German submarine

“ So the Allies, the British especially, built more and more destroyers to fight the German submarines. The Germans, of course, built more and more submarines; and so the fight went on, growing ever fiercer.
It was up-hill work for the British to guard thousands of ships over millions of miles against the hidden foe, who sometimes struck without being seen at all. A ship is a small thing on millions of square miles. A slinking submarine is very much lower and harder to see on the surface. A periscope is far harder still. ”

“ An attack by allied torpedo planes, armed with guns to defend themselves from fighting airplanes, would be a powerful menace to the German fleet and, if made in sufficient numbers, would give the Allies such unrestricted command of the North Sea, even of the shallow parts near the German coast, that German submarines would be prevented from coming from a German port, the submarine menace abolished, and all chance of German success wiped out. ”

“ The British navy, it is known, has lost during 1914, 1915, and 1916 twelve boats, some of which foundered, were wrecked or mined while others simply never returned. The loss of eight German submarines has also been definitely established. Others, however, are known to have been lost, and their number has been greatly increased since the arming of merchantmen. In 1917 it was estimated that the Germans lost one U-boat a week and built three.
Just what sensations a man experiences in a submerged submarine that finds it impossible to rise again, is, of course, more or less of a mystery. ”

“ Every submarine that was sent to the bottom amounted in 1917 to a saving of many thousands of tons per year of the merchant shipping that would have been sunk by the U-boat if left unhindered to pursue its course. Besides escorting merchant ships, therefore, the Allied navies developed several methods of hunting individual submarines; and these methods not only sank a considerable number of U-boats, but played an important part in breaking down the German submarine moral. ”

“ The activities of the German submarine have completely occupied public attention; and this is perhaps the reason why few newspaper readers have suspected that there were other than German and Austrian submarines constantly operating at sea. Everyone has heard of the U-boats, yet how many have heard anything of the H-boats, the E-boats, the K-boats, and the L-boats? The H-, E-, and K-boats were British submarines, and the L-boats were American submarines. In the destruction of the German under-water craft these Allied submarines proved more successful than any kind of surface ship. ”

“ There is no recorded instance of a German submarine having penetrated into any British war harbour. The British submarine service was certainly not inferior in enterprise to the Germans, and from the very first hours of the War our boats were in the Heligoland Bight; but no British submarine officer attempted actually to penetrate a German war harbour or run actually into the mouths of the Elbe, the Jade, the Weser or the Ems. ”

“ German naval policy, no less wise for its own ends than for the British, has depended upon the submarine, whose importance may be easily exaggerated and easily underestimated. No submarine can approach the major fighting ships of a great fleet when that fleet is properly protected by torpedo-defense guns and fast destroyers and light cruisers. ”

“ May 27—German submarine torpedoes and sinks British battleship Majestic off Sedd-el-Bahr; 49 men are lost; Majestic was completed in 1895 and belonged to the oldest type of battleship in commission in British Navy; British Admiralty announces that submarine E-11 has sunk a large Turkish munition ship, while she caused a small storeship to run ashore; also that E-11 entered Constantinople harbor and discharged a torpedo at a transport alongside the arsenal; British steamer Cadeby is sunk off the Scilly Islands by gunfire from a German submarine; crew saved. ”

“ In fact, it was the submarine itself which, contrary to all pre-war theories, proved the most effective type of naval craft against its own kind. Whereas fuel economy compelled German submarines to spend as much time as possible on the surface, the Allied under-water boats, operating near their bases, could cruise awash or submerged and were thus able to creep up on the enemy and attack unawares. According to Admiral Sims, Allied destroyers, about 500 in all, were credited with the certain destruction of 34 enemy submarines; yachts, patrol craft, etc., over 3000 altogether, sank 31 ”

“ The position of the Allies was that a submarine, even though without guns or torpedoes, was practically a vessel of war from its very nature, and for it to pretend to be a merchant vessel was as if some great German man-of-war should dismount its guns and pass them over to some tender and then undertake to visit [136] an American port. They argued that if the submarine would come out from harbor it might be easily fitted with detachable torpedo tubes, and become as dangerous as any U-boat. Even without arms it might easily sink an unarmed merchant vessel by ramming. ”

“ Germany has not improved the submarine, except in detail. Undersea craft of that country which have been recently captured show [Pg 273] little deviation from the original lines of the submarine as used in the German Navy four years ago. They are larger—the new ones, that is—but the principle of their construction is fundamental, and the development not unnatural.
Our modern submarine-chasers are merely a modified form of the torpedo-boat destroyer. The depth-bomb was known before it was employed as one of the most effective weapons against the submarine. ”

“ As a result of the German submarine campaign it is possible that the United States may develop a fleet of underwater merchantmen to circumvent the enemy while this war continues, though there has been but little discussion of it. But even so, commonsense would indicate that such a fleet would be abandoned on the restoration of peace. If anything is to be done toward making the submarine a vessel of ordinary everyday use the present double system of motors—the Diesels for surface navigation and the electric for submerged service—will have to be abandoned. ”

“ Moreover, the submarine is exceedingly difficult to attack: it presents a very tiny mark to gunfire, and when it sights a hostile ship capable of attacking it, it can always seek safety by submerging. But, when all is said and done, the number of German submarines, given all the good fortune they could wish, is quite inadequate seriously to threaten the main body of either our commerce or pur Navy. ”

