The Story of Our Submarines. John Bowers QC
and as we're moving ahead a little 'up helm' keeps her fairly dry. The hand on deck does 'look-out' astern and I look out ahead; meanwhile the people below carry on smoking (that's the chance they've been waiting for all day). If the look-out sees anything at all he gives a yell and points at it, and then jumps down inside the conning-tower. If I don't like it when I turn round and see it, I press the button and follow him down. If I see something first I hit the look-out, and he jumps down and I follow. They're all on the top line below, so as soon as I press the button and the horns sound (they make a din all over the boat) they open the vents and put her bow down with the planes, and then by the time I've closed the lid over my head the gauge is showing fifteen feet, and she's going down at a big slant. If I'm slack on the lid I get wet. If I'm too slack and the First Lieutenant thinks I'm not going to get the top lid shut before she's under, he slams the lower doors and either leaves me isolated in the tower or else swimming around on the surface till he comes up later to look for me. (No – I've never got left like that yet, but some people have been pretty near it. It's not safe for the First Lieutenant to hang on too long for you – he might fill the boat.) It's quite simple. With a well-trained crew anything's safe, and you can cut it as fine as you like. When you've heard the propellers from overhead1 you just keep along at sixty feet for ten minutes or so, and then you come up and get on with the work again. Oh! I'm bored with all this talking. You ought to be able to run a trip inside by yourself by now. But there's one thing always makes me mad, that's the Heligoland leave-boat. She leaves the island on Friday afternoons and she comes back on Monday morning. She's a big flat-bottomed coal barge – too shallow draught to torpedo – and crammed with men. You can't use a gun, because she's towed by a small tug with a big gun forward and a little one aft; and besides, we're not allowed to give away the fact that we're there by having a joke with small craft. But it's devilish aggravating, all the same, to see the bloated Hun going off for the week-end while we dive up and down for a week waiting for something to turn up. We get our leave all right though. We get three days to the half crew each trip, so that each of us gets leave every other trip. The business is too exciting for me to take leave seriously. I just go to all the revues and amusements I can if I go up to town, and if it's winter-time like now, I get in three days' shooting here. The local people are jolly nice to us, and even if they haven't got a regular shoot going, one can get out to the marshes and shoot duck. After the leave we come back and do a couple of days' exercise-diving and torpedo practice, and then we go out again for another trip. It's awfully interesting, because we work in the Huns' front-yard in a way, and it seems so cheeky somehow. Makes us want a drink? Well, I guess not. If you've got cold feet you don't want a drink, because you daren't have it. That's why we don't carry any in the boats. You see, the Owner here looks on us as so many race-horses he's got in training, and if one of us shows symptoms of breathing a bit short, he gets classed as a roarer, and leaves the job altogether to repent in a big ship; there's lots more waiting to take our place, and the Owner's got no what you'd call 'motherliness,' if he thinks you're not all out for business. Hearing propellers? Oh yes, you can hear them quite clearly from any quiet part of the boat; the fore torpedo compartment is a good place for listening, and so is the space abaft the main motors. You can hear what speed he's going, and when you're used to them you can make out what kind of craft he is – trawler or destroyer. The best time, though, is when you've finished a day's patrol and charging and all, and gone on down to the bottom. I allow the whole crew one cigarette apiece, and they have a concert. They gather round the periscope and sing for an hour before turning in, and the orchestra plays – (that's a concertina and a couple of mandolines), – we've got quite a lot of talent in the boats. Smoking like that overnight doesn't matter. If you keep the circulating fans running the smoke all goes away while you're asleep. I don't know where it goes to, 'cos it can't get out; but it goes somewhere. I allow the officers a couple of cigarettes apiece during the day-time, and I smoke whenever I feel scared – that gives me about nine cigarettes a day. Of course you can't smoke at the end of a long summer's day; after about fourteen hours' diving you can't get a cigarette to burn, and a match goes out as soon as it's struck. But you can smoke a bit in the forenoon without spoiling the air in the boat – and besides, on occasions like when somebody is chasing you and dropping those little depth bombs they use, and you've gone to ninety feet or so to keep clear of them, it's a sort of guarantee of good faith if the skipper walks away from the periscope and lights a fag. It looks contemptuous somehow, and the sailors approve. You see, they never know the facts of what's going on. Only the skipper knows the situation, and so they watch you all the time. They spend a trip sitting or lying by their stations, and obeying orders and trusting to their boss not to kill them unnecessarily if he can help it. I tell you, the submarine sailor, once he's past his probation time and been tested on patrol, is a hand worth writing home about! Now, if you'll stop listening a minute and struggle out of that chair, I'll take you round the boat. She's pretty filthy still, but we'll get her clean again by to-morrow."
