The Story of Our Submarines Part 9

"_Wale._ 'I make you five.'

"'E 9.' 'Neutral limit is three miles--please stand clear while I sink this ship.'

"11.24 A.M.: Fired stern tube at _Dal Alfven_. _Wale_ was 100 yards on our beam. Torpedo ran well and vessel sank in two minutes."

"E 19" (Commander Cromie) was at sea also at this time:--

"October 3rd, 5.30 P.M.: Stopped German merchantman. She would not obey the signal until I hit her with a sh.e.l.l amidships--then she abandoned ship. Put five shot-holes in her water-line, and left her on a lee sh.o.r.e. Weather getting worse.

"October 10th: Sea rough with rain squalls. Stopped German ship _Lulea_. Made crew abandon ship and then sank her.

"October 11th: Sank _Walter Leonhardt_ of Hamburg. Crew taken aboard Swedish steamer. Then sank _Gutrune_, carrying iron ore to Hamburg. At 4.55 P.M., stopped and sank _Director Rippenhagen_, carrying magnetic ore to Nordenheim. Put the crew aboard Swedish steamer _Martha_. 6.30 P.M.: Sank the _Nicomedia_, carrying iron ore to Hamburg. Crew pulled ash.o.r.e.

"Stopped the _Nike_. This ship requiring further investigation, I put a prize crew on board and sent her to Bevel. Her captain informed me that twenty German ships, laden with iron ore, are stopped at Lulea, waiting for escort."

On November 2nd "E 19" was on the traffic route again and sank the _Ruomi_ of Hamburg. (The work being done by these boats was the same as the Germans were doing to us, but if the Germans had carried out their work with the same decency and care for the lives of the non-combatants they would be receiving far more consideration and respect from us now.) The enemy had now started to protect their traffic lane, and they sent out a cruiser to drive the E boats away.

"E 19" continues (November 7th, 1.45 P.M.):--

"Fired starboard beam tube 1100 yards' range, hitting her forward on starboard side. The cruiser (_Ancona_ cla.s.s) swung round and stopped. At 1.55 P.M. fired stern tube at 1200 yards. Torpedo hit just abaft main-mast, and after-magazine blew up. Three minutes later there was no sign of her."

The German ships torpedoed in the Baltic seem to have had touchy magazines. Commander Goodhart "E 8" met the _Prinz Adalbert_ on October 23rd, 1915. She was zigzagging slightly and going 15 knots, with two destroyers zigzagging ahead as a screen. The torpedo was fired at the fore-bridge as she pa.s.sed, and--

"Observed very vivid flash of explosion along water-line at point of aim. This was immediately followed by a very heavy concussion, and the entire ship was completely hidden by a huge column of thick grey smoke--fore magazine having evidently been exploded by torpedo. As many portions of the ship were observed to be falling in the water all round, I proceeded to 50 feet depth."

The range of this shot was about 1300 yards. This comparatively long distance was fortunate, as the resultant explosion would have probably caused a terrific shock to "E 8" had she happened to fire from closer.

The E boats in the Baltic came from Harwich _via_ the Sound. It sounds simple, but it was a remarkably difficult and dangerous trip.

For six miles in the narrows it is too shallow for a submarine to submerge. The boats had to trim down and go along with their conning-towers showing and their keels b.u.mping along the rocky bottom.

The traffic--both neutral and enemy--was so thick that it was not so much a question of avoiding being seen, as of actually avoiding collision. A maze of moving and fixed lights, searchlights, star-sh.e.l.ls, and attempts to ram made up a nightmare of navigational difficulties to add to the normal anxiety of pa.s.sing through thick traffic in a narrow channel. It was really a marvel that any boats got through safely at all.

