IV.
The U-C 1 pushed out from Zeebrugge harbour on July 23.
She was dirty as to paint, rust streaks disfigured her sides, and she was not a pretty object to look at in the bright sunshine.
But she was not really a wicked submarine, as she did not sink passenger liners or hospital ships with torpedoes or gun fire, but only laid mines, which is a legitimate act of war.
She was a hundred and eleven feet long, and was the sole survivor, but one, of fifteen similar boats. She carried twelve mines in four vertical tubes forward of her conning-tower.
Her Commander passed the North Hinder and pushed on towards England, running on the surface across our deep mine-field. When in sight of the shipping channel he dived and worked his way right into the approaches to Harwich. He was a bit early, for it was still daylight, and he liked to lay his mines at high water, as this gave him a greater depth for diving.
He loafed along at two knots, thirty feet under the surface, with his periscope twelve inches above water, keeping a sharp look-out for trouble. Presently he saw a fleet of mine-sweepers working in the distance, and creeping cautiously closer, observed that they were sweeping in an area between four bright-green buoys, marking off the corners of a large parallelogram. Consulting the chart supplied by his intelligence department, he saw that the trawlers were sweeping in the emergency war channel.
The mine-sweepers were working in pairs, travelling abreast and some distance apart. Each trawler towed a kite at the end of a wire cable. The heavy wooden kite was V-shaped and sank under the surface to the required depth when towed. Between the two kites was a wire rope. It had chains attached to it, so that it dragged on the bottom, and rollers, so that it would not foul. In the bight of the wire was a serrated portion. The idea was to catch the mooring cable of any mine on the wire and saw it in two on the serrations. The mine would then rise to the surface and could be destroyed by rifle fire.
The Commander of U-C 1 told his second in command that these preparations clearly meant that the Harwich Light Forces were going to take a burst out to sea, and that he intended to lay a line of mines across their path.
At dusk the trawlers packed up and boiled off for home at top speed. The German Commander watching them said: "It is easy to see that they are burning Government coal."
Just before high tide the U-C 1 entered the parallelogram inside the four green buoys, still under water. She was a third of the way across when a sharp order was given, a lever was pulled, and a mine left one of the tubes.
The complete mine consisted of two parts, the war-head and the sinker.
As it left the submarine it slowly sank to the bottom and rested on its sinker, for in the war-head was an air chamber which kept it right end up.
A slow spring, automatically released when the mine left the tube, began to move a lever, and at the end of five minutes it pulled back a catch and released the war-head from the sinker.
The air chamber in the war-head caused it to rise. As it rose it unwound the mooring cable from a reel in the sinker. It rose to within eight feet of the surface and then stopped. A hydrostatic valve had operated a catch which stopped the reel unwinding. The valve could be set to hold the war-head at any depth under the surface required.
The pull of the war-head on the mooring cable closed an electric switch, and the mine was ready for business.
In accordance with The Hague Convention a switch was fitted to the mine, which would open, rendering it harmless, if the war-head broke away from the cable; but it had been carefully put out of action before the mine had been put in its tube.
The Commander of the U-C 1 crossed the parallelogram and laid all his mines at close intervals. His work finished, he slipped off toward the open sea, thinking with satisfaction of his row of mines with their ugly warty heads swaying to the tide below the surface of the water.
He pictured the Harwich flotilla coming out in line ahead, a light cruiser leading, her four hundred and thirty-six feet of slim grey length driven through the water by her forty-thousand horse power. He thought of her 3-inch protective plating, but this he knew only went two and a half feet below her water-line. He gloated over her armament—two 6-inch guns, six 4-inch guns, and one 4-inch high angle anti-aircraft gun—all useless when pitted against his mines.
He saw her in his mind's eye touch a mine. It rolled along her side. The soft metal protruding horns were bent. The glass tubes inside them were broken. The liquid in the tubes fell into cups in which were two solid elements of an electric battery. A current was generated. The exploder was detonated, and the charge of high explosive went off with a chattering crash.
But all that would happen to-morrow. He was well pleased with himself as he slipped along.
