SINKING A DESTROYER

North Otago Times, Volume CIII, Issue 13651, 19 August 1916, Page 7

SINKING A DESTROYER

PICTURE OP A DREADNOUGHT IN ACTION.

])i a series of articles on die Navy at war written by Mr Bernard Copptestone ami published in the Conihill Magazine under the title of "With the Grand Fleet," there appears one which purports to tell how Lieutenant I'ctcr, Royal Marine Artillery, on night witch on a super-dreadnought battleship, sank a German destroyer, He says:—.

I will tell you all about it. I was up on the platform at my watch. My battery of six guns was down below, all loaded with high explosive shells weighing 1001b each, All the gunners were standing ready for anything that might happen, but" expecting nothing, 80 they had stood and waited during a hundred watches. It was greying towards dawn, but there was a, good bit of haze and the sea was choppy, The old ship was doing her rocking-horse trick as usual, and also as usual. I was feeling a bit squeamish, but nothing 1 0 worry about, As the light increased I could see about two thousand yards, more or less—l am not much good -yet' at judging sea distances. The officer of the watch was walking up and down on the lookout. "Hullo," 1 heard hinr say, "what's that dark patch three points on the starboard quarter?"'Ho meant thirty degrees to the right, poor chap, I put up my glasses and so did lie, and just then came a call from the look-out near us, As we looked the dark patch changed to thick smoke, and then out of the haze slid the high forepeak of a destroyer. I thought it was one of our escort, aud'ao did the officer of the watch, but as we watched the destroyer swung round, and we could see the whole length of her. Then, for the first time in my service, I saw the German Navy -flag! It was an enemy which had blundered into us by mistake, and was now .trying hard to get away. I don't know what the officer of the watch did—l never gave him a thought—my mind simply froze on to that beautiful battery of six-inch guns down below and on to that enemy destroyer trying to escape. Those two things—the battery and the enemyfilled my whole world.

Fire Oponod .Within Five Second!).

Within five seconds I had called the battery, giving them a range of 'two thousand yards, and loosed three shells —the first shells which I had seen fired in any action. They all went over, for T had not allowed for our height above the water. The Bosche did an extraordinary thing. If he had gone on swinging round and dashed off lie might have reached cover in the haze before I could hit him. But his officer of the watch was either frightened out of h'is ,'wils or else was a bldoniin' copperbottomed 'ero. Instead of trying to get away, he swung back towards us, rang up full speed, and came charging in upon us so as to get home with a torpedo. It was >citlicr the maddest or the bravest thing t shall ever sec in my life. T ought to have been frightfully thrilled, but somehow I wasn't. 1 felt no excitement whatever, you see. I was thinking all the time of directing my guns, and had no consciousness of anything else in the world. The moment the destroyer charged,,zigzagging as she came to distract our aim, I knew exactly what to do with him. J gave my gunners a thousand yards,'rapid curtain fire from the whole battery, and you should just have seen those darlings pump 'it out. I have seen fast firing in practice, but never anything like that. There was one continuous stream of shell as the six guns took up the order. Six-inch guns are no toys, and 1001b shells are a bit hefty to handle. Yet no, quick-firing cartridge loaders could have been worked faster than were my heavy beauties. I suppose that it took that destroyer about sixty seconds, to reach, the edge of my rideau de feu, and every ten seconds my lovely battery spat out six great shells. On came the destroyer and round came our ship facing her. The officer of the watch was swinging our bows towards the enemy so as to lessen the mark for his torpedo. 1 swung my guns the opposite way as the ship turned, keeping them always on the charging destroyer. 1 could see them leaping backwards and forwards on their slides just like automatic pumps.. 'Away towards ihe enemy the sea boiled as the torrent of shells hit it and ricochetted for miles. A Torpedo Missca. It was only for a moment that I looked down at the guns and at the smooth, quick, precise, but unhurried movements of the gunners, for I had to watch with every scrap of my attention the zigzag course of my enemy and to keep my impenetrable curtain true in his path. He reached the edge of my curtain I It seemed to have been hours since I began to fire, but it couldn't really have been more than a minute, for even German destroyers will cover half a mile in that time. He reached the edge of my curtain, flung his bows straight towards us, amiloosed a torpedo. At that very precise instant a shell, ricoChetting upwards, caught him close to the water-line of his high forepeak and burst in his vitals,. I saw .instantly a great flash blaze up from his funnels as the high explosive smashed his engines, boilers, and fires into scrap. He reared up and screamed exactly like a wounded animal. It sounded rather awful, though it was only the shriek of steam from the burst pipes; it made one feel how very live a thing is a ship, how in its splendid vitality it is, as Kipling says, more than the crew. He I'eared up and fell away to port, and two more of my shells hit him almost amidships and tore out his bottom plates like shredded paper. I could hear the rending crash nf the explosions through my ear protectors and through the continuous roar of my own curtain fire. He rolled right over and was gone! Ho vanished so quickly that for the moment my shells |

Ilea- screaming over'an empty sea, and then I stopped the gunners. My battle had lasted for one minute and forty seconds!' "But what about the torpedo/" you will ask, I. never saw it, but the officer of the watch (old me that it had passed harmlessly more than a. hundred feet away from us. ■ , ■ "You sank'the destroyer," said the officer of the watch, grinning, "but my masterly navigation saved the ship, So honours is easy, Mr Marine, If I had hail also those guns of yours," he went on, "J would have sunk the beggar with' about half that noise and half that expenditure of Government ammunition, I never saw such a wasteful performance," said he. But he was only pulling my leg. -All the naval officers, from the Owner downwards, wen very nice to me, and said that fur a youngster, and a Pongon at that, J hadirt managed'the affa;?. at all badly, f had fired eight shells per gun, plus.the three sighting shots, lifty-onc rounds, altogether about two and a-half tons of ammunition. It sounds a lot, but there was a good lot to show for it.