III

Throughout this history I am giving selections from despatches of typical "contacts" with the enemy, or of those which describe exciting incidents on patrol; but I don't want to give the idea that submarine patrol work was one whirl of gaiety, and that a boat had only to go to sea in order to find a target. The facts are very different. A boat might do a matter of twenty trips without meeting any kind of chance at an enemy, and I suppose that each boat averaged two to three thousand miles of diving between chances. The following description of routine in a patrol boat must stand for four years of blank days in the North Sea, Atlantic, or Mediterranean:--

The boat dives at dawn, and, the trim correct and the captain satisfied, the order is given to "fall out all but diving hands." One officer remains at the periscope, while the remainder and the majority of the crew move off to their sleeping billets and lie down. When not on watch it is customary for everybody to sleep, read, and eat all the time; this is to conserve the stock of air in the boat. Oxygen is not carried, but "purifiers" are. The air in the hull of the boat is, however, ample for a long day's dive, and except when kept down by accident or the machinations of the enemy there is no necessity to renew it. It is kept on the move, however, by ordinary circulating fans, which produce a general draught and disturbance of the halos of bad air around each man's head, and this keeping of the air moving makes a great difference--in fact, with no fans running a match fails to burn after nine hours' diving; with all fans circulating a match can be lit after a dive of from fourteen to eighteen hours. Why this is, I don't know. If any work is done while diving (such as reloading of tubes or repairing of damage) the air is used more rapidly--in fact, extraordinarily quickly. When no work is being done, but only the usual day's dive has been carried out, there is a slight increase in rate of respiration among the hands on watch, with a slighter rise in rate of pulse. But as soon as one attempts to do anything, such as lifting weights or making a speech to the crew on the subject of their crimes, one finds it necessary to breathe heavily and quickly; and in fact, in the case of the speech, only a few minutes' harangue would be possible towards the end of a day. Officers do not keep watch at the periscope for more than a couple of hours at a time--it is bad for the eyes and bad for the temper; the deadly monotony of shuffling slowly round while stooping to stare at a perfectly blank and usually misty horizon is the worst part of a patrol. The periscope work makes one sleepy also.

Submarine officers sleep a lot; the work is dull and sleep pa.s.ses the time. One gets tired of reading, although one certainly reads an extraordinary amount. A succession of blank uneventful trips is good for education, however; somebody once said that the book to be cast away on a desert island with was Gibbons' 'Roman Empire.' I have known heavier books than that to be worked through on patrol--even to weighty tomes on Const.i.tutional History. The sailors also read, sleep, and eat continuously. A few hands keep watch on the hydroplane wheels, the pumps, and the motors; the rest take it easy. They study such periodicals as one finds on the counters of small tobacconists' shops, and in addition they borrow and read intelligently the more abstruse literature from their officers' library.

There is not much cooking done while diving. Cooking is done in electric ovens and boilers, but it is usual to do what work is necessary with these when the boats are charging batteries on the surface. Cooking when submerged uses oxygen, makes smells, and expends battery power, and is discouraged. Cold meals are the rule, and submarine people cannot complain of being underfed, as there is a special supply for them of bottled fruits and other extras to obviate the dangers of illness to men living without exercise or fresh air in such confined quarters. On the whole, the crews keep healthy and fit, but there has been a good deal of illness and also eye-strain among the officers during the war.

I have said that while one officer is on watch at the periscope the others sleep or read. It is remarkable, however, how awake they are to certain sounds or happenings. An officer may take some minutes to rouse when called for his spell on watch, but if instead of the gentle shaking of the messenger he felt a change of inclination of the boat, or a new vibratory note from the motors, or if he felt by the cessation of rolling that the boat was sinking, he would be awake in a flash. The human brain seems to keep one technical department always on watch, and it misses nothing. A boat patrolling in a slight swell keeps up a gentle roll at periscope depth, and all the time one hears the rattle and click of the shafting as the fore and aft hydroplanes are worked to keep her at her depth-line. If, for instance, she meets a stratum of fresh water, she will begin to sink; the hydroplanes will be worked up to "hard-a-rise" and left there, with the boat inclined up and trying to climb. The officer at the periscope will order a tank to be partially emptied and will increase speed on the motors to help her climb up again. As she goes down the rolling will cease, and the silence of the hydroplane shafts, the hum of the motors, and the angle of the boat will tell every sleeper at once exactly what is happening; some of them could probably tell the actual depth the boat had got down to without looking at the gauge. In the same way when on pa.s.sage on the surface a change of note in the roar of the Diesel engines will wake all hands--it might mean something important. When on the surface, there is one sound which wakes everybody without any exception--and that is the electric alarm horn. It makes a dry blaring noise which is unmistakable, and in view of the fact that it may be the preliminary to the loss of the boat, it interests all hands very intimately. There is always the feeling, especially if it is dark, that the officer on watch may have rung it too late, and that before the boat can be forced under a destroyer stem may come crashing through the pressure hull. A submarine hates being on the surface--at least, a patrol submarine does. She has to come up to recharge her batteries or to "make a pa.s.sage." It must be reiterated that a submarine is fairly fast and of long radius on the surface, and of slow speed and low capacity submerged. It will be understood that a boat is in an anxious position if she has been diving long and her battery is low when she is near enemy patrols. She has _got_ to come up and charge again, and while charging a low battery she is rather helpless. Every weapon has its weak point, and a knowledge of where the weakness lies means a chance to the opponent.

