Where a boat chaser cannot see a submarine at all when she is submerged, an airplane can fly directly over her, follow her every movement, and see her when she is at a considerable depth. (See [Fig. 68].)
As the airplane is much more steady in the air than a submarine is on the water and as the former is much quicker and speedier than the latter, a battle between these two very different kinds of craft is an unequal one with the odds greatly in favor of the warplane.
A Way to Lift the U-Boat Blockade.—Here, then, is a real, ready way that the submarine can be destroyed and Germany’s blockade lifted. To put an end quickly and for all time to the U-boat menace, the United States ought to build several thousand airplanes at once and arm these with bombs and rapid-fire guns like the Lewis[39] and send this fleet to patrol the seas.
If this were done there wouldn’t be enough U-boats left in a month’s time to flag a Norwegian fishing trawler. So the thing for your Uncle Sammy to do is to build a great fleet of airplanes, and in the shortest possible time.
There is still another way to break the blockade, and this will be described in the next chapter.
CHAPTER XII
THE LAST WORD IN SUBMARINES
The Adventures of the “Deutschland” and Some Schemes for a Merchant Submarine Service