A DAY'S WORK WITH A FRENCH SUBMARINE
An American s Experience under the Sea
Told by Fred B. Pitney, by Authority of the French Minister of Marine
This story is told from "a certain formidable naval base on the coast of France." The American who relates it went out on scout duty on a submarine—for a single day. He tells how it feels to dive, the sensation of being shot at—not "unpleasant or trying on the nerves." Mr. Pitney is one of the war correspondents for the New York Tribune.
I—"WE FIRED NINE SHOTS AND SUNK BENEATH THE SEA"
To appear on the surface, fire nine shots at an enemy vessel and disappear in safety, untouched, below the surface, all in the space of forty-five seconds—this, I believe, constitutes a submarine record. Yet, this feat I witnessed as an observer on board a French submarine in active service.
Before this I was a passenger on a vessel that was attacked by a submarine. A torpedo was launched at us from below the surface, while we were anxiously trying to pick up the periscope of the submerged vessel, for we were in dangerous waters. We had just discovered the periscope when the torpedo was sent at us. Five minutes later the submarine came to the surface and fired a round at us from the gun abaft the turret we lay to and the passengers were transferred in a small boat from the passenger vessel to the submarine. It was then that I was on board the submarine while it attacked another vessel.
Thus, on the afternoon in question I participated in all the phases of submarine warfare, including entering a harbor protected with net and floating mines, filled with warships and surrounded with land batteries. Possibly the most exciting moment of all in an afternoon filled with thrills was when one land battery, uncertain of our identity, fired three shots across our bows and we had to lie to and prove who we were with a string of signal flags before we could proceed on our tortuous path among the mines.
Our little vessel, put at our disposal by the French Ministry of Marine to view the defences of a certain formidable naval base on the coast of France, was calmly traversing the waters near the mouth of the harbor, when a young officer, standing beside me on the bridge said: "We must look out for submarines near here."
"Germans?" I asked.
"Oh, yes," he replied, "Germans, of course."
We had already passed through the net that protects the mouth of the harbor and had been warned that we were going through a mine field, and that sometimes, especially in bad weather, the mines got loose and drifted about casually, getting in most anybody's way. Now we had the added pleasure of a possible encounter with a German submarine.
"How many German submarines are there in the Mediterranean?" I asked.
"About thirty-five," he said.
Recalling my geography, it seemed we had a pretty good chance of being seen.
"Are you a submarine officer?" I asked.
He told me that he was, and added that he would not change his work for any other branch of the service. I told him that I had always understood submarine service was particularly unpleasant and trying on the nerves.
"Oh, no. On the contrary, it is very restful," he said, "and extremely interesting and great sport."
"How old are you?" I asked.
He was thirty-two and unmarried.
"Perhaps that accounts for it," I said.
"Perhaps," he agreed. "I don't know. But it is the sporting interest that makes the submarine service so fine."
He told of cruising in the North Sea, watching for German torpedo boats, of weeks on guard duty in the Channel, assuring the service between France and England, and of other weeks submerged in the Adriatic, blockading the Austrian ports.
"We had to pick our way through the mine fields submerged," he said, "and then lie forty hours submerged on blockade duty. When our turn ended, we would pick our way back through the mines for a rest."
"But surely that was trying on the nerves," I said.
"Oh, no," he declared. "Not at all. We had a good rest there. There was nothing to do but sleep and watch."
"What was the worst part of that service?" I asked.
"The hydroplanes," he answered readily. "They were always flying over the harbor looking for us, and there was always the possibility that one of them would discover us and drop a bomb."
"In that event what would happen to you?" I asked.
"No one would ever know," he replied, "unless we sank in shallow enough water to be raised."
He said it in the most casual manner.
"Has there ever been a fight between two submarines?" was my next question.
He had been in two in the North Sea, he told me. "If you are on the surface, you fight with your guns," he said, "but, if you are under the surface, you go at it with torpedoes; there is not much chance with torpedoes, because you can only see the periscope and you have no idea which way the other fellow is going. Nothing happened in either fight I had. We both got off safely."
During this conversation both of us and four of the ship's officers had our glasses on the sea, watching for submarines. One of the ship's officers now announced a suspicious looking white wave on the port bow. It was suspicious because it moved, but it was a very tiny little wave, only about three feet long and the breadth of a carpenter's hand. No one would ever have suspected it without expert advice.
II—ON A SUBMARINE IN A ROUGH SEA
That, as I learned, is one of the greatest dangers of the submarine. Of course, we have all been told it many times, but when the thing is once experienced it is truly appreciated, and not until then. The approach of the submarine is more insidious than the taste for absinthe.
