Better luck attended this effort than befell the pilot of a seaplane who came across a large submersible travelling awash. Here early demise seemed a certainty. Unfortunately there is many a slip ’twixt the bomb and the U-boat. One packet of high explosive fell ahead and another astern of the grey monster. The third was a marvellous shot. It did the aviator’s heart good to see it strike. It landed directly in the centre of the deck. He had scored a bull’s-eye. I am afraid I cannot quote what he said when the missile failed to detonate. His anger was not appeased by the knowledge that his supply of ammunition was exhausted. The enemy submerged, descended to the lowest depths, and made off.
Observation balloons, towed by destroyers, although they obviously lack the initiative of airship and seaplane, have their uses like their more energetic brethren of the sky. On one occasion an observer telephoned that there was a U-boat in the neighbourhood. Depth charges were thrown overboard, but achieved nothing more than causing the boat to shift her position. She passed from mortal ken so far as her hunters were concerned. Later on, however, the submarine came to the surface and began shelling a poor little helpless sailing vessel that could neither escape nor offer effective resistance. The destroyer opened fire, and as a submersible is no match for this type of vessel, she promptly went below. Her rapidity of movement failed to evade Nemesis, though her smartness in this respect was highly commendable. Guided by the balloon, the parent ship took up the trail, and nine ‘pills’ were sent overboard with the compliments of the captain. Then followed such a display of oil as is rarely seen. No fake oil squirt ever succeeded in covering a mile of sea with the colours of the rainbow. The U-boat had gone to her doom.
The task undertaken by blimps and seaplanes in their daily warfare against the pirates was far from selfish. The Mistress of the Seas and her Allies kept guard over the welfare of neutral nations as well as of their own. While journeying homeward the Danish steamer Odense was met by a German submersible. It signalled her to stop. The order was complied with without hesitation, but instead of making an examination of the ship’s papers the U-boat opened fire, killing two of the crew. The enemy commander then ordered the survivors into the boat. This was really inviting them to commit suicide, for the weather was such as to render the likelihood of the men’s being saved extremely remote. While this little tragedy of the sea was being acted, a British submarine put in an appearance, apparently from nowhere. She had been summoned by aircraft. The U-boat did not stay to fire further shells into the steamer. Not long afterward a British patrol ship on its ceaseless vigil came across the Danes in their cockleshell, took them on board, gave them warm food and dry clothes, and amply demonstrated the fact that the British Navy was neither spiteful nor cruel because it did not own the globe.
A British coastal airship was scouting for a convoy bound westward. The voyage had been uneventful, when a look-out spied the track of a torpedo aimed with deadly certainty at one of the steamers. With marvellous agility the course of the airship was altered and traversed the trail still outlined on the water. It is said that she travelled at a rate approaching ninety miles an hour. There was the gaunt form of the submarine right enough, though submerged. Well-placed bombs did the rest.
Another airship, quietly sailing in the upper air, also came across a British convoy. The reply to the pilot’s request for news was entirely unsatisfactory from his point of view. No U-boats had been seen or reported. Things were slow. They continued so for several hours after the two branches of the Service had parted, but brightened up a bit when a wireless message was received that a merchantman was being attacked by a pirate. Details as to position proved correct. The submersible was floating awash. Blimps being preeminently handy affairs which readily respond to helm and engine control, the airship was hovering over the U-boat before the latter was completely submerged. It boded ill for the intended victim, whose ballast tanks were slower in filling than the airship’s mechanical appliances in accelerating. The first bomb was a good shot, but not a hit. It fell three feet short of the mark, and exploded astern of the propellers. That it did the enemy no good was evident. Streams of oil, too voluminous to be make-believe, spurted to the surface. The second bomb was a direct hit aft of the conning-tower, causing the stern to rise upward. It would have been waste of good ammunition to spend more on the wreck that lay below. She slowly turned turtle, and was no more seen. Another U-boat had paid the price of her perfidy. The blimp had scored a full triumph that admitted of no question.
A seaplane was patrolling her section, keeping a sharp eye on possibilities in the nether regions that failed to eventuate. Presumed periscopes are sometimes in reality nothing more than mops or spars. After the novelty of flying has worn off it is apt to become a trifle boring without action. As the pilot was proceeding on his way, doubtless thinking that his luck was most decidedly out, he picked up a wireless message. Judging by its purport it was evidently sent by a U-boat no great distance off. He had not proceeded very far before he spotted his prey, comfortably squatting on the surface about a mile ahead. The seaplane was ‘all out’ in a trice. Sea-hawk and sword-fish exchanged greetings, the one with a bomb, the other with a shell. The latter burst quite harmlessly within fifty feet of the aircraft, then splashed over the sea like a shower of pebbles. The bomb went more than one better. It fell on the U-boat and tore a great rent in her deck. While this battle royal was proceeding, three German U-boats, three torpedo-boats, and a couple of seaplanes were speeding in the direction of the firing. The weather was somewhat misty, but they sighted the solitary seaplane and tried to wing her. The pilot treated them with contempt, and calmly proceeded with the business immediately in hand. The firing in his direction became so heavy that it formed a barrage through which the German aircraft were totally unable to penetrate. The officer gave his enemy another dose of bomb, photographed her as she was going down, took a picture of her friends, and having exhausted his ammunition, returned to report.
A gunner on a British submarine cruising off Denmark proved himself a better shot than his German rivals in the afore-mentioned incident. Two enemy seaplanes saw the boat and dropped their highly explosive eggs. The bombs burst, made a great noise, but did no damage. A shell from the submarine sped straight and true and one of the seaplanes was brought down, whereupon her companion, realizing that the locality was unhealthy, beat a hasty and undignified retreat.
German airmen naturally endeavoured to turn the tables on us. They hunted for British submarines in addition to doing scouting work for their own. Within a month of the outbreak of war an enemy airman and his mechanic got what was at once the greatest shock in their lives and the means of the aforesaid lives being preserved. Their machine had broken down, and they were using it as a raft, when one of His Britannic Majesty’s submarines rose to the surface. Instead of making war on them as a ‘biological necessity,’ the commander rescued the two men and took them into Harwich, after their damaged craft had been satisfactorily disposed of.
During the afternoon of the 6th July, 1918, a British submarine was on guard off the East Coast when five hostile seaplanes swooped down on her and made a vigorous attack with bombs and machine-guns. According to the German official account, the action took place off the mouth of the Thames, and two submarines were severely damaged, one of which, when last observed, was in a sinking condition. The report rather reminds one of occasions when Teutonic imagination has robbed the Grand Fleet of battle-cruisers. As it happened, the British craft sustained only minor injuries, and was towed into harbour by another submarine—presumably the one which the enemy had seen. She had suffered no inconvenience whatever from the seaplanes’ attentions. Unhappily an officer and five men were killed in this attack.
Some time since the Berlin Press made much ado about a British submarine being sunk by a German airship. It was when Zeppelins were considered to be rather more substantial assets in the Wilhelmstrasse than they subsequently became. A little later the ‘sunken’ submarine returned to her base without so much as a scratch on her bulgy sides, and reported that she had been in action with a hostile airship, which she had damaged and driven off. So much for the Truth as propagated in Berlin.