and saw through his periscope the white path of the “Schwartzkopf” as
it sped straight and true to the tall side of the _Aboukir_. He saw
the cruiser heaved into the air by the shock of the bursting war-head,
then watched her settle and go down. Round swung her nearest consort
to the rescue, lowering her lifeboats as she came. But scarcely had
the survivors of the _Aboukir’s_ company set foot on the deck of the
_Hogue_ than she, too, was torpedoed, and the half-naked men of both
crews went tumbling down the slope of the upturned side as she rolled
over and sank. Up steamed the _Cressy_, her gun-crews standing by their
useless pieces, splendid in helpless bravery. Half reluctantly, von
Weddigen sent his remaining foe to the bottom and slipped away under
the waves, the victor of the strangest naval battle in history.
Not a German had received the slightest injury; fourteen hundred
Englishmen had been killed. It was the loss of these trained officers
and seamen, and not that of three old cruisers that would soon have
been sent to the scrap heap, that was felt by the British navy.
Realizing that no fears for their own lives would keep the officers of
a British ship from attempting to rescue the drowning crew of another,
the Admiralty issued the following order:
“It has been necessary to point out for the future guidance of his
Majesty’s ships that the conditions that prevail when one vessel of
a squadron is injured in a mine-field or exposed to submarine attack
are analogous to those which occur in an action and that the rule of
leaving disabled ships to their own resources is applicable, so far at
any rate as large vessels are concerned. No act of humanity, whether to
friend or foe, should lead to a neglect of the proper precautions and
dispositions of war, and no measures can be taken to save life which
prejudice the military situation.”
Another old cruiser, the _Hermes_, that had been turned into a floating
base for sea-planes, was torpedoed off Dunkirk by a German submarine,
most of the crew being rescued by French torpedo boats. On New Year’s
day, 1915, the battleship _Formidable_ was likewise sent to the
bottom of the English Channel. She too was a rather old ship, of the
same class as the _Bulwark_, which had been destroyed by an internal
explosion two weeks earlier in the Medway, and the _Irresistible_,
afterwards sunk by a mine in the Dardanelles.
But there was nothing small or old about the _Audacious_. She was--or
is--a 24,800 ton superdreadnought, launched in 1911 and carrying ten
thirteen-and-a-half-inch guns. This stupendous war-engine was found
rolling helpless in the Irish Sea, her after compartments flooded by
a great hole made either by a drifting mine or, what is more likely
considering its position, by a torpedo from a German submarine. The
White Star liner _Olympic_, which had been summoned by wireless,
took the disabled warship in tow for several hours, after which the
_Audacious_ was cast off and abandoned. A photograph taken by one of
the _Olympic’s_ passengers and afterwards widely circulated shows
the huge ironclad down by the stern, listing heavily to one side,
and apparently on the point of sinking. But her loss has never been
admitted by the British Admiralty, and it has been repeatedly declared
by reputable persons that the _Audacious_ was kept afloat till the
_Olympic_ was out of sight, and was then towed by naval vessels into
Belfast, where she was drydocked and repaired at Harland and Wolff’s
shipyard to be sent back to the fighting line. Her fate is one of the
most interesting of the many mysteries of the war and will probably not
be made clear till peace has come. The silence of the British Admiralty
is explained by the standing orders forbidding the revealing of the
whereabouts of any of his Majesty’s ships, particularly when helpless
and disabled. It should be noted in this connection that the German
government has never admitted the loss of the battleship _Pommern_
which the Russians insist was sunk by one of their submarines in the
Baltic.
[Illustration:
Copyright, Illustrated London News & N. Y. Sun.
Sinking of the _Aboukir_, _Cressy_, and _Hogue_.]
