I
I
There has naturally been a great deal of ink spilled during the War on
the subject of the U-boat. The British Submarines have worked unseen
and unheard of. Occasionally a few official lines have appeared in the
newspapers about them, but the very nature of the work they have been
doing has precluded any divulging of their activity. With the
permission of the Admiralty I am about to speak now of some of the work
they have done, and to give their own reports describing some of the
many occasions on which they have been in contact with the enemy.
On August 4, 1914, we had in our Submarine Service the following boats:
9 E class, 8 D class, 37 C class, 10 B class.
Of these, the B and C classes were 320 tons submerged displacement, and
were not suitable for the patrol round the mouth of the Bight. The D
and E boats were designed for that purpose, being of 600 and 800 tons
submerged displacement respectively. The B and C classes were used in
the War for local patrols, defence of the coasts and ports, and (as the
War progressed and they became obsolete), for instruction of new
entries of personnel.
Before I get on to the War itself I want to give a short description of
the entry and training of our personnel both before and after the War
began.
In peace time an officer who wished to join the Submarine Service had
first to receive a recommendation from his own Captain. He then had to
produce either a first-class certificate for his Torpedo examination
for Lieutenant, or, if he had not that qualification, a certificate
from the Torpedo-Lieutenant of his ship to the effect that he showed
special zeal in that branch of his duties. If his name was accepted it
was placed at the bottom of the candidates' list, and in due time,
after an interval which varied from year to year, he was appointed to
Fort Blockhouse, the Submarine Depot at Gosport. There the batch of new
officers were medically examined, and (the standard being high) the
unfit were weeded out and returned to their ships.
For the next three months he went through a course of practical
submarine instruction, his training period terminating in examinations
which provided another obstacle, the meshes of which prevented certain
candidates from proceeding further.
The officers of the class were then sent as "third hands" to different
boats to await vacancies as First Lieutenants. After two to four years
as First Lieutenant (the time varied with the number of new boats
built), an officer obtained command of an A boat (of 204 tons), from
which he rose by seniority to larger and more powerful commands.
The men entered in much the same way, being recommended, of first-class
character and of excellent physical standard. They went through a less
comprehensive training course, but had the same weeding-out to undergo,
so that as far as possible the "duds" were got rid of before they had
cost the country much in useless teaching.
In war-time it has not been possible to spare the time for the full
instructional courses, but the courses continued, although much
shortened. The shortage of personnel in the Navy generally cut down the
field from which volunteers were drawn, but in spite of this the
Submarine Service was able to keep up its voluntary entry, and to
continue to retain its standard by drafting back those who were by
nature or capabilities unfit for such work. The submarine sailor is a
picked man, and is the admiration of his officers. There is a Democracy
of Things Real in the boats which is a very fine kind of Democracy.
Both men and officers in a submarine know that each man's life is held
in the hand of any one of them, who by carelessness or ignorance may
make their ship into a common coffin; all ranks live close together,
and when the occasion arises go to their deaths in the same way. The
Fear of Death is a great leveller, and in submarines an officer or a
man's competency for his job is the only real standard by which he is
judged.
In the German Navy, before the War, the Submarine Service had not
received the attention it might have done. There, the submarine officer
did not hold the status in the eyes of his Navy that was held by his
destroyer or battleship brother. Since the accident to U-3 at exercise
practice, also, certain rules for exercise had been introduced, which
precluded practice attacks on target-ships going at high speed, and had
circumscribed the areas (by defining "safe" depths of water) in which
exercises might be carried out. In our Navy it had always been
recognised that risks must be incurred in peace, so as to ensure
greater safety in war. As far back as 1912 our submarines were
practising attacks on destroyers zigzagging at high speed, and were
diving in any waters, and generally reproducing war conditions as far
as possible. While even in 1904 the early boats on manoeuvres were
allowed to dive under surface ships, and destroyers were allowed to use
wire-sweeps against them.
For years before the War a Submarine Defence Committee of officers was
working to find the best antidote to the submarine menace, and
experiments were carried out by the Committee with our own boats. The
result of this was that, on the War coming, both the submarine officers
and those of our Navy whose task it was to deal with the U-boat had
considerable experience to begin on.
The British Submarine Flotillas, as shown in the preceding list,
comprised in 1914 far more small boats than sea-going ones. This was
altered later as the strategy of the War crystallised, but when the War
began it had never been expected that the enemy Fleet would remain so
inactive. The Navy's view had naturally been that the German had not
built such a fine Fleet if he wasn't going to use it, and so the
majority of our boats, instead of being designed for "Over There" work,
were designed for "half-way over." And very good boats the C boats
were, too. If the expected War of Movement had taken place, with a
North Sea dotted with racing cruisers, and ships of both sides looking
for a fight, every boat in our service would have been in the thick of
the trouble. As it was, the course of events very soon showed that the
ring round the Heligoland Bight--the blockading patrol--was to be the
chief station of our submarines in Home waters.
Both belligerents began to design and build at once. The German went
straight ahead on the one type, which, with variations, has served him
throughout the War--viz., the commerce-destroying medium-sized patrol
boat. To this type he later added the mine-laying submarine, and
towards the end of the War he evolved the large, commerce-destroying
cruiser boat.
Now, both before and during the War, we held a lead over our enemy in
the matter of submarine design. That statement is confirmed by the data
given by the U-boats arriving at Harwich as I write. Some time ago the
British Navy prepared an antidote to a design of submarine which it was
thought the enemy must, by logical reasoning, soon produce as being the
obvious thing for him to think of. Our antidote has not yet had a
chance to be used, as it was only recently that the German designers
got to that stage in their reasoning.
