Assassin of the Sea

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20917, 23 September 1939, Page 13 (Supplement)

Assassin of the Sea

THE SUBMARINE : USELESS IN PEACE : POWERFUL IN WAR (John M. Blackman in American Paper.)

TWO PEACE-TIME accidents to new and supposedly workable submarines of the United States and Great Britain within 10 days—both with a heavy toll on human life—raise once more the question : Should the. submarine be abolished ? For 25 years—namely, since the start of the World War—the submarine has been a proven instrument of destruction. For many times that period, inventors have sought in vain to develop for it a significant peace-time utility. Attempts to abolish the submarine through international agreement have been made three times by the British Government with the support of the United States; but the opposition of smaller countries like France and Japan, which regard the submarine as an economical weapon of defence, have nullified these efforts. The submarine, therefore, is still with us—close to 500 of them (built and building) are divided among the major powers. So it was that the United States was faced on May 23 with the sinking of its new £BOO,OOO submarine Squalus, off Portsmouth, N.H. A ship that had made 18 successful dives failed to come up after the nineteenth. Twenty-six men were imprisoned as a valve failed and water flooded the after compartments. The other 33 members of the crew were rescued. Then, on June 1, nine days later, Great Britain experienced a similar mishap to its new £320,000 submarine Thetis, which failed to come up after a dive near Birkenhead, England. Water came through a forward torpedo tube. Four men escaped and 99 were lost. What is Wrong with the Submarine? Isn’t it fool-proof against such peace-time disasters. The writer talked with numerous naval officers at the Portsmouth Navy Yard during rescue and salvage operations on the foundered Squalus, and studied the history of previous disasters. The record shows that there have been 61 accidents to American submarines since 1902, of which 12 had fatal results. The number who perished in the latter group ■was 147. The British record discloses even more serious results. In 11 major accidents since 1909, His Majesty’s Navy lost more than 480 men. Other countries, likewise, have had heavy losses, bringing the total for all nations close to 1000. This tends to support what Navy technicians aver—that the submarine, despite many improvements in recent years, still is a delicate instrument, as full of fragile machinery as a watch and more difficult to manouvre than an airplane. If its operation is so risky in peace-time, its dependability in war may be even more seriously questioned. It is true, however, that the number of accidents has been reduced in recent years by better equipment and better training of the crews, especially the latter. The American Navy set up a fine record of 11A years without a fatal accident prior to the Squalus sinking. The British operated their undersea craft for lh years without a serious accident until the Thetis mishap. “ The fine submarine record of the American Navy since the sinking of the. S-4 in 1927 was due chiefly to the better training of our crews,” Commander Edward Ellsberg, U.S.N.R., submarine expert, who directed the raising of the S-51 and aided in the raising of the S-4, told the writer at Portsmouth. Truly, too much praise cannot be given the technical efficiency and personal heroism of the officers and men in the submarine division of the Navy. Yet, if it is still necessary (as it is) for every submarine to be equipped with escape hatches (to "which rescue chambers may be attached by divers), a marker buoy reading “ Submarine Sunk Below,” cleats by which the vessel may be raised when sunk, and openings by which air and soup may be injected by divers; if it is still necessary (as it is) for the Navy to keep five ships in commission for the sole purpose of submarine rescue work; if most underwater accidents have fallen (as they have) into two categories, those involving collisions with other vessels owing to inability to see or be seen, and those in which the submarine’s delicate machinery or its operator failed to function and the vessel did not rise, after a dive, then is not an inquiry in order as to why the submarine is continued as an instrument of warfare ? Surely, it is not an instrument of peace. The enthusiastic claims of Simon Lake and other inventors in this regard have not been fulfilled. Many experiments in to travel under Arctic ice, without practical results. Lack peaceful operation have been tried, from dredging oysters of buoyancy has prohibited the carrying of profitable com-

mercial cargoes, and others forms of diving have been found more practical in deep-sea exploration and the salvaging of wrecks. As an instrument of war, however, the submarine is highly regarded by many Naval experts. Although highly vulnerable when discovered, it is a Powerful Weapon in Making Surprise Attacks. The usefulness of the submarine was shown during the World War by the German U-boats, which sent so many merchant vessels to the bottom near the British Isles as to establish a partial blockade of those islands, although the main body of the German fleet was bottled up by the British in the Baltic Sea. In four years of war, the U-boats sank 5408 merchant and fishing vessels of the Allied and neutral nations. In their most successful year, 1917, they torpedoed 2639 such vessels, or an average of more than seven a day. The cost of this to Britain is almost incalculable. Yet, means of defence against these unseen attacks were developed and put into effect toward the close of the war. The system of gathering merchantmen together in convoys with naval escorts was revived, and depth bombs and mines were used with devastating effect. A new instrument of destruction always gives its possessor a temporary advantage in time of war or threat of war, but mankind has never allowed such new forms of tyranny to go long unchallenged. This was the case with the submarine, and approximately 200 German submarines ultimately were destroyed by the Allied navies, most of them in the final months of hostilities. To-day, even stronger defences against submarines have been developed. Detectors have been devised which, it is claimed, can locate even a silent submarine lying on the ocean floor, its engines stopped. The twin weapons of detector rays and depth charges thus give destroyers powerful means of reaching right down through the ocean to Detect and Crush These Unseen Assailants. During the war, submarines were used chiefly to enforce commercial blockade, but at times were employed for service with the fleet, for coastal patrol, or for minelaying. For a time, the U-boats gave warning before sinking merchant vessels, and often helped the crew and passengers to escape. This was in accord with international law. But the raiders discovered that their warnings often were followed by gun fire from hidden weapons aboard the merchantmen, or by escape of the commercial vessels, which usually could outsail the slower undersea craft. So the German submarines bowed to military expediency, scrapped the international law, and adopted a policy of hit-and-run warfare. The submarine thus became the secret assassin of the sea. Engaging in no open duels, it crept stealthily upon its prey, struck murderously, and fled. It was this savage policy which so aroused not only the Allied Powers, but non-belligerents, including the United States. It was this policy which made the sinking of the Lusitania without warning on May 7, 1915, so tragic. Because of this inhumanity, 1198 passengers and crew, including women and children, were, drowned. It is axiomatic that war unleashes the lowest instincts of mankind. Thus the submarine abdicated all restraint and fell into the same class with the airplane and Zeppelin which bomb civilian populations from the air. Thus also it aroused the opposition of humanitarians throughout the world, and brought upon itself demands for its abolition. This world-wide opinion bore partial fruit in international agreements for limitation of submarine tonnage, and for the restoration of humanitarian codes in submarine warfare; but the fears of small nations and the activities of munitions salesmen, like Sir Basil Zaharoff, and others agents for the Electric Boat Company and Vickers, Ltd., contributed to the upset of plans for Complete Abolition of the Undersea Raiders. To-day, a world armaments race threatens even these restrictions. With tonnage limits formally denounced, giant overhead cranes at the Portsmouth Navy Yard are being used to put finishing touches on two sister ships of the sunken Squalus; and another submarine, costing as much as a destroyer (around £800,000) was launched at New London, Conn., with quiet ceremonies two days after the Squalus dropped 240 feet below the surface. At the same time, naval experts are predicting, privately, that the solemn humanitarian codes will not be lived up to, if war should break out. Apparently, the abolition of the submarine will come only as the abolition of aerial bombings of civilians will come about, through the abolition of war itself.