Because the overwhelming strength of the Allied fleet has kept
the German and Austrian battleships safely locked up behind shore
batteries, mine-fields and nettings, the Allies’ submarines have had
comparatively few targets to try their skill on. The activity of
the British submarines in the North Sea at the outbreak of the war
has already been referred to, and a year later they found another
opportunity in the Baltic. There the German fleet had the same
preponderance over the Russian as the English had over the German
battleships in the North Sea, but the British dreadnoughts could not be
sent through the long tortuous passage of the Skagerrack and Cattegat,
thick-sown with German mines, without cutting the British fleet in half
and giving the Germans a splendid chance to defeat either half and then
slip back through the Kiel Canal and destroy the other. So England
sent some of her submarines instead. One of these joined the Russian
squadron defending the Gulf of Riga against a German fleet and decided
the fight by disabling the great battle-cruiser _Moltke_. Another,
the _E-13_, ran ashore on the Danish island of Saltholm on August 19,
1915, and was warned by the commander of a Danish torpedo-boat that she
would be allowed twenty-four hours to get off. Before the time-limit
had expired and while three Danish torpedo-boats were standing by, two
German destroyers steamed up, torpedoed the _E-13_, and killed half her
crew by gun-fire: an outrageous violation of Denmark’s neutrality.[24]
Daredevil deeds have been done by the submarines of both sides in the
Dardanelles. The little _B-11_ swam up the straits, threading her way
through mine-field after mine-field, her captain keeping his course by
“dead-reckoning” with map and compass and stop watch. To have exposed
his periscope would have drawn the fire of the many shore batteries, to
have dived a few feet too far in those shallow waters would have meant
running aground, to have misjudged the swirling, changing currents
might have meant annihilation. But Commander Holbrook brought his
vessel safely through, torpedoed and sank the guard-ship _Messudieh_,
a Turkish ironclad of the vintage of 1874, and returned to receive
the Victoria Cross from his king and a gigantic “Iron Cross” from his
brother officers. The _E-11_ went up even to Constantinople, torpedoed
a Turkish transport within sight of the city and threw the whole
waterfront into a panic. More transports and store-ships were sunk or
driven on shore in the Sea of Marmora, a gunboat was torpedoed, and
then the _Kheyr-el-din_, an old 10,000 ton battleship that had been the
_Kurfürst Freiderich Wilhelm_ before the kaiser sold her to Turkey,
was sent to the bottom of the same waters by British submarines. One
of them the _E-15_ ran aground in the Dardanelles and was forced to
surrender to the Turks, but before they could float her off and make
use of her, two steam launches dashed upstream through the fire of the
shore batteries and torpedoed the stranded submarine as Cushing blew
up the _Albemarle_.
But on the same day as the _E-11’s_ first exploit--May 25, 1915, the
British battleship _Triumph_ went down with most of her crew off
Gallipoli, torpedoed by a German submarine. The _U-51_ had made the
2400 mile trip from the North Sea, using as tenders a number of small
tank steamers flying the Spanish flag. These vessels intentionally
drew the attention of the cordon of British destroyers drawn across
the Straits of Gibraltar and were captured, while the submarine swam
safely through and traversed the Mediterranean to the Dardanelles.
Two days after her first exploit, the _U-51_ or perhaps one of her
Austrian consorts, sank another British battleship, the _Majestic_, off
Gallipoli. The _U-51_ has been reported sunk by Russian warships in the
Black Sea.
[Illustration:
Copyright, London Sphere & N. Y. Herald.
Tiny target afforded by Periscopes in rough weather.]
If they could sink two battleships in three days, why didn’t the German
undersea boats sink a dozen or so more and raise the siege of the
Dardanelles? Enver Pasha, the Turkish minister of war, declared that
“the presence of the submarines destroyed all hopes of Russia’s ever
effectively landing troops on the coast north of Constantinople.” Then
why did they permit the landing of British, Australian, New Zealand,
and French troops on the Gallipoli Peninsula and the plains of ancient
Troy? It was not until August, 1915, that the transport _Royal Edward_
was sunk in the Mediterranean by an Austrian submarine. Perhaps before
this war is over some British transport may be torpedoed in the North
Sea or the English Channel, but for more than a year and a half since
its outbreak, troop-ships and store-ships have been crossing to
France as if there were not a hostile “U-boat” in the world. Equally
mysterious has been the immunity of the light-draft monitors and
obsolescent gunboats off the Flemish coast, where their heavy guns did
so much to check the first German drive on Calais, and have harassed
the invaders’ right flank ever since. Many of these are mere floating
platforms for one or two modern guns, all are slow-steaming, and they
are not always in water too shallow for an undersea boat to swim in,
yet none have been sunk by a submarine since the loss of the _Hermes_,
in the autumn of 1914. Zeebrugge, the Belgian port that has been made
the headquarters for German submarines in the North Sea, has been
several times bombarded by the British fleet and, according to reports
from Amsterdam, half-built submarines on the shore there have been
destroyed by shell-fire. Why did the completed undersea boats in the
harbor fail to come out and torpedo or drive away the attacking fleet?