But what did we build? Well, we did not want commerce destroyers at
least; such work as the cutting of the Turkish communications in the
Sea of Marmora and the sinking of transports in the Baltic could be
done by our ordinary E boats. But we did want mine-layers, and we built
those. What else? Well, I must branch off into a dissertation on
submarines generally.
A submarine may be any kind of surface vessel, with the advantage added
to her of being able to dive. She need not necessarily be a diving boat
with a few torpedo tubes and a couple of guns. She may be anything. A
surface ship can only be one thing; you cannot have a cruiser-monitor
or a destroyer-battleship. But a submarine may be two things at once;
and a submarine can, as a result, act unsupported. Take the case of a
scouting submarine. What is the alternative? If we had no scouting
submarines we would have had to keep a ring of destroyers out to watch
the Bight. Those destroyers might, being out near the enemy's coast, be
attacked by enemy cruisers, so that it would be essential to keep our
cruisers out in support. Then if the enemy brought out--and so on--up
to the final result of our battle fleet being continuously at sea,
which would have been not only unnecessary wear and tear on the big
ships, but a good opportunity for the U-boats if they had cared to take
a chance. Take the case of the submarine mine-layer. She has the great
advantage, to begin with, of not only getting to her position unseen,
but of being able to lay her unpleasant cargo down unsuspected and
unobserved. Then, again, she does not need a supporting force to follow
her in case she meets with trouble. She does not look on a big enemy
ship as a trouble, should one interfere with her; she would rather
describe the big ship as a "gift." She is open to the usual
anti-submarine methods, and can be dealt with by destroyers, seaplanes,
and so on; but if she succumbs to their attacks--well, that is another
submarine gone, but it might have been a big surface ship.
By the nature of the German strategy our lines of design were
indicated. The chief type we needed were scouts--in other words, patrol
boats. We built these in considerable numbers, for the several types of
patrol boats we diverged into were capable of doing any of several
things. They could do the Heligoland Bight patrol, attacking the enemy
if met with, and reporting to the C.-in-C. what they saw on their
patrols; they could go out into the Atlantic to hunt U-boats on the
traffic lanes, or they could go to the Mediterranean to work in the
Adriatic. They were the general-utility craft of the Submarine Navy.
The mine-layers were of the patrol boat type, getting larger as the War
went on, but always with the torpedo-tubes (reduced in number) built
into them to allow them to become normal submarines when a chance
arose.
In the early part of the War there were some additions to the Submarine
Flotillas in the shape of V-W and F boats of 500 submerged tonnage.
These were experiments by the Admiralty in building boats of foreign
design, drawings being used of the Laurenti and Fiat firms. After these
boats had been tried and their best points copied into our own designs,
the standard British ideas were reverted to for war construction. The
building of these boats served its purpose in giving us an insight into
the lines upon which other nations were working, but foreign designs
were not continued owing to the better performances of our own boats.
The G and J class were patrol boats--the G's being of 975 ton submerged
displacement, and so larger and with more beam than the E boats; the
J's were 19-knot boats of 1820 tons submerged, and marked a great
advance in the big-submarine type. The year 1915 gave us the addition
of a number of E class, while the G's began to join up with the
Flotillas in November of that year. The first J boat commissioned in
the spring of 1916.
The H class were small patrol boats of American design--a design later
enlarged and improved in England. The L boats were enlarged and
improved E's, and are probably the finest patrol submarines in
existence.
The 4th August 1916 saw the commissioning of a boat which was a
revolution in submarine design. This was the first K boat. This class
was designed for the expected Fleet action; their qualities were to
be--that they should have several knots in hand over the speed of the
Battle Fleet, that they should be seaworthy and able to cruise with the
Fleet, and that they should have the necessary submarine qualities to
enable them to deal with the High Sea Fleet when it should be met.
These qualities they have; but it is regretted that the enemy gave them
no chance of trying their luck in action. They were used on patrol to
keep them from getting stale during the long wait for their "Day," and
their experiences on patrol, and when at sea on the periodic occasions
when the Fleet went hurrying out in reply to reported enemy activity,
have given invaluable data for future construction of large and fast
submarines. These boats are of 1880 tons (surface) and 2550 tons
(submerged) displacement. They have a speed of slightly over 24 knots
on the surface, can carry a good gun battery if required, and their
hulls being low and well stream-lined, and their torpedo armament
powerful, they can act both as destroyers by night or as submarines by
day.
These boats have a battery capacity sufficient for a day's Fleet
battle, but no more. They may be described as having great _strategic_
speed and capacity, but small tactical radius: that is, they can get
to the place where they are wanted quickly, but are circumscribed in
their capabilities of remaining submerged in that spot for long, or of
moving fast submerged for more than one attack without rising to
recharge their batteries. In submarine design as well as in that of
surface ships, you can't have everything; each type is a compromise.
At the other end of the scale we built the R boat. These were also
"specialists," but of opposite qualities. Of 500 tons (submerged) they
have a surface speed of about 8 knots, but a submerged speed of
14-1/2--a speed which will probably be slightly increased by
alterations. These boats only joined up in the summer of 1918, and the
enemy surrendered before they had really shown what they could do. A
boat of this type (they are perfectly stream-lined, and, inside, they
are all battery and torpedo tubes) can jog out to her assigned area at
her leisure--it is no use sending her to cut off or meet a definitely
reported enemy, as she wouldn't get there in time--and once in that
area she can use her diving batteries for days without having to
recharge them, should she be kept down by enemy hunters, and her high
submerged speed and radius make her very dangerous to any target
(U-boat or otherwise) which passes within periscope range of her.
There remains the submarine monitor, which will be described in due
course. I will interpolate here an account of a typical trial of a new
boat, using an E boat of the early 1916 vintage as an illustration.