U-BOATS IMPRISONED

Otago Witness, Issue 3331, 16 January 1918, Page 26

U-BOATS IMPRISONED

CAUGHT IN THE ICE. 1 Something went wrong in the early days of Germany's submarine campaign j that is i certain, writes Mr Archibald Hurd in the I Fortnightly Review. What it was the Ger- ! mans have not, of course, revealed, though probably the explanation is very generally known throughout tho Empire. We may lind possibly a clue to the mystery In a 1 letter which appeared in the Bystander of NApril 12 from its Copenhagen correspondent, quoting Knud Rasmussen, the Danish , explorer, in reference to the imprisonment , of 30 German submarines in the Sound. | The explorer stated that the boats were I trapped in the narrow part of the (Sound, just above Helshigborg, two days after the new submarine campaign began. They were all making north from the Baltic base, evidently on their way to the "war zone," when the east wind blew the loose ice to-

gether, and as it was freezing hard—" 12deg Celsius at least "—soon all the submarines were in a solid pack. They were moving with only their periscopes up\ Some of them smelt danger in time and managed to rise. These got wedged in with their decks showing. Others were caught under the ice, only their periscopes showing. Ras-musson-.continued—

" I myself walked across the ice to them, and my mate even tried to look down a periscope. Then the ice-slip—that is, loose ice, which always drifts under the packsnapped the periscope tubes. The submarines perished miserably. Some, after three days' imprisonment, tried to get away under the ice. I know that seven were smashed in and all on board drowned." The explorer added that he had told Prince Harold of Denmark about the occurrence. Whether that is or is not the complete explanation of the miscarriage of German hopes wo shall probably not know until after the war; but at any rate some detail in the enemy's carefully elaborated preparations, extending over a period of many months, went wrong, with the result that not only were German hopes not realised, but they were shattered.