How could he know that the emergency war-channel had been shifted, that the four green buoys had been laid there for his special benefit, that the mine-sweeping was a bluff, and that his successor to the job of minelayer-in-extraordinary to the Harwich Light Forces would in his turn discover the green buoys, blunder into the mines intended for the light cruiser, and so depart this life.
Next morning he brought his boat to the surface this side of the North Hinder, and started for home. There was a light mist, no wind, and everything appeared ormolu.
But behind him at Felixstowe Commander Porte, who was back on the station for a short time, had determined to lead out a patrol of five flying-boats—a greater number than had ever been out together. It strained the resources of the War Flight, but five machines were finally shoved down the slipway into the water. Commander Porte was leading in F 2 C, his latest experimental boat, piloted by Queenie Cooper, the test pilot.
The five boats fluttered around in the water, each getting into its correct position in the formation, and then, at the signal from the leading machine, all had their engines opened out at the same time.
They boiled down the harbour, leaving five white streaks behind them, got into the air and pushed off for the Spider Web. Many times later on flights of an equal number of boats were got away easily, but this was the first time, and a sigh of relief and admiration went up from all hands on the slipway. It was a fine sight.
The formation passed the Shipwash, passed the North Hinder, and then, at ten minutes to eleven o'clock, the Commander of U-C 1 tried to dive.
He was too late.
Ginger Newton and Trumble dropped two two hundred and thirty-five bombs on him from five hundred feet. Commander Porte and Queenie dropped two similar bombs. Cuckney and Clayton dropped one bomb. And the other two boats stood by ready.
But the career of U-C 1 was ended.
There was oil on the surface and a little white spot on the water, where a long string of silver bubbles, coming up and up, were breaking gently.
The water was twenty-four fathoms deep.
A fathom is six feet.
One of the boat pilots, curious to see what the bubbles looked like at close quarters, landed, but was unable to find the spot. Once in the air again he could see the bubbles easily.
But the whole of July was a good month. The pilots flew on eighty-nine patrols, and did sixteen thousand four hundred and thirty sea miles. Twenty-five patrols were carried out, drawing blank, and then Puff Mackenzie and Dickey met up with a Zeppelin.
It was just after sighting twelve German destroyers, navigating along in close formation, that they saw the airship. Her crew saw the flying-boat coming at the same time. She altered course and went up through the clouds like an express elevator.
Holding on the same course as the Zeppelin, and climbing through the clouds for twenty minutes, Mackenzie burst up into the sunshine above and found the enemy still ahead of and slightly above him. There was great activity in the gondolas of the airship; and presently sand-ballast began to pour out, and she got to a height of eleven thousand feet when the flying-boat was at nine thousand. She had gained a bit of distance while climbing.
But now the coast had been crossed.
All sorts of odds and ends were thrown out of the gondolas, and the airship finally got to thirteen thousand five hundred feet. The flying-boat was at eleven thousand, just behind her; but it could climb no higher, being heavily laden with petrol for the return journey.
They were now thirty miles inland, and over two hundred miles from home, so the chase was broken off. As the boat turned round the disappointed engineer fired a few bursts from his stern guns, but the tracer bullets were seen to fall short.
Passing out over the coast the hostile destroyers were sighted again, and shortly afterwards Mackenzie had to land because of petrol pump trouble. The package of sandwiches was found and the thermos flask opened, and while the crew had a snack the petrol pumps were repaired. Twenty minutes later the boat was in the air again.
At half-past two Harwich harbour was reached, the crew having been in the air for six hours and twenty minutes.
Dickey, the small and bloodthirsty, would not be comforted for some time for not getting the Zeppelin, although it was pointed out to him that for one so small he had given the Germans a big fright.
Beyond shoving out a Beef Trip and the ordinary patrols, things were quiet until the 21st, when Perham and Cuckney in one boat, and Hodgson and Ramsden in the second, met up with a Fritz on the surface five miles south of the North Hinder.
She was lying in wait to sink the beef and beer, for a Beef Trip was on for next day.
Two bombs were dropped by the first boat. The submarine dived. It came to the surface seventeen minutes later. The second boat was getting into position, when it again submerged and was no more seen.
It is probable that this submarine was damaged, as she came to the surface so quickly after being bombed.
