Submarine Warfare of To-day Part 21

Numbed with the cold, they fell rather than jumped into the boat as it was pulled alongside. One was insensible and the others were too far gone to utter a word. Nothing but the wonderful vitality necessary to the airman as to the sailor had enabled them to hold on in that bitter cold for over two hours after eight hours in the air.

The task of extricating the M.L. from the tangle of wire stays and other wreckage was a difficult one. A propeller had entwined itself and become useless (afterwards freed by going astern), the little signal topmast and yard had been broken off by a loop of wire from the gigantic envelope and the ensign staff carried away. After about twenty minutes cutting and manoeuvring, however, she floated free, and a question was raised as to the possibility of salving the airship.

By this time another M.L., sent out to a.s.sist in the work of rescue, had arrived on the scene, and a conference between the air and sea officers on the senior ship resulted in the attempt at salving being made. Wires that were hanging from the nose of the airship were made fast to the stern of the M.L.'s, and all wreckage was, where possible, cut adrift.

This, to the uninitiated, may sound a comparatively quick and simple operation, but when it is performed in the darkness, with the doubtful aid of two small searchlights, on a sea rising and falling under the influence of a heavy ground swell, it is anything but an easy or rapid operation, and occupied half the night.

The huge ma.s.s of the modern airship towered above the little patrol boats like some leviathan of the deep. To attempt its towage over twenty miles of sea seemed almost ludicrous for such small craft, and yet so light and easy of pa.s.sage was this aerial monster that progress at the rate of three knots an hour was made when once the wreckage had been cut adrift, the weights released and the envelope had risen off the surface of the water.

Armed trawlers that pa.s.sed in the night wondered if it was a captive zeppelin and winked out inquiries from their Morse lamps. A destroyer came out of the darkness to offer a.s.sistance. The cause of much anxiety had been the likelihood of hostile submarines being attracted to the scene by the helplessness of the airship, which had been visible, before darkness closed over, for many miles as she slowly settled down into the sea. This danger, however, pa.s.sed away with the arrival of the destroyer and the armed trawlers, but another arose which threatened to wreck the whole venture.

About 5 A.M. the wind began to freshen from the north-west and the M.L.'s towing the huge bag were immediately dragged to leeward. The combined power of their engines failed to head the airship into the wind and urgent signals for a.s.sistance were made to the destroyer and trawlers, who had, fortunately, const.i.tuted themselves a rear-guard.

A trawler came quickly to the rescue and got hold of an additional wire hanging down from the envelope. The destroyer, in the masterful way of these craft, proceeded to take charge of the operations. Her 9000-horse-power engines soon turned the airship into the path of safety, and with this big addition to the towing power it was less than half-an-hour later when the great envelope was safely landed on the quayside, much to the amazement of the townspeople.

"UNLUCKY SMITH"

There is, however, another side to this co-operation between fleets of the sea and air. It has more than once occurred that vessels equipped almost exclusively for submarine hunting have been engaged by zeppelins, and actions between seaplanes and under-water craft have been frequent.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MONITOR

The bulge of the "blister" will be seen on the water-line near the bow.

_British Official Photograph_]

How a large fleet of unarmed fishing vessels were saved and a zeppelin raid on the east coast of England prevented by the timely action of an armed auxiliary proves once again the truth of the old military axiom that it is the unexpected which always happens in war.

It had been one of the few really hot summer days granted by a grudging climate. The sea was a sheet of gla.s.s, the sky a cloudless blue, except where tinged with the golden glow of sunset. Lieutenant Smith smiled somewhat grimly as he mounted the little iron ladder and squeezed through the narrow doorway into the wheel-house. He nodded to the skipper--an old trawlerman acting as a chief warrant officer for navigational duties--as a signal for the mooring ropes to be cast off, and mechanically rang the engine-room telegraph. He had done all these things in the same way and at the same time of day for nearly two years.

For a long while he had gone forth hopefully, saying to himself each cruise, "It's bound to come soon," but as the weeks grew into months, and the months promised to extend into years, disappointment gained the mastery and duty became appallingly monotonous and uninteresting.

This, however, did not cause him to work less strenuously or to neglect to watch the large fishing fleet which he guarded on four nights out of the seven, but each letter he received from old friends in other branches of the King's service brought tidings of excitement, rapid promotion, or at least a little of the pomp and circ.u.mstance of war, and he saw himself at the end of it all with nothing to show for years of danger, hardship and impaired health. The worry and the lonely monotony, trivial as he knew them to be, were slowly sapping his nerve and vitality.

The trawler glided from the harbour on to the broad expanse of tranquil sea, now aglow with the lights of a summer sunset. Slowly the coast-line faded into the blue haze of distance, and all around the watery plain was mottled with the shadowy patches made by the light evening breeze.

