Part 16

[23] A landing party seizing an outlying island for a base, as Block Island would infallibly be seized, always destroys everything that might enable the inhabitants to communicate with the mainland.

[24] A submarine cannot attack until it has risen near enough to the surface to lift its periscope above water. Having thus obtained its aim, it submerges again only deep enough to conceal the periscope. It fires its torpedo blind when submerged. If it dives too deep, it might send the weapon harmlessly under the ship’s keel. Hence, it is possible, often, to “spot” the disturbed, whitened water above a submarine even though it is sunken out of sight.

[25] Target practice near the land has been found to so affect all life nearby that it seriously injures the commercial fisheries. The fishermen of Cape Cod have opposed fleet-firing several times. On one occasion it is recorded that the fishing for lobsters (exclusively bottom-haunting crustacean) was quite ruined for months owing to the firing of big guns.

[26] As a matter of fact, the extreme range of the present armament of American harbor defenses is 23,000 yards. This is not a reliably effective fighting range, and is merely stated as being the extreme range, “under crucial test,” of the 12-inch steel rifled mortars. The rifled guns as now mounted have a range of not more than 13,000 yards. Battle-ships now being constructed are armed with 15 and 16-inch guns that can outrange the extreme theoretical range of the mortars.

[27] Harbor defenses are not constructed, necessarily, to protect places near them. Their purpose is to prevent a naval force from occupying an important harbor whose possession would open the way to rich territory or lay commerce prostrate. Therefore it is no defect in the construction of the Long Island entrance defenses that it is possible to bombard coast places near them. It is physically impossible ever to defend all the places on our coast with fortifications.

[28] The Army War College has repeatedly called attention to the urgent need of the mobile army for siege artillery and for the organization of an efficient body of troops trained in its use to be _available whenever needed_. “Ammunition on hand for artillery, 38 per cent. of amount required.” (See report of Army Board, and Secretary of War Garrison’s statement to House Appropriations Committee, 1915.) Another estimate in the possession of the author would indicate that the ammunition on hand for _heavy_ artillery is only about 15 per cent. of the amount required.

[29] Troops cannot be landed with as little delay as this. But naval tactics assume as a matter of course that an advance body of bluejackets, trained for beach and surf work, can effect an immediate landing if protected from attack.

[30] Lord Cochran landed 18,000 men on the open coast of Chile in five hours, with some guns. The surf conditions there are extremely hazardous.

[31] American submarines now in commission do not carry more than one 3-inch rapid fire gun. It is set in a watertight compartment from which it is elevated when the vessel is on the surface. Armaments of destroyers are: Ammen class, five 3-inch rapid fire 30 cal. rifles; Aylwin class, four 4-inch rapid fire 50 cal. rifles; Bainbridge class, two 3-inch rifles and five 6-pounders rapid fire.

[32] Submarine wire entanglements are being used effectively for the protection of harbors during the present war. The wire cannot resist cutting much more than twine can. It stops the submarine by menacing it with being entangled and trapped. A submarine caught under water cannot be cleared by its crew. The utmost the men can do is to try to reach the surface by putting on “special escape helmets” and emerging through the air-locks.

[33] With periscopes shot away, a submarine, even though uninjured, is quite helpless. She may escape, if she is in deep water and the assailant is far enough away to give her time to dive and flee, deeply submerged. See loss of U-12 on March 10 merely through destruction of periscope, which permitted enemy destroyers to ram her.

[34] Even steam vessels of high power often are rendered helpless by jamming a trailing hawser around the shaft. The revolution of the shaft so macerates and binds the fouled material that the engines are unable to turn the propellor in either direction and only a diver can clear it.

[35] The reserve buoyancy of a submarine when awash (technically known as “diving-trim”) is so delicate that 100 additional gallons of water would sink a 300-ton vessel.

[36] “From an altitude of 2,000 feet the movements of a submarine torpedo boat may be easily observed unless the water is very muddy”--Capt. V. E. Clark, Aviation Corps, U. S. A., December issue, _Coast Artillery Journal_.

[37] Important cities in this territory besides New York and Boston are Fall River, Providence, New Bedford, New London, Bridgeport, New Haven, Hartford, Worcester, Springfield, Willimantic and Pawtucket.

[38] Colonel Abbott, U. S. A., one of the leading Chiefs of Engineers who constructed the U. S. harbor defenses, stated that the fire of the sixteen mortars, “like one giant musket throwing a charge of buckshot, each pellet weighing ¼ ton,” could drop their sixteen projectiles into a space 800 feet long by 300 feet wide. The author was present at a test of a 16-mortar battery on Sandy Hook when the sixteen shells were fired simultaneously at a deck-plan of the United States cruiser _San Francisco_, the plan being outlined with stakes on the New Jersey beach five and a half miles from the battery. Each projectile struck inside of the staked outline.

