What America did

by Florence Finch Kelly

PART ONE: SECTION II. BY SEA

CHAPTER IX
EXPANSION IN THE NAVY

Our entrance into the war found the Navy ready for immediate service. The almost universal popular sentiment against an army of large size that had been growing in strength for a generation or more had not been manifest against the support of a navy comparable with the navies of other nations. Recognition of the necessity of a better defense for the long coast line of the United States had led Congress in 1916 to sanction the strongly urged plans of the Secretary of the Navy and authorize one of the largest ship-building programs ever undertaken by any nation. This Act of Congress with the ample appropriation that accompanied it laid the basis for a program of naval preparedness and enabled the Department of the Navy to make itself ready to meet the state of war which was threatened by unfolding events. For it not only authorized the building of 156 ships, including ten super-dreadnaughts and six battle cruisers, but by authorizing the enlargement of the Navy personnel and the creation of a big Naval Reserve and a Flying Corps and providing machinery for the expanding of the service as desired it made possible the putting of the Navy upon a tentative war basis during the months immediately preceding our declaration of war. By the first of April, 1917, its plans had been drafted and its preparations made and it was ready for action. Indeed, its work had already begun, for in the previous month it had provided guns and gun crews for the arming of American merchantmen under the order of President Wilson, made in response to Germany’s notice of unrestricted submarine warfare.

Upon the declaration of war on April 6th, the fleet was at once mobilized and a flotilla of destroyers was equipped for foreign service and sent overseas, where the first contingent arrived at a British port on May 4th, 1917. The second reached Queenstown on May 13th, and before the end of the month both were engaged in the work of hunting submarines in coöperation with the British and French navies. Early in June units of the naval aeronautical corps landed upon French shores and inside another month the vanguard of the American Expeditionary Forces, convoyed by the Navy, arrived in France. Battleships and cruisers quickly followed the destroyers across the ocean and took their places with the British Grand Fleet, on watch for the appearance of the German navy from behind its defenses at Heligoland.

While it was thus quickly making itself felt in the prosecution of the war, the Navy Department at once entered upon a great program of development, expansion and training. It had in commission when war was declared 197 vessels. When the armistice was signed there were 2,000 ships in its service. In the same time its personnel had expanded from 65,777 to a total of 497,000. In addition to the cruisers and battleships on the ways, 800 smaller craft were built or put under construction during our nineteen months of war. Formerly the building of a destroyer required about two years. But the great importance of that type of vessel and the urgent need for more of them speeded production to the fastest possible pace and at the end of the war destroyers were being built in eight months and in some cases in even less time. In one instance a destroyer, the Ward, at the Mare Island Navy Yard, was launched in seventeen and one-half days from the laying of its keel and within seventy days was in commission. The end of the war found the American Navy with more destroyers in service or under construction than the navies of any two nations had possessed before the outbreak of the war in 1914. In the first nine months of 1918 there were launched 83 destroyers, as against 62 during the entire nine preceding years.

The submarine menace made necessary the concentration of effort upon types of vessels fitted to deal with it and therefore construction of destroyers and submarine chasers was rushed and every vessel that could be effectively used was put into that service. Submarine chasers to the number of 355 were built for our own use together with fifty for another nation. A new design, the Eagle, was worked out in the Navy Department and preparations were made to produce it in quantity. The manufacturing plant had to be built from the foundation. Work upon the plant was begun in February, 1918, and the first boat was launched the following July. Its tests were successful and two had been put in commission when the armistice was signed while work was being speeded upon over a hundred more, of which part were for one of our co-belligerents. After the destroyer, the Eagle boat was believed by naval officers of our own and other nations the best weapon for the extermination of the submarine.

Privately owned vessels of many kinds, to the number of nearly a thousand, were taken over and converted to naval uses and many new small craft were built in order to provide the hundreds of boats needed for patrol service and as tugs, mine sweepers, mine layers and other auxiliaries. Two battleships and twenty-eight submarines built by the navy were completed and put into service during the war.

Along with this big increase in ship production went a similar expansion in naval ship-building plants and in production of implements of warfare for the navy. Before we entered the war the Navy’s ship-building capacity amounted to ways for two battleships, two destroyers, two auxiliaries and one gun-boat. At once was begun a work of expansion which within a little more than a year added five ways and, when completed, would provide facilities for the simultaneous construction of sixteen war vessels, of which seven could be battleships. Three large naval docks, which can handle the largest ships in the world, were built. Camps were constructed for the training of 200,000 men. A naval aircraft factory was built which turned out its first flying machine seven months after work started upon the factory. A little later it was producing a machine a day. Naval aviation schools were established and production was speeded in private plants of sea planes, flying boats and navy dirigibles and balloons.

The navy’s bureau of construction and repair undertook the work of making seaworthy again the hundred and more German ships in our harbors when war was declared which had been seriously injured by their crews, under orders from the German government. So much damage had been done, especially to the cylinders, that the enemy had thought, according to memoranda left behind, it probably could not be repaired at all and certainly not within a year and a half. Officers of the navy, in the face of opposition by engine builders and marine insurance companies, determined to make the repairs by means of electric welding, the use of which on such an extensive scale was unprecedented. The experiment was successful and these great ships were in service within six months, the navy’s engineering feat having thus saved a year of time and provided means for the transportation of half a million troops to France.

The naval gun factory at Washington was enlarged to double its output. The navy powder factory and the Newport torpedo station had their capacity greatly increased and a large new mine-loading plant was constructed. A big projectile factory was begun in the summer of 1917, and the buildings were finished, the machinery installed and the plant in operation in less than a year.

Within a year and a half the work of the ordnance bureau of the navy increased by 2,000 per cent, its expansion including the gun, powder and projectile factories mentioned above. Plants for various purposes taken over by the bureau from private industry increased their output at once by large percentages, in one case, in which the product was steel forgings, 300 per cent. The depth bomb proved one of the most efficient means of fighting the submarine. It contains an explosive charge fitted with a mechanism which causes explosion at a predetermined depth under the water. An American type was developed and within a few weeks was being manufactured in large quantities, while manufacture of the British type was continued for their navy. A new gun, called the “Y” gun, was devised and built especially for firing depth charges. It made possible the throwing of these bombs on all sides of the attacking vessel, thus laying down a barrage around it. A star shell was developed which, fired in the vicinity of an enemy fleet, made its ships visible, our own remaining in darkness. Anti-submarine activities made necessary an enormous increase in the manufacture of torpedoes and torpedo tubes, which grew by several hundred per cent and far surpassed what had been thought the possibility of production.