We have been shown what modern submarines can do; what prevents them
from doing much more?
Shortly after von Weddigen’s great exploit, a German submarine rose
to the surface so near the British destroyer _Badger_ that before the
undersea boat could submerge again she was rammed, cut open and sunk.
One of the most picturesque and least expected features of this war has
been the revival of old ways; soldiers are again wearing breastplates
and metal helmets and fighting with crossbows and catapults, while
against the modern submarine, seamen are effectively using the most
ancient of all naval weapons: the ram. It takes two minutes for the
average undersea boat to submerge, during which time a thirty-knot
destroyer can come charging up from a mile away, with a good chance
of scoring a hit with her forward 3- or 4-inch gun, even if she gets
there too late to ram. In the case of the _U-12_, the submarine dived
deep enough to get her hull and superstructure out of harm’s way, only
to have the top of her conning-tower crushed in by the destroyer as it
passed over her. When the inrush of water forced the _U-12_ to rise
to the surface and surrender, her crew discovered that the main hatch
could not be opened because one of the periscopes had been bent down
across it. Some of them succeeded in climbing out of the torpedo-hatch
and jumping overboard before the _U-12_ went down for good. As she sank
stern-foremost, it was observed that both of her bow-tubes were empty;
evidence that she had vainly launched two torpedoes at the British
flotilla that were hunting her down. Though several British destroyers
and torpedo-boats have been sent to the bottom by German submarines,
and the English _E-9_ has sunk the German destroyer _S-126_, yet the
nimble surface torpedo-craft have usually proved too difficult for
the undersea boats to hit with their fixed tubes that can only fire
straight ahead or astern.
It has been pointed out that the _Aboukir_, _Cressy_ and _Hogue_, the
_Formidable_, and the _Audacious_ were all moving slowly and unescorted
by any destroyers when they were attacked and sunk. The same was
true of the _Leon Gambetta_ and the _Giuseppe Garibaldi_, when they
were sent to the bottom of the Mediterranean by Austrian submarines.
Under modern conditions, such isolated big ships are in much the
same perilous position as would have been a lonely battery of Union
artillery marching through a country swarming with Confederate cavalry.
While an escort of destroyers is no sure guarantee against submarine
attack, their presence certainly seems to act as a powerful deterrent.
Waters suspected of containing hostile submarines are swept, very much
as they would be for mines, by pairs of destroyers or steam trawlers,
dragging an arrangement of strong cables between them. Sometimes this
is festooned with explosives to blow in the side of any undersea boat
it may touch. Usually the vessels engaged in this work use a large net.
When they feel the weight of a catch, it is said that they let go the
ends and leave it to the submarine’s own twin propellers to entangle
themselves thoroughly. An undersea boat so entrapped is helpless to do
anything but either sink or else empty her tanks and try to rise and
surrender. A submarine in trouble usually sends up notification in the
form of large quantities of escaping oil and gas.
Inventors have been busy devising new kinds of traps, snares, and
exaggerated lobster-pots to be placed in the waters about the British
Isles. How many German submarines have poked their noses into these
devices probably not even the British Admiralty could tell, if it
was so minded, but the traps are said to have been put down very
plentifully and most of the published designs are extremely ingenious.
Individual torpedo-nets for ships have rather gone out of fashion, but
the most effective way of keeping submarines out of a harbor is to
close its entrance with booms and nettings. The principal naval bases
on both sides are undoubtedly so protected. It has been persistently
reported that the immunity of British transports crossing the channel
is due to a double line of booms, nets and mines stretching from one
shore to the other, and enclosing a broad, safe channel outside which
the “U-boats” roam hungrily. There would seem to be no great difficulty
in building such a barrier, but it would be extremely difficult to keep
intact in heavy weather and for that reason most of our naval officers
are skeptical of its existence.
Microphones which have been placed under water off the coasts of
France, Great Britain, and Ireland have succeeded in detecting the
presence of submarines at a distance of fifty-five miles. This device
has been perfected by the joint labors of an American electrical
engineer, Mr. William Dubilier, and Professor Tissot of the French
Academy of Science. These two gentlemen, experimenting with microphones
and a submarine placed at their disposal by the French government,
“discovered in the course of the tests that the underwater craft were
sources of sound waves of exceedingly high frequency, quite distinctive
from any other subaqueous sounds. While the cause of the high-pitched
sound is known to the inventors, it cannot be divulged since it would
then be possible for German submarine constructors to eliminate the
source of the tell-tale sound waves, and thus render void the purpose
of the detector installation.”[25]
These microphones, it is believed, are usually arranged in a
semicircle. Each instrument records sound waves best when they come
from one particular direction. The operator on shore, listening to
a device that eliminates all other sounds coming in from under the
sea, can tell by the way a passing submarine affects the different
microphones in the semicircle how far off and in what direction it is
moving, and so warns and summons the ever-watchful patrol boats.