[39] “It will thus be seen that there are now provided about one-fourth of the officers and one-half of the enlisted men necessary for this purpose,” i.e. manning the defenses of the American coast--Report, Chief of Coast Artillery, U. S. A., to Chief of Staff, September 19, 1914.

[40] “It is certain that present-day coast defenses could not withstand an energetic attack from the land side,” i.e. they must be defended with a mobile army--“Over-Seas Operations.”

[41] The present war has made evident to military observers that in the future the “aeroplane screen” will play a vital part similar to the “cavalry screen.” It is based on the simple principle of overpowering the adversary’s attempts by vastly superior numbers.

[42] Estimates that were transmitted confidentially to this country by observers in Europe and are now before the writer are that the European Nations had raised their aeroplane efficiency to the following magnitude: France 1,400, Germany 1,000, Russia 800, Italy 600, England 400 (probably greatly increased since then), Austria 400, Spain 100, Belgium (in the beginning) 100, Switzerland 20 and Servia 60 aeroplanes. The United States has at present 12 army aeroplanes, 13 naval planes, no dirigibles, 2 aeroplanes old model, total effective 23. The first aero squadron of the army has just been formed at the Signal Corps Aviation School, San Diego, Cal. It will contain twenty officers and ninety-six enlisted men. The last House of Congress refused to consent to the Senate’s appropriation of $400,000 for military aviation, and the amount available this year was cut down to $300,000. The Navy Department is making specifications for a small dirigible, and on February 27 opened bids for the construction of six hydro-aeroplanes, bi-plane sea-going type, armored, to carry two men, wireless, guns and ammunition at speeds of from fifty to eighty miles an hour.

[43] Strength of Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, 1914, as per returns of inspecting officers, 5,369 men, 424 officers.

[44] Only eleven States had on hand at the time of the last annual inspection one complete uniform (less shoes) for each enlisted man of the authorized minimum strength.... “In the opinion of the Division of Militia Affairs the States could have by this time, by proper economy and care in the use of property and the expenditure of funds, acquired stores sufficient to equip the militia at war strength.... The militia is not now equipped with supplies sufficient for peace strength.... In no State is the prescribed minimum peace strength maintained.”--Pages 206, 283 and 287, Organization and Federal Property, Annual Reports, War Department, June 13, 1913 to October 1, 1914.

[45] “We are still without an adequate reserve system either of officers or men.”--Leonard Wood, Major General, Chief of Staff, U. S. A., official report, January 20, 1914.

[46] So stated in instructions issued to foreign armies for the event of disembarkation.

[47] Landing barges of this capacity are possessed by at least three Powers and have been tested in maneuvers.

[48] All these details, and many more, are systematically worked out in European army instructions, both confidential and public.

[49] Under average conditions it is possible to land 25,000 infantry, 1,000 cavalry and 60 guns in six hours.... In the Crimean War 45,000 men, 83 guns and 100 horses were disembarked and set on shore in less than eleven hours, without modern appliances.--“Over-Seas Operations.” See also British and French records.

[50] This quotation is a literal quotation from the War Department report on “The Organization of the Land Forces of the United States,” August 10, 1912.

[51] This point has been emphasized in practically every War Department report on organization for many years back. Congress never has acted on the matter. The Chief of Militia Affairs, U. S. A., was forced to report in his last report that: “Little or no progress appears to be making toward correct Divisional organization.”--Part III, 1914, Report on Organization. Only two States have approachably organized their militia in correct proportions.

[52] The Division is the fundamental army unit.... The mobile elements of the Regular Army should have a Divisional organization in time of peace.--Office of the Chief of Staff, U. S. A., January 20, 1914.

[53] Tables 17 and 18, pages 228, 229, Annual Report Division of Militia Affairs, U. S. A., October 1, 1914.... “The States which send their Infantry into active service without having made every possible effort to supply it with an adequate Field Artillery support, will see in the needless sacrifice of that Infantry the cost of their short-sightedness in time of preparation.”--A. L. Mills, Brigadier General, General Staff, U. S. A.

[54] Page 26, Organization of the Land forces of the United States, U. S. Army report.

[55] “While the men who wish to spend the Army and Navy appropriation upon unnecessary army posts or unfit navy yards have such a voice as well as a vote,” i.e. in the Houses of Congress, “a great deal of waste and extravagance is sure to result.”--Henry L. Stimson, former Secretary of War.