There is merely that little white wave only occasionally to be seen—the white water curling around the periscope—and with the sea running at all high there would be no white wave that could be distinguished from the white tops of the other waves. Then, if the submarine chooses to remain near the surface one can after a long time of very close study make out the periscope as a very small stick, like a piece of lath, poking up out of the water. But it only sticks up a little more than a foot when it is the most willing to be seen, while if, as in our case, it is not willing to be seen, the submarine, having located its prey, dives deeper and all trace of it is lost, the next thing being a torpedo coming from an entirely different point on the horizon.
Our officers were experts at watching for submarines, and though the little white wave made by the periscope disappeared, they caught the white wake of the torpedo coming toward the port quarter and sheered off to escape it. The torpedo passed harmlessly by our stern, but the adventure was not ended, for hardly a minute later we heard a shot from off the starboard quarter and, turning in that direction, saw that the submarine had come to the surface and was busily firing at us to bring us to.
We stopped without any foolish waste of time in argument. I asked if a boat would be sent to us, or if we would have to get our boat.
"They carry a small folding boat," said the officer to whom I had been talking, "but we will have to send our boat."
While we were getting our boat over the side, the submarine moved closer in, keeping her gun bearing on us all the time, most uncomfortably. The gun stood uncovered on the deck, just abaft the turret. It was thickly coated with grease to protect it when the vessel submerged. It is only the very latest type of submarines that have disappearing guns which go under cover when the vessel submerges and are fired from within the ship, which makes all the more surprising the speed with which a submarine can come to the surface, the men get out on deck, fire the gun, get in again and the vessel once more submerge.
III—IN THE SECRET CHAMBERS OF A SUBMARINE
I was in the first boatload that went over to the submarine. From a distance it looked like nothing so much as a rather long piece of 4 x 8 floating on the water, with another block set on top of it and a length of lath nailed on the block. It lost none of these characteristics as we neared it. It only gained a couple of ropes along the sides of the 4 x 8, while men kept coming mysteriously out of the block until a round dozen were waiting to receive us. The really surprising thing was that the men turned out to be perfectly good French sailors, with a most exceedingly polite French lieutenant to help us aboard the little craft.
It was a little surprise the admiral of the port had prepared for us, and nothing could have been better prepared to give us the true flavor of submarine warfare. We had had all the sensation of being chased, fired on and captured—everything except being sunk in mid-ocean. Now we were to have the other experience of chasing and capturing the enemy.
The vessel we were in was a 500-ton cruising submarine. It had just come from eight months' guarding the Channel, and showed all the battering of eight months of a very rough and stormy career with no time for a lie-up for repairs. It was interesting to see the commander hand the depth gauge a wallop to start it working and find out if the centre of the boat was really nine feet higher than either end. We were fifty-four feet under water and diving when the commander performed that little experiment and we continued to dive while the gauge spun around and finally stopped at a place which indicated approximately that our back was not broken. I suppose that was one of the things my friend the lieutenant referred to when he said life on a submarine was such a sporting proposition.
We boarded the submarine over the tail end and balanced our way up the long narrow block, like walking a tight rope, to the turret, where we descended through a hole like the opening into a gas main into a small round compartment about six feet in diameter exactly in the midship section, which was the largest compartment in the ship. Running each way from it the length of the vessel were long corridors, some two feet wide. On each side of the corridors were rows of tiny compartments, which were the living and working rooms of the ship. Naturally, most of the space was given up to the working rooms.
The officers' quarters consisted of four tiny compartments, two on each side of the after corridor. The first two were the mess room and chart room, and the second pair were the cabins of the commander—a lieutenant—and his second in command, an ensign. Behind them was an electric kitchen, and next came the engines, first two sets of Diesel engines, one on each side of the corridor, each of 400 horsepower. These were for running on the surface. Then came four bunks for the quartermasters and last the electric motors for running under the surface. The motors were run from storage batteries and were half the power of the Diesel engines. The quarters of the crew were along the sides of the forward corridor. The floors of the corridor were an unbroken series of trap doors, covering the storage tanks for drinking water, food and the ship's supplies. The torpedo tubes were forward of the men's quarters. Ten torpedoes were carried. The ammunition for the deck gun was stored immediately beneath the gun, which was mounted between the turret and the first batch, abaft the turret. Besides the turret there were three hatches in the deck, one forward and two aft.
There were thirty-four men in the crew. Each quartermaster was directly responsible for six men, while the commander and his second were responsible for five each. The men are counted every two hours, as there is great danger of men being lost overboard when running on the surface, and in bad weather they are sometimes counted as often as every half hour.