The ordnance bureau of the navy developed a new type of mobile mount for heavy guns which, by the use of caterpillar belts, made them as mobile as field artillery although the weight and muzzle velocity of the huge projectile rendered impossible the use of a wheeled gun carriage. The entire gun and mount, weighing 38 tons, can be readily transported by this means over any kind of ground. Immense naval guns, originally intended for use on battle cruisers, were sent to France with railway mounts especially built for them by the navy. Their important and successful operations overseas are described in the chapter on “The Navy on Land.”

Smoke producing apparatus, to enable a ship to conceal herself in a cloud of smoke, was evolved of several kinds, for use by different types of vessels. A shell that would not ricochet on striking the water, when fired at a submarine, and so glance harmlessly away in another direction, was an immediate necessity, brought about by the conditions of sea warfare. After many experiments a shell was devised that on striking would cleave the water, to the menace of the submarine’s hull, and, equipped with a depth charge, was soon in quantity production. A heavy aeroplane bomb which united the qualities of a bomb with those of a depth charge and did not explode on striking the water was another development of the navy ordnance bureau, which also devised a nonrecoil aircraft gun which, after much experiment, was installed on our seaplanes and put into quantity production. Its success meant the passing of an important milestone in aircraft armament. An American device for detecting the sounds made by a submarine gave highly important aid to that phase of the war. The Navy Department equipped our own submarines, destroyers and chasers with them and furnished them in large numbers to the British navy.

Not only was there need for an immense production of mines and depth charges for ordinary uses, but the decision by the British to carry out the American Navy Department’s plans for a mine barrage across the North Sea, whose story is told in more detail in the chapter on “Working with the Allied Navies,” made necessary the production in enormous quantities of a new type of mine. Combination of the best types already in use and experiment with new features resulted in a satisfactory product of which large quantities were made and shipped abroad. All this need for high explosives caused a critical shortage and the supply of TNT, the standard charge for mines, aerial bombs and depth charges, was almost exhausted, because of the scarcity of toluol, its principal ingredient. In this menacing situation the navy’s bureau of ordnance began making exhaustive experiments which finally proved that xylol, the near chemical relative of toluol, could be used in its place. The resulting high explosive, to which was given the name TNX, proved to be the equal in every way of TNT and the building was ordered of a plant for the distillation of xylol which would make possible the production for the following year of 30,000,000 pounds of high explosives.

Armament had to be furnished for merchant ships, 2,500 of them, equipment for destroyers and submarine chasers, and all the multitude of requirements for ships on distant service and for the repair ships that accompanied them. All this increase in ships and plants and personnel called for an enormous increase in the amount of materials and stores it was necessary to provide for them. The greatest total of supplies bought for the Navy in any one pre-war year amounted to $27,000,000. But the greatest total for a single day during the war amounted to $30,000,000.

Among the giant tasks which the Navy undertook during the war was the building of an enormous structure in Washington for the housing of the Navy Department, of several immense storehouses, of which one in Brooklyn is said to be one of the largest storehouses in the world, the installation at Annapolis of the greatest high-power radio station yet erected, and the completion of the powerful radio plant at Pearl Harbor.

The Medical Department of the Navy increased under war conditions from 327 doctors to 3,074, dentists from 30 to 485, women nurses from 160 to 1,400, and Hospital Corps members from 1,585 to 14,718. Three hospital ships were added to its equipment, it had numerous hospitals and dispensaries scattered through Great Britain and France and its hospital service at home was enlarged from 3,000 to 17,000 beds.

The inventive ingenuity of the American people was apparently much attracted towards the problems of sea warfare in this conflict, for they began to send ideas, suggestions and devices to the Navy Department even before the United States became a belligerent. After that date the Consulting Board of the Navy, which has charge of such matters, was almost snowed under by these suggestions. During our participation in the war the Board examined and acted upon 110,000 letters, of which many included detailed plans or were accompanied by models of the contrivances which their writers hoped to have adopted. Most of them were either worthless or already known, but a comparatively small number were found valuable.

At the beginning of our war activities our naval roster listed over 65,000 officers and men, with 14,000 more in the Marine Corps. A year and a half later the Marines numbered 70,000 and in the Navy there were a little more than 497,000 men and women, for a goodly number of patriotic women had enlisted in order to undertake the duties of yeomen and so release able bodied men for active service. The total permanent personnel of the Navy, officers and men, had grown to 212,000. This rapid expansion had made necessary intensive training for both men and officers that was carried on with never ceasing activity at training stations on shore and on ships at sea in both home and foreign waters. In small-arms training alone a force of 5,000 expert instructors was built up who trained an average of 30,000 men per month.

How all this immense expansion in ships, men, stores, facilities and production measures against the previous history of the Navy appears in this fact: In the almost century and quarter since the Navy was established in 1794 until and including 1916 its expenditures totaled, in round numbers, $3,367,000,000, an amount which exceeded its expenditures in the next two years alone by only $34,000,000.

Convoy of Troop Ships Entering the Harbor of Brest

CHAPTER X
OPERATING AN OCEAN FERRY

The United States had to carry on its share in the war from a base three thousand miles distant from the battle zone and to transport troops, munitions, supplies across an ocean infested by submarines intent upon sinking as many of them as possible. It was a task so unprecedented and so difficult that before it was attempted it would have been thought, in the dimensions it finally assumed, utterly impossible. The enemy was so sure it was impossible that he staked all his hopes and plans upon its failure.

In this stupendous enterprise the British Government gave much invaluable assistance. Without its help the task could not have been discharged with such brilliant success, for this country did not have enough ships—no one country had enough—for such an immense program of transportation. But the two nations combined their resources of shipping and naval escort and with some help from the French and Italian Governments the plan was carried through with triumphant success.