Neither side had any submarines present at the Battle of Jutland, for the simple reason that neither side had at that time any boats fast enough to cruise with the Fleet and so arrive in time at a tactical rendezvous. One boat did arrive at the scene of battle next day--a homeward-bound U-boat who knew nothing of what had happened; she pa.s.sed through an area of water which was covered with corpses, wreckage, and debris, and which was occasionally marked by the ends of sunken ships standing up above the surface. She cruised about, wondering, for a time, and then hurried on into harbour.

If, however, there had been another fleet action during the war, the fast submarine would have been represented in it. The Germans never built anything like our K cla.s.s boats, and so the war test of the type would have been carried out by us only. Tests in practice had given such good results that the reluctance of the enemy to repeat the Jutland experiment was very disappointing to the K-boat officers, who had two years of waiting for their one chance--a chance which never arrived. A submarine of 2600 tons cannot throw up her tail and slip under in a few seconds as an E boat can do--she must be taken under with due respect for her great length and size, and she cannot therefore be used on the usual Bight patrols. She is built and designed for battle only, and the type, apart from a few "incidents" with enemy submarines while employed on scouting patrols, had to share the fate of the Grand Fleet battleships which never got a fair chance at the enemy.

The building of these boats, however, showed us that the big submarine was a working possibility. We designed and built them to a certain specification, and they showed they could improve on that specification in practice, and they gave most valuable data for future design.

There is, at any rate, one point on which prophecy as to the future of submarines (if they are allowed by International Law to continue to develop) is safe: at present a boat has to travel submerged by electric power, because that is the only form of propulsion we know which does not consume air. When an engine arrives which can propel a boat under water by abstracting the necessary oxygen from the surrounding sea, we will have made the submersible a commercial proposition. A properly streamlined body moves faster under than on the surface of water, and with a submersible internal combustion engine there would be in all probability a doubling of the speed of ships. That such a type of engine will come there is little doubt, and when it is remembered that water is a far cheaper protection from sh.e.l.ls than is armour-plate, a field for prophecy is opened which is much too big and tempting to venture into here.

Whatever happens, the German policy of torpedoing merchant ships without warning must be made not only illegal, but unsafe for a nation adopting it; the use of this weapon by the enemy has made the word "submarine" one of reproach; the submarine personnel of every allied navy feels that an honourable weapon has, on its first appearance in a great sea war, had its name degraded by a section of its users. If these notes of mine serve no other purpose, they will at any rate do something towards differentiating between the submarine and the U-boat.

If the name of the weapon is to become a term of reproach, it is better to particularise and to spare the honour of the Allied Navies.

I am going to relate an incident which occurred during the war. It was not in the presence of the enemy, and so there is little direct connection between it and a War History. But it is ill.u.s.trative of the ideas of the Submarine Service in that it evoked little comment among the Flotillas, the standard shown by the personnel being considered to be normal, and in accordance with accepted practice.

