What the actual methods employed by the Navy are cannot be explained. When Mr. Frederick Palmer, the American writer, visited the Grand Fleet he asked how the thing was done, and officers said: “Sometimes by ramming; sometimes by gunfire; sometimes by explosives; and in many other ways which we do not tell.” M. Joseph Reinach also visited the Fleet, and said in the Figaro that the submarine was pursued “by net, gun, explosive bomb, and other means.” Squadron-Commander Bigsworth on August 26th, 1915, destroyed a submarine off Ostend by dropping bombs upon her from his aeroplane, and there have been several other episodes of the same kind. When the first American transports were attacked in the Atlantic, bombs fitted with a short-time fuse were employed which burst at a determined depth below the surface of the sea.
The Royal Naval Air Service plays a large part in the anti-submarine campaign. Its seaplanes are always scouting over our waters and sight enemy submarines from afar. Flying high, they can and do discover submarines navigating below the surface, and by wireless or other signals bring destroyers or other craft to the scene, where by special means submarines are destroyed.
Probably gunfire is the chief means by which submarines are sent to the bottom. A German submarine may attain complete submergence from the cruising trim within about three minutes; but the time may be longer, if she has a gun mounted, wireless rigged, and other top hamper. From the awash position, in which her speed is reduced, she may submerge in about two minutes. A swift destroyer, knowing the position of such a submarine, may advance toward her, covering a nautical mile within two minutes, so that she has an excellent chance of coming within range and putting in shots with effect. Gunnery is carried to a high pitch of proficiency in the Navy, and one destroyer may be mentioned which knocked out the periscope of a German submarine at a range of over 2,000 yards with her first round. There is nothing an enemy submarine likes less than to see destroyers tearing down towards her at high speed as she is getting in her gun, withdrawing her periscope, lowering her masts—often a disguise—and filling her tanks. Moreover, complete submergence may not be a sure protection for her if she is watched, for she may be destroyed by an explosive bomb.
German submarines have also learned to fear armed merchantmen, which have not seldom used their guns with effect, sometimes compelling their assailants to submerge, and so evading their attack, and sometimes by obtaining direct hits. The Dunrobin in September, 1916, carried on a lively action for some minutes, hitting her assailant in the vicinity of her conning-tower with a T.N.T. shell—thereby causing an internal explosion, from which dense smoke arose—followed by three common shell, each of them making a direct hit, after which the enemy suddenly plunged at a sharp angle, evidently going to the bottom. In March, 1917, the Bellorado was attacked by gunfire from a submarine, whereby her master, chief officer, and a seaman were killed, while her gunners put such shot into the assailant that she was silenced and manifestly disabled.
Further it is not permissible to go on describing how submarines are accounted for. The catalogue of methods is a long one. There could certainly be no single and decisive weapon for the destruction of this new engine of warfare. There is no remedy for the effects of gunfire, and if submarines discover targets possible to be attacked they will certainly attack them. Some surprise was expressed that the British Admiralty did not at once suppress the submarine menace. When the submarine campaign began in February, 1915, it resulted in the sinking of a number of British merchantmen; but, having risen to its height, it declined, with fluctuations, until it was described as being “well in hand.” The methods employed had been successful. Then, after several months, the submarines began their depredations again, carrying them into the Atlantic and the Mediterranean with great violence. They also penetrated the Channel, though they never checked the great stream of transport for the armies between English and French ports, which the Navy was guarding with complete success.
The reason for this recrudescence of submarine piracy was the intense energy which the Germans devoted to the production of standardised and powerful classes of submarines, whose parts were produced in many districts of the German Empire. The new boats were practically submarine cruisers, capable of high surface speed, which enabled them to overhaul slow merchantmen, and they were armed with powerful guns. The early enemy submarine carried a 1.4-inch gun, but a 2.9-inch 12-pounder was provided. There is now reason to believe that the calibre has risen to 4.1 inches and, in the case of some of the more powerful boats, to 5.1 inches, these larger guns being shorter and lighter than the same guns mounted in cruisers. But obviously submarines of these classes, carrying on their work over wider areas and in distant places, will not be so easy to destroy as the smaller boats of the early submarine campaign, and this may account for the difficulty in providing a complete protection from the attack. Submarine sections have been sent overland and assembled at Trieste for the Adriatic and Mediterranean, and at Varna for use in the Black Sea, and also doubtless at the Golden Horn or in the Gulf of Ismid.
There is much uncertainty about the future of the submarine. She exercises no command at sea, and she makes many fruitless attacks upon armed merchantmen; but she is dangerous, nevertheless. The British Navy has devoted exhaustless energy in applying every possible agency for dealing with hostile submarines, and its great success encourages the hope and belief that the scourge will yet be exterminated. Destroyers, motor launches, patrolling ships of many classes, seaplanes, observation balloons, and other craft are at work every day and many of them every night. But whatever element of uncertainty there may be as to the complete success of these agencies, there is none in the conclusion that the submarine will never bring England, still less her Allies, to the verge of famine or anywhere near it. Scarcity of food is not due so much to the submarine as to the great demand on the world’s supplies, and the enormous volume of shipping absorbed by the naval and military requirements of England and her Allies. The Navy, which has done such wonderful work in the war, is not and will not be ineffective against the submarine.
CHAPTER VI
The Navy and the Mine
They sink, they slink, they seek the boat,
Grisly horns stuck through their skin,
Ready to sink all things that float,
These villain boxes shaped of tin.
The fisher sees the death therein,
But reaches down with his long fling,
And grasps the chain that holds them in,
And draws the fangs they hoped would sting.