[56] Only the most perfectly organized intelligence department can extract from the incredible mass of reports that come in during army movements, the few true and important facts on which the final orders of the commander may be based. An inadequate scouting service is worse than merely weak. It betrays its own forces to disaster.

[57] The Long Island Sound defenses are built to prevent the entrance of a hostile fleet into Long Island Sound. By thus closing Long Island Sound they protect all the Sound cities and the City of New York; but they cannot and do not protect all the possible landing places. Long Island, the land highway to New York City, is entirely undefended. The War Department desires to erect proper defenses on or near Montauk Point, but has still to get the authority.

[58] Trinitrotol, now being used in Europe largely for under-water work, is one of the most violently acting explosives known to-day.

[59] The latest type of 16-inch naval gun has a range of 23,000 yards or eleven and a half nautical miles, which is a little more than thirteen statute miles.... A projectile from a 12-inch rifled gun (U. S. A. coast-defense type) which was fired in the presence of the author, ricochetted seven times.

[60] Not a fanciful description. The impact of a 12-inch projectile was calculated exactly by Major General Abbot, Chief of Engineers, U. S. A., in order to formulate a precise comparison.

[61] The writer has seen iron bars two and a half inches wide, which locked the steel doors to a casemate, buckle and bend outward from the vacuum created by the blast of a rifled gun.

[62] Report, Chief of Coast Artillery, U. S. A., September 19, 1914, pages 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15.

[63] The ammunition now on hand and under manufacture is 73 per cent. of the allowance fixed by the National Coast Defense Board. Last report to the Chief of Staff, U. S. A.... “The actual supply of ammunition at present is very considerably behind even that modest standard,” i.e. the minimum allowance, “and in many cases of our most important sea-coast guns would be sufficient for only thirty or forty minutes of firing.”--Henry L. Stimson, former Secretary of War, March 1, 1915.

[64] Army and naval officers, both American and foreign, believe that 5,000 men would be more than sufficient to take such works if they are manned only by their Coast Artillery companies and undefended by a mobile army.

[65] We have less than one quarter of the ammunition considered necessary as an adequate supply and reserve for our full number of small-arms. (Author’s Note.) ... “We are less adequately supplied with field artillery material than with any other form of fighting equipment.”--Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War, 1911.... “A full supply of this type of material must be stored and ready for use before war is undertaken.”--W. W. Wotherspoon, Major General, Chief of Staff, U. S. A., November 15, 1914, Annual Report.

[66] It has been said authoritatively that if all the guns of the army should have to go into action at any one time there is not enough ammunition for a single day’s engagement, even at a conservative estimate of the amount of shells expended by each gun. In some of the European battles, more guns than our whole supply were engaged on each side.

[67] There is only enough material on hand to keep our present mobile army (at its present low peace strength) in the field for six months in the event of war. There is nothing to spare.

[68] Cavalry troops in the regular army as now constituted are under law rarely filled to a number of more than 70, while their proper complement is 100.

[69] A comparatively small number of modern liners would be enough to aggregate this net tonnage.

[70] Based on foreign army calculations.

[71] Modern artillery is almost invariably concealed. Experienced soldiers would suspect that an infantry regiment hardly would be without at least one battery, and more probably two, of field artillery support.

[72] “Unless provision is made in the near future for additional Coast Artillery personnel, it will be necessary to reduce the garrisons to mere caretaker establishments at some of the defenses.”--E. M. Weaver, Brigadier General, Chief of Coast Artillery, U. S. A., September 19, 1914, Annual Report.

[73] Actual manning detail for New Bedford defenses, 1914, one company regular Coast Artillery.

[74] There is said to be only one firm in the United States that can produce the rifling tools, jigs, gauges and other exact and intricate machinery needed to make a rifle. Consequently, the loss of the Springfield Arsenal would be disastrous.

[75] Official statistics.

[76] Large numbers of guns and large numbers of ammunition are liable to capture and destruction.... To start into field operations with the expectation that the proper proportions will be maintained without large sources of manufacture, would be fallacious.”--Chief of Staff, U. S. A., 1914.--See Report on Militia Organization, 1914, for comments on the great loss and destruction of equipment and material.

[77] Some observers of the European War declare that the reserve of one gun per man has proved itself necessary for the proper equipment of an active army.