With the incessant call from Britain and France of “Hurry, hurry, send men, and more and more men, and hurry, hurry” speeding our preparations, the need for transport facilities for men, munitions and supplies was urgent. And those facilities were meager indeed. When war was declared we had two naval transports, of which one was not quite completed and the other proved unseaworthy. There was no organization for transport service, because none had ever been needed. For the first transport fleet, that sailed in eight weeks after the war declaration, the Government chartered four cargo vessels, nine coast liners and a transatlantic passenger ship and at once began to prepare them for their new uses and to engage and alter other ships for the transport service. They had to be overhauled and made seaworthy, staterooms had to be ripped out and in their place tiers of bunks built in, big mess halls made ready, radio equipment, communication systems, naval guns and other defensive facilities installed, ammunition stored, lookout stations built, ample quantities of life boats, life rafts and life preservers provided.

Work upon the big German liners in American ports that had been seized upon our declaration of war to repair and refit them for use as transports was undertaken by the navy and carried forward with speed and zeal. Under orders from the German Government their officers and crews had injured them in many ingenious ways to such an extent that they did not believe the ships could be made seaworthy again in less than a year and a half, at the least. Cylinders had been ruined, valves wrenched apart, engine shafts cracked, boilers injured, pipes stopped up, ground glass put into oil cups, acid poured upon ropes and into machinery, bolts sawed through and all manner of mischief done that would injure without destroying the seaworthiness of the ships.

For all of this reconstruction and refitting work there was insufficient skilled labor, indeed, insufficient labor of any sort, because the needs of the fighting forces were drawing men by the hundred thousand into the training camps and the equally urgent needs of the ship-building program, the munitions manufacture, the coal mines, the hundreds of factories that were turning their attention to the vital necessities of warfare, were draining the labor supply. There were insufficient numbers also of trained personnel to officer and man the huge transport service that would be necessary. Training for this work was carried on in schools on shore and on ships at sea, and civilian officers and crews were taken into the service. Sailors from the navy yards turned to with a will for mechanical labor in the repairing and refitting of ships, their zeal compensating, in some measure, for their lack of skill.

The British Government gathered up all the ships it could spare, taking risks with its own supply of food and raw materials, and sent them to take part in this enterprise upon whose success depended the fate of the Allied cause. The seized liners were ready for service long ahead of the time in which any one had thought they could be repaired, the first of them taking their trial trips within five months of the declaration of war and the remainder becoming ready for service at various times within the next four months. So much more efficient had the engineers of the navy made them that the utmost speed the Germans had been able to get out of several of them was increased by two or three knots. The French and Italian Governments supplied a few ships, and the United States Shipping Board furnished scores of merchant ships, as they became available under its program of ship-building and taking over of sea-going vessels. Later in the war period a number of vessels were obtained from Holland.

It was agreed between the War and Navy Departments that the Army should take charge of the work of operating docks and providing and loading cargoes and that in the hands of the Navy should lie the responsibility of providing more tonnage when necessary and of equipping, keeping in repair, operating and escorting the transports. To the Navy therefore belongs the credit of having operated with marvelous success for a year and a half an ocean ferry service of enormous proportions across 3,000 miles of submarine infested seas. To call it a ferry service is no exaggeration. For the convoys started so promptly from American shores, moved with such precision across the Atlantic, discharged their passengers and left upon the homeward trip in such good time that the ships came and went upon almost as sure a schedule as that of a ferry across a river. In all, seventy-six groups of transports sailed with troops, the size of a group ranging all the way from a single unescorted ship to as many as fifteen troop ships escorted by from one to four or five cruisers, destroyers and converted yachts. The famous Leviathan, with her capacity for carrying from 9,000 to 11,000 men, made ten such trips, most of them unescorted, her own guns, the skill of her gun crews, the care with which watch was kept and her speed and maneuvering ability being thought to give her ample protection. Trip after trip the Leviathan took with the greatest regularity, steaming down New York Bay with her decks brown with khaki-clad men, speeding across the Atlantic, unloading on the other side and returning to her dock in the New York port promptly in sixteen days. And in eight days more, just as promptly, would she be ready for another trip.

From a beginning that was next to nothing, for it lacked merchant ships, organization, officers, crews, there was developed a cruiser and transport fleet of 42 transports and 24 cruisers with a personnel of 3,000 officers and 42,000 men. There was a fleet of cargo carrying ships in steady service numbering 321 and aggregating 2,800,000 tonnage, nearly one-third of which were supplied by the United States Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation and officered and manned by the efforts of the Navy Department. At the end of hostilities there had been transported across the Atlantic in the seventeen months from the first sailing over 2,000,000 troops, of which 911,000 had been carried by U. S. naval transports and 41,500 by other United States ships, while British and British leased ships had carried 1,075,000 and French and Italian ships 52,000. In the summer of 1918 as many as 300,000 per month were carried overseas. Of the entire army of 2,079,880 men American ships carried 46¹⁄₄ per cent and British ships 51¹⁄₄ per cent, while 2¹⁄₂ per cent sailed in French and Italian ships. Of the total strength of the naval escort guarding these 2,000,000 troops 82³⁄₄ per cent was furnished by the United States, 14¹⁄₈ per cent by Great Britain and 3¹⁄₈ per cent by France. All the troops carried in American ships were escorted by American warships, cruisers, destroyers and converted yachts, and American destroyers gave a large part of the safe conduct through the danger zone to the troops that were carried by British, French and Italian ships.

The enemy had counted confidently upon being able to paralyze American transport of troops and supplies by submarine activity and his undersea vipers were constantly speeding back and forth and up and down through the eastern waters of the Atlantic and even as far as its western shores. But no troop transport on its heavily laden eastward trip was ever lost and none at all under American escort. Only three troop ships, all told, were sunk by submarines, and these were westward bound and the loss of life was very small. The first convoy of troop ships twice battled with submarines and many others were attacked, while the naval officers who did convoy duty saw the undersea boats upon almost every voyage. By submarines and raiders there were lost during our war period 130 cargo carrying ships but under the guarded convoy system these losses steadily decreased.

In a convoy the troop or merchant vessels sailed in echelon formation with destroyers or cruisers steaming in front and at the rear while a destroyer ranged in zig-zag course along each side. Naval gun crews manned each ship and on each one, in addition to the watches kept on board the escorting vessels, keen eyes constantly swept the surrounding waters, every moment of the day and night. At night all lights were dimmed, so that not a ray of even a lighted match on deck was ever visible, and the great black hulks rushed onward through the darkness, never knowing at what moment they might collide with one another or with one of the escorting vessels. But so skillfully navigated were they that all such dangers, though they were very real, were escaped.

