THE SUBMARINE

Evening Post, Volume cxxiv, Issue 148, 20 December 1937, Page 13

THE SUBMARINE

ITS MENACE REMAINS

HIGHLY ELUSIVE VESSEL

WAR EXPERIENCE

i j To those more senior naval officers !who can look back to the days of the iwar and that dread period when the j Admiralty felt impelled to sound a note lot warning as to their ability any longer to protect the seaborne' trade •of the nation, the present situation in the Mediterranean will stir many memories, writes Captaiii Lionel Dawson, R.N. (retired), in the "Daily Telei graph." (He was engaged in antij submarine work during the war.) | Although the present offers no parallel, the emergency has been sufficiently grave, and the naval methods (adopted as a result of the Conference tat Nyon did not, in essentials, differ [•greatly from those.adopted during that S crisis of the war. . . I Danger > then threatened principally from under the sea, although the share [ which surface craft took in denying the • use of the sea to merchantmen had also !to be contemplated. Perhaps this is not a matter which is likely to arise in the present case. If it did the landsman would not find much difficulty in understanding the subject. Where he is apt jto be confused, and not a little deceived, is in discussing the more technical operations of the submarine and torpedo. , He is often at a loss to understand the capabilities and the practical offensive value of these instruments of warfare, and is puzzled as to what can and cannot be done to meet and1 defeat them. MUCH MISUNDERSTANDING. From time to time I find recorded the utterances of gallant but ignorant mariners as to what they will do to predatory submarines if attacked; they will describe the narrow escapes they have had from assaults upon their ships which, it is very probable, never occurred at all. It is to be hoped, and indeed anticipated, that the recently constituted anti-submarine courses will assist in dispelling much of the misunderstanding which exists even among seafarers. Those of us whose lot it was to deal with underwater attack during the war, whether in men-of-war or merchant,men, well know the difficulty first of sighting a submarine, and secondly of causing it sufficient damage to destroy it.

The submarine combines, in a curious way, vulnerability, and great capacity for taking punishment. • • . Like the wood-pigeon which, unless hit in the head, takes a lot of killing, the submerged submarine can overr come great adversities. On the sur^ face, she is perhaps the most vulnerable of all craft. Submerged, unless actually rammed and rammed heavily, she is liable to survive the most unpleasant attentions. Nor is the ramming of a submarineassuming that her periscope remains up for a sufficiently long period to give a iline of attack—at all an easy matter. Very few cases emerged from the war, at any rate as far as British ships were concerned. That of the Dreadnought, which sank the famous Otto yon Weddingen in U29 on St. Patrick's Day, -1915, by this method was perhaps the most outstanding. MIGHT HAVE ESCAPED. Here, however, I am not convinced that the submarine commander could not have saved his ship had he not been determined to press home an attack; and his gallantry cost him his life and the lives of his crew. As a general method of attack ramming is a matter of chance rather thandesign. To avoid a torpedo fired from an attacking submarine, if either the periscope or the torpedo track is sighted in time, it is in most cases expedient to turn towards the point of attack' and thus present a>smaller§tar.gct; with a fast-steaming ship and a. rather ill-handled, submarine, subsequent collision, to the detriment of the submerged craft, may be.' the conse-' quence. . > . . ' ......: But it is not always advisable, even in this event, to turn towards the enemy. Should the attack be from abaft the beam —i.e., a following shot —it is obvious that it is better to turn away, and no such sequel can occur. In either, case, the submarine's tactics after firing are to go deep—and below the keels of any retribulory avengers. The gun is of no avail against a submerged submarine. All that can be seen of her (and that very intermittently) is a periscope sticking up out of the water like a broom-stick and. presenting an impossible mark except by chance. If the odds allow the rare hit, no harm is done to the rest of the boat, and she always has another periscope; nor do any number of shells bursting on the water near her at "periscope depth" cause any damage to her hull, or produce anything' more than a possible slight momentary discomfort to her crew. A fuse or two may be blown—a switch jerked off—but nothing else. THE DEPTH CHARGE. Remains the depth charge—the principal enemy of. the submarine. Even this, however, has its limitations. It. needs to explode very close indeed to a submerged submarine to injure her mortally. In 1917 I saw a British submarine return to harbour with her conningtower blown off and other desperate wounds in her body which, however, had not impaired the pressure hull; and the courage and seamanship of her captain and company had brought her safely, to harbour. Nor was this instance unique; at least one desperately wounded German submarine reached home to my certain knowledge.- . • In those days there was no method of detecting the submerged submarine from the attacking ship other thansomewhat primitive hydrophones which, operating rather on the lines of the doctor's stethoscope, gave, by the revelation of her engine noises, a rough indication of the most likely area in which to drop the charges. It is revealing no official secrets to say that we have progressed beyond that point nowadays. All nations possess submerged-submarine detecting devices, and there is no reason to suppose that Great Britain lags behind in this sphere oE warfare afloat. Nowadays the chances that a hostile submarine will be detected by ships fitted with these devices are perhaps more favourable to the surface vessel; but, conversely, it will be realised that, during the passage of the years, the' submarine has experimented with, and probably perfected, counter measures to meet the improved equipment of the surface ship. NO CERTAIN SOLUTION. The destruction of the submarine, once detected, may not be quite so difficult as it was, but it remains a problem for which there is no certain solution.

When, therefore, we read or hear of oil-patches rising to the surface, periscopes which disappear when fired at, and other symptoms of the presumed fate of an underwater craft, it is generally wise to treat them with caution.

The same may be said to apply to claims that submarines have been sighted or torpedo-tracks observed. To the latter tale is sometimes appended the statement that the torpedo was