Settling himself in an old deck-chair, which he kept in the wheel-house, Smith lit his pipe and allowed his thoughts to wander, but every now and then his eyes would search the sea from slowly darkening east to mellow west.

Although the summer was well advanced, there were but few hours of darkness out of the twenty-four in these northern lat.i.tudes, and when the armed trawler came in sight of the widely scattered fishing fleet, which it was her duty to guard throughout the night, a mystic half-light subdued all colours to a shadowy grey, but a pale amber afterglow still lingered in the sky and the stars were pale.

Smith lingered a few minutes on deck to finish a cigar before going below for his evening meal. Seldom during the past year had all the elements been so long at peace, and the contrast appealed to him as a luxury to be enjoyed at leisure. Even the light breeze of sunset had died away, leaving an unruffled calm, and the sails and stumpy funnels of the little fishing craft appeared like "painted ships on a painted ocean."

For nearly an hour he sat inhaling the fragrant and satisfying smoke from more than one cigar, preferring the cool of the deck to the stuffy cabin. Then a dark blot appeared from out of the luminous blueness of the eastern sky and it travelled rapidly downwards towards his flock.

Smith watched it for several seconds, then it suddenly dawned upon him that the hand of the destroyer was coming even into this haven of peace, and a fierce resentment entered his soul. He heard the distant shouting of fishermen as they cut adrift their nets and prepared to scatter before the approaching zeppelin, and in a moment he realised that the long-awaited chance had come. It all seemed too unreal to be true, but he rose up quickly and in a few terse sentences gave the necessary orders for the guns' crews and engineers.

The whir of the airship's propellers grew rapidly louder and its bulk loomed black against the bright sky. Determined, however, to take no risk of failure, Lieutenant Smith withheld the fire of his guns until the great aerial monster, now travelling down to less than 1000 feet, was well within range.

Attracted by the helplessness of a large number of fishing craft congregated in a comparatively small area of sea, the _destroyer_ dived to the attack like some giant bird of prey, unable in the gloom which shrouded the earth to distinguish the presence of an armed escort.

The suspense was painful. Then the muzzles of two high-angle guns rose up from the well-deck and superstructure of the armed patrol, and in response to a low-toned order from the C.O., giving the height, time and deflection, they quickly covered the great black body of their objective. Tongues of livid flame leapt from their mouths and were followed by sharp reports. A few minutes of heavy firing and the nose of the monster appeared to sag.

The men at the guns yelled exultantly, redoubling their efforts, and sh.e.l.l after sh.e.l.l went shrieking heavenwards. Suddenly the sea around rose up in huge cascades of foam and a shattering roar, which completely dwarfed the voice of the guns, shook the small ship from stem to stern.

Everything movable was hurled across the deck. Breaking gla.s.s flew in all directions, and the aerials at the mast-heads snapped and came tumbling down with a ma.s.s of other gear. The cries of injured men arose from different parts of the ship, but still the guns hurled their sh.e.l.ls, and the zeppelin, now well down by the head, rose high into the upper air and made off eastwards. After dropping all her bombs in close proximity to the armed trawler she had lightened herself sufficiently to rise out of range, but whether or not she would be able to keep up sufficiently long to reach her base, over 300 miles distant, was extremely doubtful.

Flames spurted from the short funnel of the patrol as she steamed at full speed after the retreating zeppelin, endeavouring to keep her within range as long as possible. It was a question of seconds. Before she finally disappeared in the increasing darkness another long-range hit was observed and the zeppelin receded from view, drifting helplessly.

The disappointment at not being able to give the _coup de grace_ to the aerial destroyer was keenly felt by all on board, for a half success is of little account in the navy. The gunners had done magnificently, the ship had been manoeuvred correctly and four of the crew had been wounded by fragments from the bombs dropped _en ma.s.se_, but notwithstanding their exertions and the luck which had brought the zeppelin down from the security of the skies, they had failed to secure the prize legitimately theirs. That the attack on the fishing fleet had been successfully beaten off appeared a minor detail, and the voyage back to port in the quickening light of a beautiful summer morning was a sad pilgrimage. Scarcely a word unnecessary for the working of the ship was spoken, except Lieutenant Smith's brief explanation that it was just his luck.

About two weeks later the proverbially "unlucky Smith" was ordered to report at the office of the Admiral Commanding, and he had a sharp struggle to maintain a becoming composure when he heard the terse compliment and the mention of a recommendation from that austere officer, coupled with the intelligence that the zeppelin had dropped into the sea off the coast of Norway.

The spell was broken, and the brisk step and gleam in his dark eyes told their own tale as he walked quickly back to his ship.