No greater feat was achieved by our fighting forces than this of ferrying across the Atlantic an army of 2,000,000 troops, with their food, equipment, and munitions, and the material necessary in enormous amounts for the creating and carrying on of the Service of Supply. It was an arresting achievement not only because of its unparalleled bigness and its audacity and success but also because of its vital importance. Without it the war could not have been won. And the credit for the achievement belongs to the American Navy. Our co-belligerents gave vitally important aid. But the American Navy suggested, developed, organized, supervised, operated and was responsible for the entire huge system. Into its success went many factors, not the least of them the foresight and watchfulness and careful planning of the officials of the Navy, from the Secretary down to the junior officers on the troop ships. There was constant study of the submarine peril and of means to lessen it, and it was, by autumn of 1918, almost eliminated by the combined efforts of the associated nations. There were the zeal and diligence of officers and crew alike and the consequent high morale, the skill of the gun crews, who never ceased from the effort to make it better still by daily target practice, and that constant attention to detail which leaves no loophole anywhere through which success might dribble and slide away. And finally there were the skill, courage, devotion and audacious spirit of the naval officers whose ships escorted the convoys back and forth across the ocean. All these and other factors combined to make possible an achievement that stands out commandingly even in a war compact of big things and huge achievements.

By Permission of Mid-Week Pictorial, New York Times Co.

Mine Barrage Across the North Sea

CHAPTER XI
WORKING WITH THE ALLIED NAVIES

The American Navy was the first section of the American fighting forces to take part in the war. It was ready to begin operations at once upon our declaration of war, it lost no time in sending its first contingent across the ocean and the importance of its coöperation with the navies of our co-belligerents constantly increased until the end of hostilities. Aside from the vital consequence of its achievement in operating an Atlantic ferry, one of the capital performances of the entire war, its chief work was done in coöperation with the British, French and Italian navies in European waters from the Mediterranean to the White Sea.

Upon our entrance into the war a patrol force was at once organized charged with the protection of the western waters of the Atlantic and the shores of America, from the Bay of Fundy to Colombia, including the West Indies and all the region west of the 50th degree of longitude. But within a few months it became apparent that the enemy would confine his efforts mainly to European waters and accordingly most of our naval forces were sent overseas. For the protection of our own coasts and coastwise shipping when, during the second summer, enemy submarines appeared along our own shores, submarines, sub-chasers, destroyers, mine sweepers and other small craft of offense and defense were ready to be put into action and prevented the enemy from doing any considerable damage.

At the end of hostilities we had in European waters 364 vessels of all classes, of which 304 were warships, and serving there were 5,000 officers and 70,000 enlisted men of our Navy, a total greater than its full strength when we entered the war. Our destroyers had been steaming an average of 275,000 miles per month and our ships of all classes, including only those actively engaged in naval duties and excluding those operating as escorts, had steamed a total monthly average of 626,000 miles. Individual destroyers steamed a total, during the first year of service overseas, of from 60,000 to 64,000 miles. The Navy established bases at the Azores, Gibraltar, Corfu, at many places along the French coast, at English Channel ports, on the Irish coast, in the North Sea, at Murmansk and at Archangel, fifteen in all. Our 14-inch naval guns mounted on British monitors did their share in the attack on Zeebrugge, and smaller naval guns mounted on floats and manned by Italian crews gave much aid in the defense of Venice.

The bases at the Azores and at Gibraltar, where we maintained a considerable naval force, were provided with all the necessities for our cruisers, destroyers, submarines, chasers and other small craft which joined the Allied navies in the policing of the Mediterranean and the adjacent Atlantic waters where we coöperated in the hunting of the undersea enemy and the protecting of transport and merchant craft. Several of our battleships and cruisers worked with the Italian Navy in Mediterranean waters. American sub-chasers gave important aid in the battle of Durazzo, in which they were given the advance post of honor and, preceding the Allied fleet, went forward picking a way of safety for the larger vessels through the thickly strewn mine field. Inside the harbor they shared in the battle, aiding in the attacking and sinking of Austrian steamers, destroyers and submarines. Assisting in mining operations and in the construction of a mine barrage was another of the important works of this group of submarine chasers in the Adriatic Sea.

Several naval bases were established along the coast of France and through the last year of the war seventy vessels, of which half were destroyers, operated in these waters, their chief duty being to meet the convoys of American troop and cargo ships and escort them through the danger zone. They also worked up and down the French shores, hunting enemy submarines and escorting coastwise shipping. At all these repair and supply bases it was necessary to provide extensive facilities; a number of huge fuel oil tanks were built, most of the new destroyers and many other ships being oil-burners; several naval hospitals were constructed; a dozen naval port offices were established, from Cherbourg to Marseilles, to expedite the movements of American shipping through as many ports; naval aviation stations were built; rescue tugs and a wrecking steamer watched for and assisted damaged vessels; minesweepers kept open the approaches to the ports.

The principal bases from which our destroyers operated were Gibraltar, Brest and Queenstown, of which the last named was the largest; the submarine chaser bases were at Queenstown, Plymouth and Corfu; and those for our submarines were at the Azores and at Berehaven on the Irish coast. The flotilla of destroyers that was dispatched from the United States a few days after our declaration of war reached Queenstown, part of it within four and the rest within five weeks after that date, and the whole flotilla was at work in coöperation with the British forces within eight weeks after our entrance into the war. In the latter part of 1917 a squadron of six American battleships was sent to strengthen and coöperate with the British Grand Fleet that was on watch in the North Sea to give battle to the German ships if they should come out from their hiding place behind the defenses of Heligoland. It was this vigilant watch of the Grand Fleet, assisted by our battleships, that kept the German navy off the high seas, where it would have raided commerce, made far more difficult the transporting of our troops and war material to France, fought our own and the Allied warships and greatly prolonged the war and made it even more bloody and destructive. Our craft constituted twelve per cent of the fleet that kept the German navy thus bottled up and rendered it incapable of harm.