Air craft are doubtless being much used in the hunt for submarines,
for an aviator at a height of several hundred feet can distinctly see
a submarine swimming beneath him in clear water with a good light
reflected from the bottom. Early in the war, the pilot and observer
of a “Taube” that was brought down in the North Sea were rescued by
a British submarine. In the attack on Cuxhaven a combined force of
submarines, sea-planes, and light cruisers was resisted by the German
shore-batteries, destroyers, “U-boats”, aeroplanes and Zeppelins. As
the British sea-planes returned from dropping bombs on the Cuxhaven
navy yard or taking observations above the Kiel Canal, some of them
were shot down by the Germans but the aviators were picked up, as had
been arranged beforehand, by English submarines. In the spring of 1915
there was an engagement between a Zeppelin and a British submarine in
which each side claimed the victory. On August 26 of the same year the
secretary of the British Admiralty announced:
“Squadron Commander Arthur Bigsworth, R.N., destroyed single-handed a
German submarine this morning by bombs dropped from an aeroplane. The
submarine was observed to be completely wrecked, and sank off Ostend.
[Illustration:
Copyright, Illustrated London News & Flying.
Photograph of a submarine, twenty feet below the surface, taken from
the aeroplane, whose shadow is shown in the picture.]
“It is not the practice of the Admiralty to publish statements
regarding the losses of German submarines, important though they have
been, in cases where the enemy has no other source of information as
to the time and place at which these losses have occurred. In the case
referred to above, however, the brilliant feat of Squadron Commander
Bigsworth was performed in the immediate neighborhood of the coast in
occupation of the enemy and the position of the sunken submarine has
been located by a German destroyer.”
“This is inexact,” replied the German Admiralty. “The submarine was
attacked but not hit and returned to port undamaged. One of our
submarines on August 16 destroyed by gunfire the benzol factory with
the attached benzol warehouses and coke furnaces near Harrington,
England. The statement of the English press that the submarine attacked
the open towns of Harrington, Parton, and Whitehaven is inexact.”
Equally interesting but unfortunately lacking in details are the
reports from the Adriatic of submarines fighting submarines. There have
been three such duels, in one an Austrian sank an Italian submarine,
in another the Italian was victorious, while after the third both were
found lying on the bottom, each torn open by the other’s torpedo.
As it is a physical impossibility for the pilot of one submarine to
see another under the water, it would seem as if at least one of the
combatants in each of these fights must have been running on the
surface at the time.
Both Mr. Simon Lake and the late John P. Holland were absolutely
confident that submarines could not fight submarines, that surface
craft would be utterly unable to injure or resist them, and that
therefore the submarine boat would make naval warfare impossible and do
more than anything else to bring about permanent peace.
All that can be said at present is that the actual situation is much
more complex than had been expected. Submarines have sunk many surface
warships but have suffered heavily themselves. The German government
has admitted the loss of over a dozen “U-boats,” while the unofficial
estimates of their enemies’ run as high as thirty-five or fifty German
submarines destroyed or captured. Admiral Beatty’s victorious squadron,
pursuing the German battle-cruisers after the second North Sea fight,
turned and retreated at the wake of a single torpedo and the glimpse of
hostile periscopes. But the submarine has not yet driven the surface
warship from the seas and it has signally failed against transports.
Its moral effect has been very great: British submarines have
terrorized the citizens of Constantinople; while the victories of their
beloved “U-boats” have cheered the German people as the victories of
our frigates cheered us in 1812, and have been a somewhat similar shock
to the nerves of the British navy. But that sturdy organization has
recovered from more than one attack of nerves. And as the war goes on,
it becomes increasingly clear that it is unfair to expect unsupported
submarines, any more than unsupported frigates a century ago, to do the
work of an entire navy. Like the aeroplane, the submarine was first
derided as useless, next hailed as a complete substitute for all other
arms, then found to be an indispensable auxiliary, whose scope and
value are now being determined.