“ These were in sufficient number, American and British naval authorities believed, to protect the transports should they be attacked by German submarines.
The transports themselves carried big guns fore and aft and were so equipped as to be able to give a good account of themselves should occasion arise; and as the voyage progressed a sharp lookout was kept aboard every vessel of' the flotilla, that a submarine might not come unheralded within striking distance of the transports or their convoy. ”

“ The great measure of success won by the German submarines and the apparent impossibility of coping adequately with those weapons of death once they had reached the open sea, led the British and the Americans to consider the possibility of destroying them in their bases and destroying the bases as well. But Kiel and Wilhelmshaven were too heavily defended to make an attack by sea seem at all practicable. The lesser ports of Zeebrugge and Ostend had been successfully raided from the air and made practically useless as submarine bases. ”

“ U-boating close to England has long ceased to be a popular amusement with the German submarine flotilla, who have a thoroughly healthy appreciation of the various devices by which so many of them have been destroyed. The National Liberals believe that the British will not be able to tackle long-distance submarines operating in the Atlantic and elsewhere. Their radius of action is undoubtedly increasing almost month by month. From remarks made to me I do not believe that these submarines have many land bases at great distances—certainly none in the United States. ”

“ The idea of sending a fleet of submarines out on to the high seas was a new one, and had been impossible in the last war in which they had been used—that between Russia and Japan. But the improvements which had been made in their design and equipment since then had made an actual cruising submarine possible, and made possible the new phase of naval warfare inaugurated by the German admiralty. ”

“ Sixty-eight million Germans think their submarine officers and crews are the greatest of the great.
When the Berlin Foreign Office announced, after the sinking of the Sussex, that the ruthless torpedoing of ships would be stopped the German statesmen meant this method would be discontinued until there were sufficient submarines to defy the United States. At once the German navy, which has always been anti-American, began building submarines night and day. Every one in the Government knew the time would come when Germany would have to break its Sussex pledge. ”

“ It was, therefore, possible for our submarines to stop an occasional ship with impunity, or to call up a destroyer and send a prize into port; and in the narrow waters of the Baltic and the Sea of Marmora, supply ships and merchantmen were captured and destroyed by them with every regard for the laws of humanity. But the German submarines had no fleet at sea to back their attempted blockade, and German war policy therefore took the downward course, hacking a way through the rules, and sacrificing, for the hope of victory, the very foundations of civilised human life. ”

“ May 21—German submarine, with thirty-nine shots from her gun, sinks British sailing ship Glenholm off Irish coast; crew saved.
May 22—German submarine sinks Norwegian steamer Minerva; crew saved.
May 23—Repeated reports keep coming from Copenhagen that the German naval authorities admit the loss of seventeen submarines since the opening of the war.
May 24—An allied submarine sinks Turkish gunboat Pelenk-i-Deria.
May 25—British battleship Triumph is sunk in the Dardanelles by a German submarine, going down in seven minutes; 56 men are lost; the Triumph was built in 1904 and cost $4,750,000. ”

“ Military Governor of Smyrna says that British have bombarded unfortified villages; another British superdreadnought joins allied fleet at Dardanelles; French transports are on way with troops; Turks lose coal supply by Russian bombardment of Zunguldiak; report from Berlin that German submarine U-16 has sunk five merchantmen; British Admiralty states that German submarines, from Jan. 21 to March 3, sank fifteen British steamships out of a total of 8,734 vessels above 300 tons arriving at or departing from British ports in that period; more mines planted near Denmark. ”

“ Arrangements can then be made for raising the boat or towing her to some point at which salvage is possible. An instance of the value of this device was given by the disaster to the German submarine "U-3" which was sunk at Kiel in 1910. Through the telephone the imprisoned crew notified those at the other end that they had oxygen enough for forty-eight hours but that the work of rescue must be completed in that time. A powerful (p. 315) floating derrick grappled the sunken submarine and lifted its bow above water. Twenty-seven of the imprisoned crew crept out through the torpedo tubes. ”

“ Many are the fables which the Germans have done their best to pass off for truth among the spectators of the present War; but not one is more wilfully and demonstrably false, than their account of the origin of the submarine. According to the story which they have endeavoured to spread among the unthinking public in neutral countries, the under-sea boat—the arm with which they claim to have revolutionised naval warfare—is the product of German ingenuity and skill. ”

“ It was towards the end of 1914 that the German Admiralty conceived the idea of blockading the British Isles by means of a submarine fleet. There were, as we have already seen, great difficulties in the way. For the pursuit and capture of commerce, a submarine is not nearly so well fitted as an ordinary cruiser; is not, in fact, well fitted at all. To hold up and examine a ship on the surface is too dangerous a venture for a frail boat with a very small crew; to put a prize crew on board, and send the captured vessel into port, is generally impossible. ”

“ In these pages, therefore, I may make claims for submarines which have not yet been publicly proved by actual performance, and such claims may impress many as being as visionary as the destructive capabilities of submarines appeared to be until Lieutenant Weddingen, of the German Navy, shocked the conservatives and put the submarine on the map as a naval weapon by sinking, single-handed, three cruisers within one hour of each other. ”

“ It is bad enough to be lost in a naval engagement, but [Pg 177] at least the names of the ships involved and the valor of the crews, both friend and enemy, are noted. But under the British system, a submarine leaves port, and if she is sunk by a patrol-vessel or other war-ship, that fact is never made known. The Germans know simply that still another submarine has entered the great void.
It adds a sinister element to an occupation sufficiently sinister in all its details. There may be no doubt that the policy of silence has had its effect upon the German morale. ”