The American squadron worked in entire harmony with the Grand Fleet, and was assigned to one of the two places of honor and importance in line of battle, the head or rear of the battleship force. So vigilantly did the Grand Fleet keep its watch and so persistently did it go after the enemy whenever he dared to appear, whether in a single ship, a squadron or his entire fleet, and so vigorously chase him back that he ventured out less and less frequently and toward the end rarely came more than a few miles from his base. All manner of temptations were used to induce him to come out into the open where battle could be joined—a few ships apparently detached venturing into the Heligoland Bight, merchant ships apparently without protection passing near the entrance to the Bight, and other devices. When the German fleet did emerge and a battle seemed imminent, the American division of battleships headed the line and would have led the attack if the enemy had not slipped quickly back.

The plan of laying a mine barrage across the North Sea, from the Scottish coast to the Norwegian shore waters, originated with the Ordnance Bureau of the American Navy. For some time the British Admiralty insisted that it was not practicable, but after much discussion they finally consented and the details of the operation of the scheme were worked out together. A new type of mine was demanded, because of the depth of the water, and this and a new firing device had already been developed by the Ordnance Bureau of the Navy. The number of mines required to lay a barrage 245 miles long and 20 miles wide was so enormous and the need to have them ready at the earliest possible moment so urgent that it was impossible to provide them by the usual methods of manufacture. Therefore the mine was divided into its many component parts and these were separately produced in as many as four hundred industrial factories. The parts were partially brought together in sub-assemblies in this country, and were thus shipped to Europe, where the complete assembling was done just prior to issue to the mine planters. There were manufactured 100,000 of these mines, of which about 85,000 were shipped abroad, some of them being used in similar mine barrages elsewhere. For this purpose a fleet of over fifty merchant ships was taken over by the navy and fitted out for the carrying of all this mine material overseas. Out of the entire fleet only one was lost by enemy action. Mine bases were established on the coast of Scotland, many mine layers and auxiliary vessels were fitted out and the work was carried on at a high rate of speed, sometimes as many as a thousand mines a day being laid. The American Navy furnished all the mines and laid 80 per cent of them for this huge barrage, of a greater length and in deeper water than had ever before been thought possible. The barrage was fatal to at least ten submarines within a short time after it was finished, and had the war continued would have reduced the submarine danger to little consequence.

Immense quantities of oil were needed on the east coast of Scotland for the British and American ships of the Grand Fleet and other purposes and the practice had been to send it on its journey from the United States in tankers around the north coast of Scotland. But enemy submarines took a heavy toll of the precious liquid and the Navy Department suggested the laying of a pipe line across Scotland. The work of laying the line was mainly done by the American Navy, which furnished the pipe for the work. The line could deliver 100 tons per hour and was the longest in Europe. The entire work was completed in six months and was finished on the day when firing ceased.

The relations of the American Navy with the Allied fleets were in every case cordial and harmonious. The close and friendly coöperation was especially noteworthy with the British fleet, because the major portion of American operations was with it and the association was closer and more constant. American vessels operated under British command and British under American command effectively and without friction and the ability, skill and seamanlike qualities of each, officers and men alike, won hearty praise from the other. The British Admiralty sent a commission to the American squadron of the Grand Fleet to inquire how the ships were kept in such a state of readiness and high efficiency without sending them to the dockyards.

American naval forces in European waters engaged in 500 battles with submarines, in which it was known that at least ten undersea boats were sunk by them and thirty-six others damaged. Deaths in the Navy from war causes totaled 1,200 and at the close of hostilities there were 15,000 patients in naval hospitals.

In both European and American waters a total of 48 naval vessels of all classes was lost during the war, of which the armored cruiser, San Diego, which struck a mine off the coast of New York, was the most important. The losses were occasioned by submarines, mines, collisions and miscellaneous causes.

CHAPTER XII
THE NAVY ON LAND

The American Navy did work important and memorable on land as well as upon the sea. Its Marine Corps fought in decisive battles with unsurpassed courage, daring, endurance and aggressiveness and some of its big guns were instrumental in more quickly bringing to pass, unexpectedly early, the order to “cease firing.”

The Marine Corps, the landing and fighting force of the Navy, added glowing pages to its already splendid record. As with every other fighting force of the United States, it had first to increase its numbers and train its new members. It had a total, when we entered the war, of 14,000 officers and men. At the end of the war it had 70,000, the new members having come, mainly by enlistment, from all classes of the community and including business, professional, working and college men. In one instance a whole college battalion enlisted together. Marine Corps service has always attracted young men of the highest quality and these new members were especially notable for their intelligence, spirit and fine soldierly character, qualities that shone brilliantly in their action in the lines of battle. More democratic than any other fighting force of the nation, the Marine Corps officers are mainly promoted from its rank. Several officers’ training camps were held at which intensive, practical and competitive work gave thorough training in quick time and yielded a plentiful supply of officers chosen in accordance with the work and character of the men. Certain quotas of the Students’ Army Training Corps, which was hard at work when the armistice was signed, were designated for Marine Corps service. Recruiting and training stations for the Corps were increased and enlarged and intensive training of the recruits went on steadily, with such especial attention to rifle practice that when the Marines drove the enemy back at Belleau Wood over 90 per cent of the men in line had qualified as marksmen, sharp shooters or expert riflemen.

When the German Army, in its steady drive toward Paris in the last days of May, 1918, had reached its nearest point to the capital city and the Allied armies were facing a serious crisis. General Pershing offered to Marshal Foch whatever he had in men and material that the French Generalissimo could use and a division composed of regiments of Marines and of the Regular Army was thrown forward to block the German advance, which had been rolling steadily onward and driving everything before it at the rate of six or seven miles per day. The Marines blocked the advance in an engagement on June 2nd. Calmly setting their rifle sights and aiming with precision, they met the German attack and under their deadly fire, supported by machine guns and artillery, the enemy lines wavered, stopped, and broke for cover.

