The work of the submarines on the anti-submarine patrols, minelaying
trips, etc., was useful, and at times exciting; but it must be
remembered that the main duty of the flotillas lay in watching for the
enemy's fleet, and that this duty continued throughout the war. Boats
were stationed watching both the entrance to the Baltic and the several
exits from the Bight right up to the date of the signing of the
Armistice. For the first two years of the war the duty of these boats
was to attack the enemy if seen, and to signal afterwards that the
enemy had been met. The signalling question then was a secondary
consideration. The boats were considered less as scouts than as
torpedo-boats, especially in view of the fact that in the early part of
the war their wireless range was limited. When "E 23" (Lieut.-Commander
Turner) torpedoed the _Westfalen_ in August 1916, he rose to the
surface as the enemy drew out of sight and signalled the enemy's
position to the Commander-in-Chief. It is true that no decisive result
came of the signal, as the enemy turned home when barely clear of the
Bight, and the Grand Fleet's attempt to cut him off, as usually
happened, failed again; but that signal was the first clear "enemy
report" given by a unit of the Bight Patrol. It was then that new
long-range wireless sets were installed in all boats, amid the curses
of the submarine officers, who at that date were distinctly
narrow-minded on the question of how their boats could be most usefully
employed. They looked upon it as a personal insult that their limited
accommodation should be cut down by the extra instruments supplied, and
also that (this was where the shoe pinched) their splendid independence
on patrol should be lost to them now that Their Lordships could call
them up direct from the wireless at Whitehall. But they soon discovered
that the idea was right, and that their loss of independence weighed
nothing against the new strategic use which had been found for the
submarine as a fleet scout. Orders were issued that the boats were on
no account to fire at the enemy if he was seen coming out, until a
wireless signal had been made to Commander-in-Chief. This, of course,
implied that the boat could not attack the outward-bound High Sea Fleet
at all, as the signal would have to be made from surface trim, and by
the time it was acknowledged the chance of a torpedo attack would have
gone by. If the enemy was seen homeward bound, the submarines were at
liberty to fire at them; but outward-bound squadrons were safe from
under-water attack. A submarine officer was heard to explain the reason
for these orders by the light of his own logic: "The Commander-in-Chief
won't let us fire at them coming out, because he wants 'em for himself,
and thinks if we butt in it discourages them and they lose their
enthusiasm; I suppose he's right, but it looks a bit selfish...."
During the last two years of the war, the enemy gradually discovered
that such orders as these must have been given. The Naval Armistice
Commission to Germany has heard some interesting sidelights on the war
from the officers of the German Commission. A good deal of the
information volunteered has to be left unconfirmed owing to the lack
of opportunities for checking it, but in cases where it can be
corroborated by our own information, it can be seen that the Germans
see no object now in concealment or perversion of facts. The following
is from a German Commander, a dignified solemn-featured figure standing
rigidly on the bridge of an Allied destroyer, his face turned to the
bank of the Kiel Canal that slid past him--a man who felt clearly the
disgrace and humiliation that had come upon his country:--
"We wondered why, when we made an excursion, we were not fired at. We
knew you had submarines all round the Bight, and our ships even saw
periscopes, but no torpedoes came. We thought after a while that it was
an order--that we were being watched and reported, but left unmolested
till the Grand Fleet should come. I remember when we came out one night
and we heard the wireless speak by Hiorn's Reef. The operator heard it,
but we could not block the signals. If we had blocked we would have
been yet found--our position would have been known by the Directional
Wireless in England. We heard him sending by full power, and by the
nature of his signal (it was so short and quick) we knew the purport of
it. Then we went on, but all the time we knew it. We knew that we might
meet the Fleet. It is impossible to leave the Bight without being
reported. Then on the return by Hiorn's Reef the torpedo came and the
_Moltke_ was hit. She was badly damaged, but we towed her in. I do
not know if it was the same submarine that saw us go out. I do not
think so. You do not know? No? It was perhaps the same, but you had
many boats patrolling. The Zeppelins claimed many to be sunk with
bombs. It was not so? No? The flying men are all full of imagination.
It is the vibration of the engines that affects the eyes....
"... Yes, I was at the Skageraksclaght (the Jutland Battle). We were
not hit. Some ships were badly hit. One ship [probably the
_Seydlitz_--Author] had an artillery officer on board. It was his
holiday, and he spent it on board her with his friend. He said after
that he would prefer a year on the Western Front to twenty minutes'
naval bombardment. The doctors were all killed and the ship was on
fire. The shells came into both casualty stations. Did many English
ships receive hits from torpedoes? The _Marlborough_ only? That is
strange, for we fired many. Yes, the Emperor said it was a victory, but
if it had been a victory we would have known it without his having to
tell us so. The sailors were not persuaded so...."
(I seem to be quoting irrelevant matter here, but German mentality at
any rate bears on the submarine subject, even if indirectly.)
"... The _Tiger_ is not sunk? No? We thought not--we heard later that
it was a dummy _Tiger_ that was torpedoed. We were sure before that it
was the real ship that sank, and the officer that fired was decorated.