Submarine "C 12" was under way in the Humber; her main driving motors failed, and before the fault could be remedied or anchors let go, she was carried by the strong ebb-tide against the bows of destroyers which were lying at the Eastern Jetty at Immingham, and badly holed. Most of the crew and the first lieutenant (Lieutenant Sullivan) were below at the time, while the captain (Lieutenant Manley) was on deck. Seeing that the boat was sinking fast, Lieutenant Manley ordered all hands on deck. They hurried up, the first lieutenant remaining below. The water was pouring in over the electric batteries, causing heavy chlorine fumes to be given off. The boat was on the verge of sinking when, the last man being up, Lieutenant Manley went below, closing the conning-tower lid after him. The boat then went to the bottom, with both officers inside her. Finding, however, that nothing could be done owing to the extent of the damage, the chlorine gas, and the weight of water entering, these officers entered the conning-tower, closing the lower door after them. They then flooded the conning-tower and, lifting the upper door, swam to the surface, reporting that nothing could now be done without salvage plant to lift the boat.

War produces a lot of incidents of a note-worthy kind, but work in submarines produces similar incidents under peace conditions also, because the Service is always at war with its constant enemy--the sea.

The boats have small buoyancy, and a leak is a dangerous thing; they are very vulnerable to the ram, and even in peace manoeuvres before the war we lost 6 boats from collisions either on the surface or diving. During the war we lost 61 boats, of which

7 were blown up without losses in personnel--these being the boats of the Baltic Flotilla.

20 were lost from a cause unknown. In other words, they went on patrol, and nothing more was heard of them. The enemy have no knowledge of their fate, and there were no survivors from them.

Their loss was probably due to their striking mines.

5 were sunk by enemy submarines (one of them--"E 20"--in the Sea of Marmora).

3 were sunk while entering the Dardanelles, and 1 by gun-fire in the Marmora.

4 were sunk by mines off our own coasts.

3 were wrecked on neutral coasts, 1 in the Baltic, and 1 on our own coast.

2 were sunk by air bombs.

7 were sunk by collision.

3 were sunk in error by gun or ram by our own side.

1 sank in harbour, 1 sank on trials, 1 was sunk by gun-fire after sinking a German destroyer off the Bight, and "C 3" blew herself up on St George's Day against the Mole at Zeebrugge.

The losses were heavy, but were not incurred uselessly. The boats were the outposts of the Fleet, and, however great the losses, they could never have equalled those the bigger ships would have had to endure had they been given the same patrols to perform.

Looking at the above list, one can see that the majority of the losses were due to mines. Losses by direct contact with the enemy were infrequent. This, of course, is because only a Fleet holding command of the sea can inst.i.tute regular anti-submarine methods and patrols. Our boats were working in and around the Bight, and were taking the risks of mine-fields all the time. The five wrecks show that navigational difficulties are increased in war-time. This was found also by surface vessels. The Dardanelles took their toll; it was easy to do damage to traffic in the Marmora from a well-trained submarine, but getting in and out of the Narrows was no simple matter. Of the two sunk by air bombs, one was alongside in harbour, and the other was destroyed by an Allied aircraft which mistook her for a U-boat; the submarine could have easily dived and avoided attack, but was under the impression her unfortunate opponent was only closing in order to make signals. The three others sunk in error by our own side show that a submarine's risks are great even on her own coast, and that methods of identification can never be perfected. The enemy suffered more than we did from errors. They had several clashes between their own destroyers: on June 1 (the morning after Jutland) the _Stettin_ was fired on by the whole of their 2nd Battle Squadron; while one U-boat in 1914 successfully stalked and torpedoed another (U 5), thinking it was one of our own.

VI

I have mentioned the fact that Submarine "A E 2" (Lieut.-Commander Stoker) was the first boat to get into the Sea of Marmora. Her experience is worth relating, especially in view of the fact that she was an Australian Navy boat, and that her trip was made simultaneously with the Gallipoli landing.

She entered the Straits at 2.30 A.M. on 25th April 1915, and continued upon the surface till, being fired on from the northern sh.o.r.e, she dived at 4.30 A.M., and proceeded at 70 feet depth through the mine-field. Her despatches say:--

"During the ensuing half-hour or so the sc.r.a.ping of wires against the vessel's sides was almost continuous, and on two occasions something caught up forward and continued to knock for some considerable time before breaking loose and sc.r.a.ping away aft."