Then followed, a few days later, the fierce and stubborn attacks of the Marines upon the defenses which the Germans had set up and which they held with determination. Belleau Wood, a jungle of underbrush, heavy foliage and piles of boulders, they had filled with machine gun nests. The Marines attacked in wave formation, rushing, halting, rushing again, the rear waves plunging forward over the dead and wounded bodies of those who had fallen. It was almost a month before the Americans reached their final objectives and completely routed the Germans from Belleau Wood, to be known ever after as the Wood of the American Marines because of the valor and heroism with which it was won. They fought day and night, day after day, much of the time without sleep or water or hot food. Their officers sent back messages that the men were exhausted and must be relieved and were told that the lines must hold and if possible continue to attack. And the lines again went forward. They fought from tree to tree, they charged machine gun nests with the bayonet, wiped them out and turned the guns against the retreating foe. Some companies lost every commissioned officer, some that had entered the battle 250 strong dwindled to fifty or sixty. The Germans threw in fresh troops, their best Prussian Guards, with orders to retake the lost positions at whatever cost. But the Marines and their fellows of the Regular Army held on, repulsed the fresh attacks, and slowly advanced their positions. And at last, toward the end of June, with some reënforcements and following an artillery barrage that tore the woods into fragments, the Marines made their final successful rushes and with rifle and bayonet cleaned out all the remaining machine gun nests. The enemy had been turned back, Paris had been saved, the morale of the best German troops had been undermined and the Allied commanders and armies had been shown what raw American troops could do. After the battle of Belleau Wood neither British nor French commanders had any doubt about sending American troops anywhere, no matter whether they had had much or little training and little or no experience.

At Soissons, in July, the Marines again showed their valor and at the battle of St. Mihiel, in mid-September, they took over a portion of the line and, attacking with two days’ objectives ahead of them, won them all by mid-afternoon of the first day. And early in October the Second Division, brigaded with the French and still composed of Marines and Regulars, swept forward in an attack on Blanc Mont Ridge, east of Rheims, the keystone of the German main position, for the possession of which German and Allied Armies had fought many bitter battles. The Marines and their companions attacked the rugged and wooded Blanc Mont, rushed the enemy before them across its summit and pushed him down the slope, repulsed counter attacks and forced the Germans to fall back from before Rheims and yield positions they had held for four years.

The casualty list of the Marine Corps amounted to about 6,000, of whom only 57 were captured by the enemy. They lost approximately half of their numbers who entered battle. But they took more prisoners than they lost, all told, of their own men, and they inflicted more casualties than they received.

The big guns sent by the Navy to France for land warfare played an important part in the decisive battles of the last few weeks of the war. These huge, 14-inch guns, 66 feet long, had been intended originally for the new battle cruisers, but a change of ship design had made them available for other uses and the Navy Bureau of Ordnance suggested that they be put on railway mounts and used on land. They were first offered to the British authorities for use behind their lines, but they doubted the effectiveness of the guns and delayed final answer until General Pershing asked for them. At the end of December, 1917, not a drawing for the mounts had been started. Four months later one of the guns was rolling on the wheels of a completed mount for long range tests at the Sandy Hook Proving Ground. At the end of hostilities forty-four guns and mounts had been sent over in various steps of preparation for the front and six of the monsters had been in action, throwing their destructive shells far behind the German lines.

The railway mounts, designed for this particular purpose, were built and covered with armor plate by the Navy according to plans and designs prepared by its Ordnance Bureau, while the locomotives and the twelve cars for the operating forces of each gun, including berth and kitchen cars, armored ammunition cars, machine shop cars containing everything from a forge and anvil to a handsaw, crane and wireless cars, were all built and equipped especially for the purposes of these land batteries of naval guns. Intensive training was given to the men, all of them taken from naval forces, who would operate the huge batteries in France and serve the guns in action. The whole battery was so mobile that even if it were in action when the order came to move, the gun, personnel and entire train of cars could be put under way in an hour.

The first gun to be sent landed in France in the latter part of June but did not go into action against the enemy until mid-September, when, placed near Soissons, it fired on the railroads entering Laon. It had been intended for use against the German “Big Bertha” that had been dropping shells upon Paris from a distance of over seventy miles, but on the day in August when the American gun was ready to begin action “Big Bertha” retired and was heard of no more.

The German long range guns which bombarded Paris and Dunkirk and other places were set on permanent steel and concrete foundations, and therefore were immobile, and the military efficiency of their shells was reduced by the fact that they were small and made for long flight. The enormous shells of the American guns had a range of thirty miles, weighed 400 pounds each, seven times as much as the German, and could penetrate eight feet of solid concrete. Each gun, without its mount, weighed more than a hundred tons. They fired heavier projectiles and had a greater range than any mobile land artillery that had previously been used. Their chief usefulness was in the destruction of ammunition dumps and of railroad yards and rolling stock and the consequent demoralization of the enemy’s transportation system. When the shells from one of the guns were directed upon the railroad stations and yards of Montmedy and Longuyon they stopped all traffic there and one which struck the German headquarters killed twenty-eight members of the general’s staff.

Cruising through France like battleships on wheels, demonstrating their perfect mobility and proving their usefulness by cutting the enemy’s lines of communication and seriously obstructing his transportation, these big naval guns on railway mounts proved their value so triumphantly that the Navy had been requested, when the end came, to provide as many more as it could rush quickly to the front.

The Navy also removed a number of 7-inch guns from battleships, the changed conditions of warfare demanding a lighter and quicker firing gun, and devised for them, at General Pershing’s request, a new type of mount, utilizing the principle of the caterpillar belt and thus making it possible for them to travel directly over any kind of ground. So satisfactory were the first tests that the Army asked the Navy to furnish 36 such guns and mounts as quickly as possible and these were being rushed to completion when the armistice was signed.

The Navy maintained a large personnel and carried on considerable operations on shore both in Great Britain and France. On the coast of each of these countries was a series of bases for the repair and upkeep of escorting and patrolling ships, from cruisers to converted yachts. In many cases it was necessary to construct complete repair plants. At every naval base overseas there was a fully equipped hospital. In Scotland the Navy took over an entire watering place whose hotels, bath-houses and other structures were converted into large hospital buildings wherein were cared for many British as well as our own sick and wounded.

CHAPTER XIII
THE WINGS OF THE NAVY

The wings of the Navy, that had barely begun to sprout when the United States became a belligerent, grew in a year and a half as if under a conjurer’s wand. Previous to that time the appropriations that had been granted for the development of naval aeronautics had been so small that little could be done. Upon our declaration of war the Navy had 22 low powered seaplanes of no value except for training purposes, five kite and two free balloons and one dirigible balloon, and the Naval Aviation Service had three stations, but no adequate training field, while its personnel consisted of 45 naval aviators and less than 200 enlisted men.

