It’s astounding to me, perfectly astounding, how the very best amongst us absolutely fail to realise the vast impending revolution in naval warfare and naval strategy that the submarine will accomplish! (I have written a paper on this, but it’s so violent I am keeping it!) Here, just to take a simple instance, is the battleship “Empress of India,” engaged in manœuvres and knowing of the proximity of Submarines, the Flagship of the Second Admiral of the Home Fleet nine miles beyond the Nab Light (out in the open sea), so self-confident of safety and so oblivious of the possibilities of modern warfare that the Admiral is smoking his cigarette, the Captain is calmly seeing defaulters down on the half-deck, no one caring an iota for what is going on, and suddenly they see a Whitehead torpedo miss their stern by a few feet! And how fired? From a submarine of the “pre-Adamite” period, small, slow, badly fitted, with no periscope at all—it had been carried away by a destroyer lying over her, fishing for her!—and yet this submarine followed that battleship for a solid two hours under water, coming up gingerly about a mile off, every now and then (like a beaver!), just to take a fresh compass bearing of her prey, and then down again!
Remember, that this is done (and I want specially to emphasise the point), with the Lieutenant in command of the boat out in her for the first time in his life on his own account, and half the crew never out before either! why, it’s wonderful! And so what results may we expect with bigger and faster boats and periscopes more powerful than the naked eye (such as the latest pattern one I saw the other day), and with experienced officers and crews, and with nests of these submarines acting together?
I have not disguised my opinion in season and out of season as to the essential, imperative, immediate, vital, pressing, urgent (I can’t think of any more adjectives!) necessity for more submarines at once, at the very least 25 in addition to those now ordered and building, and a hundred more as soon as practicable, or we shall be caught with our breeches down just as the Russians have been!
And then, my dear Friend, you have the astounding audacity to say to me, “I presume you only think they (the submarines) can act on the defensive!”... Why, my dear fellow! not take the offensive? Good Lord! if our Admiral is worth his salt, he will tow his submarines at 18 knots speed and put them into the hostile Port (like ferrets after the rabbits!) before war is officially declared, just as the Japanese acted before the Russian Naval Officers knew that war was declared!
In all seriousness I don’t think it is even faintly realised—
The immense impending revolution which the submarines will effect as offensive weapons of war.
When you calmly sit down and work out what will happen in the narrow waters of the Channel and the Mediterranean—how totally the submarines will alter the effect of Gibraltar, Port Said, Lemnos, and Malta, it makes one’s hair stand on end!
I hope you don’t think this letter too personal!
Ever yours,
J. A. Fisher.
Note made on January 5th, 1904: