There are at the present time[35] only about thirty million tons of shipping[36] in the world which can be used to supply the Allies of Europe with munitions of war. The German U-boats are picking off ships, both neutral and otherwise at the rate of half a million tons a month, and at this rate of destruction shipping cannot last more than a few years. Hence the great need of breaking the blockade and of doing it quickly.
Schemes for Outwitting the Submarine.—Many plans have been thought of and tried out to get the best of the tough old submarine and so defeat it; and among these are:
(1) To build ships that are so heavily armored that they can withstand the attack of torpedoes.
(2) To build ships which have a light enough draft and are speedy enough to outdodge and to outrun the swift torpedo.
(3) To outrig the ships below the water-line with nets which prevent the torpedoes from striking the hulls hard enough to explode them.
(4) To fit the ships with wireless ears which will detect the presence and determine the position of the submarine before it gets within torpedoing range and so give them a chance to escape.
(5) Any number of other impracticable schemes.
Now, you may ask why these schemes are useless. Among the reasons are these, (a) steel armor has yet to be made that will withstand the violent explosive power of the torpedo, (b) ships with a draft light enough and a speed great enough to get out of the way of a torpedo could not be used as freighters, (c) nets on ships make them slow and unwieldy, and as soon as they were used the torpedoes were fitted with steel cutters which enabled them to go through as easily as before, (d) the art of wireless has not yet advanced to the point where it is possible for a ship to detect the presence and position of a submerged submarine, (e) every other scheme that has been put to the acid test has had a glaring fault in it.
Plans for Destroying the U-Boats.—Now, the right way to break the German blockade is to destroy the U-boats, and plans along this line have been devised and carried out with better success.
The submarine can be destroyed in several ways. Among the most important are (1) by laying mine-fields; (2) by arming merchantmen with rapid-fire guns; (3) by destroying the base-ships which mother the submarines; (4) by hunting them down with submarine chasers, and (5) by dropping bombs or shelling them from aircraft.