On the following day seven patrols were boomed into the air for the Beef Trip, the greatest number up to this time put out in one day. Owing to the number of machines being overhauled two of the boats had to be sent out twice, each doing five hundred and forty miles.
It was quick work.
Between trips the boats were taken out of the water, cleaned and filled with two hundred and forty gallons of petrol. The four machine-guns were stripped, cleaned, and assembled. All control wires and the structure were examined. And the engines were checked and tested.
When coming in from the first patrol on one of these boats there was a splintering crash. I thought we had been hit by a shell from a pom-pom. But a tray of ammunition had blown off the front Lewis gun and gone into the port propeller. The brass-tipped mahogany blades were turning at twelve hundred revolutions a minute, for the propellers are geared down, and do not turn as fast as the engines. The tray shattered one blade, the splinters shooting through the top of the boat, but the crew were uninjured, except for a few scratches. The engine had to be shut off, and I flew the boat home thirty miles on one engine.
Flying-boats can fly on one engine if the total weight is not too great. It is a question of weight for horse-power available. To enable the pilot to keep the boat flying in a straight line without undue strain, a heavy rubber cord is fitted on the rudder wires, which can be tightened as requisite.
During the Beef Trip Hodgson and Ramsden sighted a U-boat, which dived. It torpedoed a small Dutch steamer seven miles north of the North Hinder, which was seen in trouble by Hallinan and Brown. They saw two boats put out, the crew tumble into them, and the ship sink.
Shoving off to the Beef Trip, for she was not part of the convoy, they flashed the position by Aldis lamp, and the two boats were picked up by a destroyer.
Next day Bath and Keesey, and Tiny and Moody, made a presentation of four bombs to a Fritz in the Spider Web, and two days later Perham and Barker, on the way in from the North Hinder, surprised a U-boat near the Outer Gabbard buoys, and followed the good example.
The end of July coincided with the end of U-B 20.
She was on her way south—about to the approaches to Ireland, where her Commander intended to destroy merchant ships.
For this purpose he carried a 4·1-inch gun and five torpedo tubes, four in the bow and one in the stern. He had ten torpedoes.
His boat had a double hull, and was a hundred and eighty feet long. She could do thirteen knots on the surface. Therefore he was able to overhaul ordinary merchantmen and sink them by gun-fire. He liked to do this, because he could carry more shells than torpedoes.
The U-B 20 was designed to dive very quickly. But this time she did not dive quickly enough.
Puff and Ball in one boat, and Young and Barker in another, met up with her ten miles this side of the North Hinder. Apparently the Commander never saw the flying-boats coming, as he made no attempt to change course or submerge.
Puff passed over him at eight hundred feet, and Ball dropped one bomb.
It was a long slim bomb, with an armour-piercing nose, and weighed two hundred and thirty pounds.
Ball leaned out of the cockpit and watched it all the way down. Unconsciously he held his breath, and time seemed to stop. And then he saw it crash into the stern of the submarine.
On the explosion the stern went down and the bow rose out of the water. It smacked down a moment later with a wide-flung splash.
Close behind the leading boat came Young. Barker dropped two one hundred pound bombs. They detonated just in front of the submarine. He saw that the bow hydroplanes were damaged.
The U-B 20 was now out of control.
She did figure eights.
She dived and came up again.
And then, after seven minutes of such evolutions, her twin propellers stopped, and she began to sink by the stern.
The pilots were now circling above their quarry at a height of four hundred feet. Puff and Ball obtained a second direct hit just in front of the conning-tower, and Young and Barker straddled her with two bombs.
She was much down by the stern.
Suddenly she stood on end, remained poised there for a perceptible fraction of time, and then slid down backwards and disappeared in a smother of white water.
The pilots were back in harbour in time to dress for dinner.
But U-B 20, her wicked hopes frustrated, lay at the bottom of the North Sea in twenty-two fathoms.
She had been killed dead.
August was a cold miserable month. Mist and fog shrouded the southern portion of the North Sea, and when there was no mist and fog, heavy clouds hung like palls low over the surface, or there were heavy rain-squalls and high winds.
Only two submarines were sighted, neither being bombed.
But it was a welcome stand-easy for the pilots and ratings who had been working double tides for four months.
Lifting 230-lb. bomb into place.
