Jack Heaton, wireless operator

by A. Frederick Collins

The H-24 has a hull that is very much like a huge catfish, that is it has a blunt round head and the torpedo tubes, one on either side, look for all the world like a pair of great eyes; the body tapers off gracefully to a point at the tail and on this the direction rudder is attached. Two horizontal rudders, or hydroplanes as they are called, by which the submarine is given its diving angle, are fastened one to each side of her head and give the appearance of a pair of great lateral fins.

Her hull is built up of thin but exceedingly strong sheets of steel and these are riveted together in the same fashion as the hull of any steel ship. When you consider that the hull of a submarine must be able to stand a pressure of at least 200 pounds to the square inch—as much as a high pressure steam boiler—without collapsing when it is fully submerged it must be clear that the strongest steel plate which can be made must be used.

A steel deck, or superstructure as it is called, covers the top of the hull from bow to stern, nearly, and on its middle sets the conning tower. A steering wheel and compass are fixed to the side of the conning tower so that the boat can be steered from the outside when she is running light or awash.

A short mast, called a stanchion, is also fixed to the conning tower and this carries the signal lights and holds one end of the aerial, the other end being fastened to the stern. It isn’t much of an aerial but as our submarine was built for coast patrol cruising we were never very far from shore.

The inside of the hull is partitioned off into rooms, or compartments, and these can be shut off from each other by means of bulkhead doors and so made watertight. The purpose of these watertight compartments is to prevent the water from filling the whole boat if she should be unlucky enough to be hit by a shell or rammed by a ship. To my way of thinking watertight compartments seem to be of little use whether the boat be a submarine or the largest ship. For instance when the Titanic was scrapped by an iceberg and the Lusitania was hit by a U-boat torpedo they both went down in a few minutes.

I won’t try to tell you what all the different compartments have in them but some of them are most uncommonly interesting and these you should know about. The first is the conning tower with its periscope. When the submarine is running either light or awash and the weather is good the commander can see what’s what around him from the deck or from the bridge, as we call the top of the conning tower. When the weather is rough or an enemy is nigh he takes a look around through the ports, that is, watertight windows, in the conning tower.

Should, however, the boat be submerged and the captain wants to size up the situation he permits only the top of her periscope to project out of the water and through this he scans the sea. Whenever I got a chance I used to look through the periscope. At first it was hard for me to make out a vessel on the surface because the field of view was small and what with the boat rolling from port to starboard it seemed to me I was always looking at the water or the sky; but after awhile I got so I could take in whatever there was to see in between times.

Our submarine had two periscopes, one of the older kind that you have to turn around in order to see the whole horizon, and the other, which was the latest style, showed the whole horizon at once with a magnified view of the ship or other vessel in the distance in the center. This scheme was a great invention as it prevented us from being attacked from behind unawares. It was like having a third eye in the back of your head.

Inside the conning tower are also speaking tubes and an electric system of lights and bells worked by pushbuttons and these run into all the compartments; by means of these intelligence transmission systems our captain could get in touch instantly with the chiefs of the crew in the engine, diving, torpedo and wireless rooms.

There are also several instruments in the conning tower and among these is a depth meter, that is, a device that shows just how far below the surface of the water the boat is. An inclinometer which points out the angle at which the diving rudder, or hydroplane is set, and a tell-tale, that is a bank of miniature lamps, each of which is connected to a detector in a compartment. Now if the boat should spring a leak the detector closes the current and the lamp is lit.