It is all right, because since then he has earned the decoration for
other things, so that he does not mind. A lot of things we did not
understand for long. Our submarines have seen your K-boats at sea.
They saw them through the periscope, and could read the numbers, but
they said they must be fast submarine-hunters, like the Americans were
written to be building. Then one day a U-boat saw through his
periscope a K-boat steaming, and then in one minute the K was
submerged, so we knew it was really a submarine. What was the
submarine that torpedoed the U 51 in the mouth of the Jahde river?
That was a fine attack. The U-boat was not yet out of the river on its
voyage. Did the English boat get home? Yes. I am glad--she had many
depth-charges to face. Your mine-laying submarines were dangerous.
They had a trick of following our mine-sweeping boats up the channel.
They did not lay mines until the channel was swept and reported free.
It was well organised ... and also the submarine that struck the mine
and yet got back. The captain of her is to be congratulated; we heard
of it and we thought she was very lucky--I think it was at Amrum bank
she struck the mine. I think it was an English mine; one of our mines
would have put her in pieces. I do not know why the Heligoland
trawlers did not see her as she was passing home to England...."
I must just hark back to the question of the U-boat here, as the
Inspection Commissions in Germany that are seeing to the handing over
or destruction of the U-boats bring back their reports here, and their
reports are full of interest, though perhaps they contain little that
is news to the Admiralty. There are now 135 German submarines in
England, and there are more to come yet. The building-yards of Germany
show that a huge effort was to have been made along the lines of
submarine war in the spring and summer of 1919. Every available yard
was working at full power at the date of the cessation of hostilities,
and the work was almost entirely on submarine construction. The only
other work being done was on new and more powerful destroyers and on
standard merchant ships--the latter for after-the-war reconstruction.
Yards that had never before done warship work of any kind were fully
employed on building small submarines. The big yards were given all the
new submarine-cruiser work to do. The submarine cruisers were a
comparative failure on trials, as were also the big submarine
mine-layers of the U 118 class; this must have been a sad
disappointment to the enemy, as one can judge by the number of big
boats preparing that he had set his heart on a campaign of thorough
frightfulness on the American coast in the spring. Work on the new big
surface ships had stopped in the spring of 1918, partly owing to the
shortage of nickel and chiefly owing to their whole stake having been
put on submarines and not on the Fleet. The German mentality never
seems to have grasped the fundamental rule of sea-fighting--that
commerce-destruction will never win a war, and that only the defeat or
mastery of the main enemy fleet can bring command of the sea.
Such yards as the two at Hamburg (Vulcan and Blohm & Voss) are typical
of the method of construction. On November 11 these two yards had
seventy-two submarines under construction. At the same time at Blohm
& Voss's yard the battle-cruiser _Mackensen_ lay abandoned in the
water just as she had been launched in the spring of 1918, and the
battleship _Ersatz Freya_ lay half-finished on the building-slip. The
submarines were on the slips in rows--each row representing a group of
perhaps seven boats of the same class. Lying alongside each row were
parts and fittings waiting to be built in: for instance, seven bows
(complete with sterns and torpedo-tube pads), seven sterns (complete
with hydroplane-guards, etc.), seven bow top-strakes, seven stern
top-strakes, etc.--in fact, one was reminded strongly of what one had
heard of American motor-car factories. The whole idea was of quick and
standardised production, and the two points that occurred at once to
the observer were--"There would have been a deuce of a rush of new
stuff into commission in the spring," and then, "How on earth were
they going to provide skilled crews for such a lot of boats all at
once?"
The latter question is still difficult to answer, even if one takes
into account a system of "compulsory volunteering," and also the fact
that standardised boats can be worked by standardised and
partly-trained men. What it would have come to was indicated by the
trend of U-boat war results in 1918. It would have implied a good deal
of real work being performed by a few experienced and trained crews,
and a lot of blank trips and half-hearted performances by a mass of
other crews, the mortality among the latter rising to a terrible
percentage. It will always be the same; a good personnel will do well
in any boat--a bad personnel will do badly, however good the boat is.
In the remarks quoted from a German officer, I have referred to three
incidents in connection with the activities of our own submarines. I
will give them in their order, as they appeared to the officers
concerned. It was "E 42" (Lieutenant C. Allen) that met the German
battle-cruisers on 25th April 1918, and, the enemy being homeward
bound, fired a torpedo into the _Moltke_ as she passed Hiorn's
Reef:--
"A.M. 0630. While on surface, sighted hostile sea-plane--high up,
but close.
"Dived to 60 feet (4 bombs). Surfaced for observations. Saw smoke
bearing N.E. Dived.
"Sighted a battle-cruiser escorted by three torpedo-boats. Altered
course, and proceeded utmost speed to attack. Fired starboard bow
tube (quarter shot). Range 2000-2500 yards. Heard sound of
explosion a long way off--possible hit."
(The "possible hit," as a matter of fact, caused the _Moltke_
to be towed in a very precarious condition all the way home.)
"About 5 depth-charges and 20 lance-bombs were dropped at me after
the shot. Courses as requisite for getting clear."
The next incident, of the attack in the Weser river, has a story behind
it.