When the armistice was signed the Aviation Service of the American Navy had 1,656 trained airplane pilots, of whom half were in service over European waters; 1,349 ground, or executive, officers; 3,912 student officers at training fields at home or abroad who would soon have been ready for service; an enlisted personnel numbering almost 37,000; approximately 8,000 trained mechanics and 6,000 more in training; in France, sixteen naval aviation stations besides others for training and supply work; two stations in England and four in Ireland; three stations in Italy and the Azores; two stations in Canada; one station in the Canal Zone; eleven stations in the United States; 759 seaplanes and flying boats in service for patrol and bombing work and 140 airplanes or land machines for land service, with 491 seaplanes and 100 land airplanes for training purposes, while a dozen planes of new and experimental types were being tried out; 282 kite and seven free balloons and 11 dirigible balloons. Many hundreds of seaplanes, flying boats and balloons of various kinds were on order for early delivery. All this development of material and personnel, of systems of training for pilots, ground officers and mechanics, of stations and service, and of the big and smoothly working organization that produced important results in the work of the naval aviators was the growth of but eighteen months.

To ensure the rapid production of planes a naval aircraft factory was erected at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. The contract for its construction was signed in August, 1917, and in the following March, 228 days after the breaking of the ground, the first machine had been completed and was given its trial flight. And a few days later this machine and another which had followed it to completion and trial were on their way to Europe. In the meantime, in order to meet the expansion which was foreseen to be necessary in naval aviation plans, the naval aircraft building was greatly enlarged. Included in the extension was a huge assembly plant for the assembling of airplane parts separately built in a large number and variety of private manufacturing plants whose work for the aircraft factory was directed by its management. By this means team work was secured, resulting in quick deliveries and an ample supply of craft for both service and training purposes. By September of 1918 enough naval aircraft had been shipped overseas to meet the needs of its assembly bases there for several months. The big rubber plants which had almost ceased the manufacturing of balloons renewed and expanded that phase of their activities and balloon fields and schools were created or enlarged and newly equipped. The completion of the Liberty motor brought the later development of the flying boat, used especially for coastal patrol work.

By Permission of New York Times Co.

Naval Gun on Railway Mount

Candidates for flying commissions were sent to technical institutions for special courses and afterward to flying stations for instruction in flying. The most difficult part of the problem of seaplane construction was that of finding skilled workmen and personnel for their direction acquainted with the making of aircraft. The same difficulty handicapped the procuring of trained officers and enlisted men for work at the supply and repair stations, which were constantly busy with the assembling and upkeep of the machines. To meet this difficulty half a score or more of schools for naval aviation mechanics were established in different parts of the country, with a force of instructors, who volunteered for the work, composed of professors in technical schools and colleges. From these schools came the trained mechanics and ground officers who filled the roster of the Naval Aviation Service at the end of hostilities.

The Navy Department saw at once that the most important aid its Aviation Service could give would be coast-wise work directed against the submarine menace. With that end in view it located its stations at strategic and important points all down the eastern coast of the United States, eleven in all, from Cape Cod to Key West, with another in the Canal Zone. Similarly its patrol stations were dotted up and down the shores of France, the British Isles and the Azores. On both shores of the Atlantic its dirigibles and seaplanes helped to escort outgoing convoys and went far out to sea to meet those coming in, eagle eyes sweeping the waters to watch for and warn against the sea vipers. The dirigibles were especially useful in this convoy work, as they were able to keep pace with the ships.

In addition to this assistance in the convoy service the naval aviators ranged above the waters far out from shore, hunting submarines, looking for disabled vessels and for boats and wreckage carrying shipwrecked passengers and crews sent adrift on the ocean by submarine officers, and locating mines, and they carried on bombing operations by sea and land.

The first United States forces to land in France for service against the enemy belonged to the Air Service of the Navy, which set ashore there within a month after our declaration of war five naval air pilots and 100 enlisted men. From this beginning grew the nine seaplane, one training, three dirigible and three kite stations that dotted the French shores from Dunkirk almost to the Spanish border. Most of these stations were used for convoy work, for submarine hunting and for searching for mines and wrecks. But at Dunkirk was a station for bombing operations which made day and night attacks on the German naval bases and supply depots along the Flanders coast, with especial attention to Zeebrugge and Ostend. After the British blockaded the entrances to those places the naval aviators, American, British and Belgian, coöperating in the work, dropped such a steady rain of bombs by day and night that the Germans were prevented from clearing away the obstructions. Two stations that were completed and in operation within ten months included a large aviation school and flying field at a lake near the coast, which specialized in bombing practice, and an aviation assembly and repair base with large machine shops and accommodations for the housing of their 5,000 men. The naval aviation stations along the French shores were so spaced that the entire coast line could be kept constantly under the observation of seaplanes and dirigibles. Some of the stations were located on uninhabited islets and others in tiny fishing villages on bleak peninsulas. This naval aviation force with its dirigibles and seaplanes coöperated so well with the sea patrol that between them they kept the whole of the French coast, for fifty miles from shore, safe from submarines through the last six months of the war.

The two naval aviation stations in Italy and that on the Islands of the Azores coöperated with the British and the Italian air patrols in the never ceasing hunt for submarines, the locating of mines, the watching for wrecks and the convoy of troop and merchant ships. Especially harmonious and cordial was the teamwork of the men of our six naval air stations in England and Ireland with the men of the British naval air service. The aviators flew together, they used each other’s planes, coöperated in the guarding of the coasts and the convoy of incoming and outgoing groups of troop transports and cargo vessels, worked together upon perilous enterprises. Some of the most moving tales of daring adventure and heroic endurance of the whole war narrate the deeds of these American boys who guided the wings of the navy over the coasts and waters of England, Ireland and France.

In the United States alone naval aircraft flew a distance of over 6,000,000 miles. On the other side, seaplanes and dirigibles aided in the convoying and protecting of 75,000 ships. Submarine hunting, which had a greater development than any other line of naval air work, reached a notable point of scientific exactness in its methods. Each patrol as it started out had mapped for it designated areas of the air of certain sizes and shapes and locations which it covered by following the directed courses by means of the compass. It is certain that many submarine attacks upon our shipping were thus prevented and that, by the dropping of bombs, several undersea boats were sunk. At the time of the signing of the armistice the plans of the Navy for its Air Service had not nearly reached the peak of development. But its effect upon submarine activities was already evident and it is probable that it saved in values of shipping that would have been destroyed but for its protection more than its development cost the Navy Department, which had expended upon it $100,000,000.