The turret was divided in two sections. In the after part was the main hatch and behind it a stationary periscope, standing about thirty inches above the surface of the water when the deck was submerged and only the periscope showing. There was no opening in the forward section of the turret, but the fighting periscope, which could be drawn down into the interior or pushed up to ten feet above the surface when the vessel was completely submerged, extended through the top.
It is with this periscope that the vessel is navigated. The submarine sails at a depth at which the fighting periscope shows about eighteen inches above the surface, while the commander, standing on two iron grips, with his head, shoulders and body in the turret and his legs sticking down into the cabin, keeps his eyes glued to the sights of the periscope, which he constantly turns from side to side to take in all points of the limited horizon. The part of the fighting periscope that extends above the water is a brass rod about two and one-half inches in diameter, while its eye is only three-quarters of an inch in diameter. It is on this tiny opening that both the safety and fighting ability of the vessel depend.
For two hours, turn and turn about, the commander and his second stand watch on the iron grips in the turret, one eye on the periscope, the other on the compass. And this goes on for weeks on end. It is only when they lie for a few hours fifty to seventy-five feet below the surface that they can get some rest. And even then there is no real rest, for one or the other of them must be constantly on duty, testing pipes and gauges, air pressure, water pressure and a thousand other things.
I met the next day another officer whose mustache and eyebrows were black as jet, but whose hair was silver white. He was thirty-eight years old. For six years and a half he had been a submarine officer, he told me.
"Why did you quit it?" I asked him.
"Too old," he said.
"Is there an age limit?" I asked.
"No," he replied, "but a man knows when he is too old for the work."
Yet nothing would induce those who have not yet found themselves too old to leave it. One would think the sailors, at any rate, would find the life tiresome or too dangerous. I talked to several of them about it, but they all agreed that they would not change.
"Is this life better than on a battleship?" I asked one sailor.
"Oh, yes," he replied. "I would not go back to a battleship."
"What makes it better?" I asked.
"It is more tranquil," he answered.
Tranquil, sixty feet under water and your life hanging on a gauge that needs a good heavy wallop to make it work.
When we dropped through the hatch into the interior of the submarine and the cover was clamped down over our heads the commander at once ordered me back into the turret.
IV—"WE RAN SUBMERGED THROUGH A MINE FIELD"
"Hurry, if you want to see her dive," he said.
I climbed into the after section of the turret and fastened my eye to the periscope. Around the top of the turret was a circle of bulls' eyes and I was conscious of the water dashing against them while the spray washed over the glass of the periscope. The little vessel rolled very slightly on the surface, though there was quite a bit of sea running. I watched the horizon through the periscope and watched for the dive, expecting a distinct sensation, but the first thing I noticed was that even the slight roll had ceased and I was surprised to see that the bulls' eyes were completely under water. The next thing there was no more horizon. The periscope also was covered and we were completely beneath the surface.
"Did it make you sick?" the commander asked, when I climbed down from the turret, and when I told him no he was surprised, for he said most men were made sick by their first dive.
The thing most astonishing to me about that experience was how a submerged submarine can thread its way through a mine field. For though the water is luminous and translucent one can hardly make out the black hull of the boat under the turret and a mine would have to be on top of you before you could see it. The men who watch for mines must have a sense for them as well as particularly powerful sight.
We continued to dive until we were sixty-eight feet below the surface, too deep to strike any mine, and there we ran tranquilly on our electric engines, while the commander navigated the vessel and the second in command opened champagne in the two by four mess room. After half an hour of under-water work we came near enough the surface for our fighting periscope to stick twenty inches out of the water and searched the lonely horizon for a ship to attack.
It was not long before we sighted a mine trawler, steaming for the harbor, and speeded up to overtake her.
"Pikers!" said our commander, as we circled twice around the mine trawler; "they can't find us."
Five men on the trawler were scanning the sea with glasses, looking for submarines. We could follow all their motions, could tell when they thought they had found us and see their disappointment at their mistakes, but though we were never more than five hundred yards from them I did not think they were pikers because they did not find us. I had tried that hunt for the tiny wave of a periscope.
"No use wasting a torpedo on those fellows," said our commander. "We will use the gun on them."
"How far away can you use a torpedo?" I asked.
"Two hundred yards is the best distance," he said. "Never more than five hundred. A torpedo is pure guesswork at more than five hundred yards."
We crossed the bow of the trawler, circled around to her starboard quarter and came to the surface, fired nine shots and submerged again in forty-five seconds.
The prey secured, we ran submerged through the mine field and past the net barrier to come to the surface well within the harbor and proceed peacefully to our mooring under the shelter of the guns of the land forts.