CHAPTER XXVI

ON THE SEA FLANK OF THE ALLIED ARMIES

IT is a mere truism to say that the sea outflanks all land operations in warfare. Yet how many people fully realise that the left wing of the Allied armies in Belgium and France depended for its safety on the naval command of the North Sea and English Channel? Had this sea flank been permanently penetrated or forced back by the German fleet, the result must have been disastrous to a large section of the Allied military line, which actually extended from the North Sea to the Mediterranean.

Although the security of the North Sea flank did not entirely depend upon the naval forces based on Dover, Dunkirk and Harwich--as all operations, whether on land or sea, were overshadowed by the unchallenged might of the Grand Fleet, which hemmed in the entire German navy--it was upon these light forces, largely composed of units of the new navy, that the brunt of the intermittent flank fighting and the repeated attempts by the enemy to break through--with the aid of all kinds of ruses and weapons--was borne for four and a half historic years.

The detailed story of their work on the Belgian coast and in the Straits of Dover could only be told in a separate volume, but the following account of a bombardment and its sequel may not be without interest here. Its relevance to anti-submarine warfare lies in the fact that the bombardment was carried out with the object of destroying the nests of these under-water craft established in and around Zeebrugge. Much that has also been said in former chapters bases its claim to inclusion in this book almost entirely on the fact that although it did not deal exclusively with submarine fighting or minesweeping, it nevertheless formed part of the daily operations of the anti-submarine fleets, and no account of their work would bear any resemblance to the actual truth in which such seemingly extraneous episodes were excluded as irrelevant.

THE BOMBARDMENT AND ITS SEQUEL

There was a flat calm, with the freshness of early summer in the air.

Zeebrugge lay away in the darkness some fifteen miles to the south-east--awake, watchful, but unsuspecting--when the British bombarding squadron steamed in towards the coast to take up its allotted position and wait for daybreak.

It was a heterogeneous fleet, screened by fast-moving destroyers, torpedo-boats, trawlers, M.L.'s and C.M.B.'s. The great hulls of monitors loomed black against the paling east, and the long thin lines of destroyers moved stealthily across the shadowy sea. No lights were visible, and only the occasional rhythmic thud of propellers and the call of an awakened sea-bird broke the stillness of the morning calm.

The sky was not yet alive with the whir of seaplanes, and the air remained undisturbed by the shattering roar of guns and sh.e.l.ls. It was that brief s.p.a.ce of time in which even Nature seems to hold her breath and make ready for the coming storm. The only movement other than the continued circling of destroyers was towards the shallow water close insh.o.r.e, where powerful tugs were towing large barges--flat-bottomed craft carrying gigantic tripods made of railway metals. At predetermined places these were dropped overboard into the shallow sea and, with their legs embedded in the sandy bottom and their apices towering high above the surface, they formed observation platforms from which, in conjunction with aerial scouts, the fire of the big ships could be accurately directed on to the fortifications ash.o.r.e.

These tripods were laid a distance apart and quite away from the bombarding ships, but a system of range-finding and signalling had been organised and an officer chosen as a "spotter" in each trestle.

The post of honour was on one or other of these observation towers, alone with the necessary instruments. The big sh.e.l.ls from the sh.o.r.e batteries would scream overhead; some would plough up the water close by, smothering the tripod with spray, and the smaller guns would direct their fire against these eyes of the bombarding fleet. The chances were in favour of a hit, then there would be nothing left of the tripod or the spotter, simply a brief report to the Admiral Commanding that No.

---- observation post had been destroyed and later a fresh name in the casualty lists. It was, however, accepted as the fortune of war, and many volunteered.

The sky brightened until a pale yellow glow suffused the east, while behind the bombarding fleet the western horizon was still a cold, hazy blue. A flight of seaplanes buzzed overhead and a few minutes later the dull reports of anti-aircraft guns echoed across the miles of still water. Tiny bright flashes from white puffs of smoke appeared in the central blue, and then having got the range the great guns of the monitors roared away their charges and the scream of sh.e.l.ls filled the air. The calm of the morning vanished, and with it the oppressive silence which precedes a battle.

It was some time before the German airmen could rise from the ground and evade the British fighting formations. In the meantime a rain of heavy projectiles from the fleet was destroying all that was destroyable of the harbour and works of Zeebrugge. With the aid of gla.s.ses huge clouds of smoke and sand could be seen rising into the air almost every second.

Objects discernible one minute had disappeared when the smoke cloud of bursting sh.e.l.ls had moved to another point of concentration a short time later. When at last the enemy's planes, in isolated ones and twos, succeeded in hovering over the fleet the surface of the sea was almost instantly broken by great spouts of white water, at first far away, then nearer, and the battle commenced in earnest.

A vast cloud of smoke now hung like a black curtain between the fleet and the sh.o.r.e. The M.L.'s were emitting their smoke screen to cover the bombarding ships. Sh.e.l.ls splashed into the sea all around. The noise and vibration of the air seemed to bruise the senses, and lurid flashes came from the smoking monitors.