The Marine Corps, the Navy’s landing force of fighting men, developed its own Aviation Service with both heavier and lighter than air craft, for flying above both land and water, which gave important assistance in several parts of the battle front.

CHAPTER XIV
THE TRAINING OF THE RESERVES

The rapid, splendid expansion of the navy to more than sevenfold its former size brought its own big problems of how to prepare for a very specialized kind of life and duty young men having, as was the case with most of them, no sea tradition in their blood and but little previous interest in the naval affairs of their own country. In Great Britain there are hundreds of families whose names have been represented in the British naval roster, without the break of a single generation, for centuries. The very strength of the tradition draws the sons of these houses into the naval service by an insuperable attraction and from childhood attunes their minds and hearts to preparation for naval life and work. And everywhere in Britain pride in the navy is high and interest in it is keen.

No such previous mental attitude of a whole people made easy the problem of expanding the American navy and training its new recruits under the necessity of the highest possible speed. Pride and interest in their navy have always been potential rather than actual and constant among the American people. If it did something, in war or peace, that aroused their sub-conscious feeling about it they were quick and ardent in their response. But through year after year the navy was something as foreign to the daily life and interests of the great mass of people in all that wide extent of inland country wherein lives the majority of the population as were the canals on Mars. Very few of them ever saw a battleship or a destroyer or a naval officer or a bluejacket and only an occasional picture, or newspaper headline, or magazine article reminded them at wide intervals of the American navy’s existence.

Under such conditions, the quick response of the country to the navy’s needs was one of the finest and least to be expected of its many achievements. From all over the country, Mid-Western and coastal regions alike, young men began to pour into the naval recruiting stations, and it is well within the truth to say that the majority of them came from homes and from regions in which the navy had hardly been even mentioned or thought about by any one from year’s end to year’s end. Moreover, they were mainly men of old American stock. The navy for this war did not become a fused mass of nationalities, as the army did, but returned to a condition even more thoroughly native-American than it had recently shown. Between ninety and one hundred per cent of the seamen of the enlarged navy were American born. The most of them were of that fine type of young men, educated and intelligent, who become, a little later, of consequence in their communities. In their training the fact that they had had no “sea legs” in their ancestry, or in their own minds and hearts, did not seem to matter in the least. They took to the training and to the life on the sea-washed, rolling decks of destroyers, chasers and other craft as ducks take to water.

The increase of over 400,000 in the naval personnel came partly through expansion in the permanent strength of the navy, partly through the enlargement of the various naval reserves, fleet, auxiliary, coast defense and others, and to some extent through the national naval volunteers and the Marine and Hospital Corps. In September, 1918, provision was made by which men in the selective service might enter the navy instead of the army. A quota of 15,000 men a month was allotted to the naval service, and 5,000 monthly to the Marine Corps for four months, after which its monthly quota was to have been 1,500. Provision for the navy was made, at the end of September, in the Students’ Army Training Corps, under instruction in several hundred colleges, and naval sections were established in ninety of these institutions and placed under the instruction of naval officers.

But the sudden close of the war in November made unnecessary the completion of these plans for the further expansion of the navy. While increasing its size and strength at the swift pace that marked all our war preparations, at the same time it met every need for its services, of whatever sort, with promptness and efficiency. That had meant zealous and incessant work in the education for their new duties of more than 300,000 young men who had joined the Naval Reserve Force, in addition to those who had become a part of the naval forces in other ways. At a number of immense camps, where were built barracks, lecture halls and other necessary buildings for the housing and training of from 20,000 to 40,000 students at each station, the young men were trained in naval discipline and schooled in the maritime and naval subjects in which they must be proficient. Special schools for officers gave to those who were qualified and ambitious the necessary instruction. Other schools for advanced and specialized work trained officers for submarine duty, for assignment to the naval torpedo station and for work as naval aviation and naval turbine-engine engineers. An intensive course of instruction at Annapolis Naval Academy completed the training for officer duty for many who had already had sea service.

The Navy furnished during the war to the United States Shipping Board 200,000 trained enlisted men, as well as 20,000 trained officers, to man its new ships, and the training for these men, in addition to that for fireman’s and seaman’s duty given at the regular naval training stations, was provided in nearly fifty different schools, from those for carpenters, cooks, yeomen, signalmen and divers, to those for mine sweeping, searchlight control and aviation aerography. On both ships of the Navy and naval-manned merchant ships sea-training constantly went on of those who had finished the courses at training stations, camps and schools, each ship of whatever type receiving its quota for a certain length of training in specified duties. Training bases in Europe for men who had already had some service aboard ship furnished material for refilling the crews of destroyers, part of whose complement had been sent back to this country to form the nucleus of new destroyer crews.

The taking over by the Navy, upon our declaration of war, of all radio stations, the constantly increasing demand for radio operators in the Navy and on merchant vessels in the transport service and in commerce made necessary greatly enlarged radio training facilities. Two large naval radio schools were developed, one at Harvard University and the other at Mare Island Navy Yard, each of which gave a four-months’ course and graduated thousands of operators.

In all the naval training camps, stations and schools the utmost effort was made, as in the army training camps, to conserve the physical, mental and moral well being of the young men preparing for sea service. The activities and beneficence of the Army Commission on Training Camp Activities have already been described. Under the same head and working along similar lines the Navy Commission on Training Camp Activities busied itself with the welfare of the men fitting for naval service and provided them with books, sports, lectures, music, theatrical entertainments, moving pictures. There was the same endeavor to develop musical and dramatic talent and direct its use among the men. The cordial coöperation of the same civilian organizations that did so much to promote the welfare of the soldiers in training aided also in safeguarding the naval recruits and in adding to their pleasure. The thorough organization of athletic sports in all the camps, both outdoors and indoors, provided seasonal recreation in the way of football, baseball, basket ball, hockey, running races, boxing, wrestling, rowing and swimming. In the last named sport, when it was found that less than half the young men gathering in the camps were able to swim, instructors were added to the list of athletic directors and told to make sure that every man in the camp learned to take care of himself in the water.