II
I
Before speaking of anti-submarine work, a very short description of the German submarine and its variations in type is advisable.
A U-boat is not unlike our ordinary patrol-type submarine. She varies in size and capabilities, but is generally a 16-knot (surface speed) boat, with two guns – a 4·1-inch and a 22-pdr., two bow and two stern torpedo-tubes, and about 800 tons surface displacement.
A U-B boat is a small patrol boat of about 500 tons surface displacement; one 4·1-inch or 22-pdr. gun, one stern and four bow torpedo-tubes, 13 knots surface speed. There is also a "Flanders," type U-B class, of 250 tons and 8½ knots speed. The latter class worked from Ostend and Zeebrugge.
A U-C boat is about 400 tons; one 22-pdr. gun, 12 knots speed, one stern and two bow torpedo-tubes. The Flanders type U-C's are of 180 tons and 7½ knots speed. All U-C's are primarily fitted for mine-laying.
The U cruisers are from 2000 to 3000 tons displacement, carry two 5·9-inch guns, have a speed of 16 knots, and in some cases are fitted as mine-layers in addition to their torpedo equipment.
The number of slight divergencies from the main types is considerable. Boats were built in standardised groups, and, during the second half of the war, in great quantities. On November 11th, 1918, the position was, roughly, as follows: 200 submarines in German hands, commissioned or completing – 135 (roughly) on the building slips. About 200 had been destroyed up to that date.
In 1918 the average number of German submarines at sea – in the Adriatic, Irish Sea, Channel, and North Sea – was (in the spring) 20, in October, 24. The number available for service – excluding Mediterranean boats, school boats, and boats out of date – was about 72; so that, roughly, one-third were kept at sea, and the remainder resting or repairing.
The medium-size German submarines are quite good-looking boats, but the German mind showed itself clearly in the U cruisers. It has been an axiom at sea since the days of the Vikings, that a thing that looks ugly isn't good seamanship. British submarines are better stream-lined than German boats, and have generally a more "varminty" and clean-run look. The sight of a U cruiser in dry dock recalls to one's mind a pair of pictures once published in 'La Vie Parisienne' – a Paris weekly which has done as much to win the war as any other periodical. The first picture showed a "seventy-five" gun, and standing beside it a girl built on clearly thoroughbred lines, balancing a cartridge on her hand. The second was of a squat 11-inch howitzer, accompanied by 'La Vie's' interpretation of a homely German Frau clutching the great shell to her portly figure. The two pictures illustrate rather well the ideas of our own K-boat designers as compared with the mental state of the authors of the German submarine cruisers.
II
It used to be a catchword of naval correspondents that "submarine cannot fight submarine." Well, it is true, and it isn't. What can be done is that one submarine submerged can torpedo another submarine on the surface: in which case submarine No. 2 is not really a submarine at the moment. Two submarines may meet and have a gun-action, with possible damage to one or both of them, and much entertainment to their crews; but in such a case neither boat would be acting as a submarine.
Throughout the war our boats have been on the look-out for, and ready to engage, any enemy submarines met with. We have had
The date the speaker deals with is before the general use of the hydrophones in submarines. – Klaxon.