[78] “He,” i.e., Secretary Garrison, present Secretary of War, “asks for an increase in the number of officers to take the place, in time of peace, of such officers as are serving with the militia or on detached duty, and in time of war to assist in the organization of the citizens’ army. The necessity of these requests is self-evident. Yet the House of Representatives has completely ignored each and every one of them, and the pending appropriation bill contains no provision for them.”--Henry L. Stimson, former Secretary of War.

[79] The scandal caused in 1898 by appointing incompetent civilians to the Quartermaster’s Department and the ensuing difficulties with commissariat, etc., have been the subject of much discussion.

[80] Our War Department has asked for only about five guns to every thousand men, but has not yet been able to have this quota finished. European practice has been to increase the number of guns to the thousand rifles and sabers steadily. Before the war it was at least five. It has been enormously increased as a result of the experience gained during the recent fighting, in which it was established that infantry or cavalry without absolutely dominating gun protection were hopelessly weak.

[81] These movements of advance bodies and patrols have been carefully worked out as a campaign problem. The lines of advance mentioned are those that present themselves to military observers as the ones most likely to be selected by an invading army moving toward Boston from a base on Narragansett Bay or Buzzards Bay.

[82] So laid down as the most likely movement to be made by invading armies with heavy cavalry supports.

[83] The elementary tactics for the procedure of every army that has to hold any extended territory.

[84] Worked out from a consensus of opinions and plans by tactical experts both here and abroad.

[85] “When the defenses outside the Continental United States are provided for, there will remain for home gun defenses 176 officers and 7,543 enlisted men, _which is about one-third of one relief_.”--Page 15, Report, Chief of Coast Artillery, U. S. A., for year ended June 30, 1914.

[86] “The searchlight project is approximately 50 per cent. completed.... The fire-control system may be said to be approximately 60 per cent. completed.... Installation of power generating and distributing equipment is 25 per cent. completed.... Submarine mine structures are 83 per cent. completed.”--Report, Chief of Coast Artillery, U. S. A., for year ended June 30, 1914.

[87] Regular manning detail for Boston defenses, twelve companies of Coast Artillery. These have seven systems of defense to maintain. The companies are not enlisted to their full strength. Even if they were, there would be less than two hundred men to each defense. This is not sufficient for any sustained action at the big guns alone. A sufficiently energetic enemy, even if he might not damage the works, could wear out the men by incessant attack for a few days and nights. There certainly would not be men enough to provide for outlying defense against landing parties.

[88] These are all vitally necessary parts of the defense of the Boston harbor forts. They are only a small part of what would have to be done in case of naval attack. The data used here are not theoretical. They have been developed by actual test.

[89] So developed in sea and land maneuvers undertaken for the purpose of establishing the very points here mentioned.

[90] It is estimated, from careful calculations, that to put out of action a searchlight at night with shipfire at a range of 6,000 yards, more than a thousand shots from 3-inch guns should be required. The fact is mentioned here to illustrate the great strength of harbor defenses against fire from the sea, if there be enough mobile troops on the land to prohibit destruction by landing parties.

[91] That the American harbor defense system and construction are of the very highest type, has been acknowledged many times by the technical experts of the world. More than once the author has heard foreign officers express the belief that they were practically impregnable to naval fire, providing they were fully supplied and equipped with the material necessary for continuous defense.

[92] A generous system of reliefs is imperative in harbor defenses during war. Peace time maneuvers have developed the fact that the mere strain of incessant watchfulness while waiting for an enemy who may appear at unexpected points suddenly, is so great that unless the men have frequent relief, they cannot exert that concentrated energy which is needed instantly in the crisis.

[93] This system of night attack has been developed and tested by actual trial, and is such as is now laid down for battle practice in the tactics of most navies. “The ... squadron will enter ..., and will maneuver at range of about 9,000 yards from Fort ..., firing heavily, to induce the defense to expend as much ammunition as possible.”--Extract from actual orders in author’s possession, given to a squadron of battleships and cruisers for night attack. It will be noted that this distance is less than one-half the range of the 12-inch rifled mortars in a harbor defense battery.

[94] The search-light system, recognized as a vital part of harbor defense by the Endicott Board on harbor defense (appointed in 1885) has grown steadily in importance with the steady increase in ship armament and ship speed. A thoroughly efficient installation of search-lights for modern harbors demands as much scientific calculation and interlocation as do the gun-systems. If the search-lights cannot infallibly find any vessel that may approach within range, the guns of the fortification are useless.

[95] The inadequacy of the installation has been made the subject of continuous reports. It is a fact that a few years ago, when a mock attack on one of the most important Atlantic defenses was ordered by the War Department, the commander had to requisition search-lights from other coast defenses, and that during the maneuvers the search-light defense, because of its inadequacy and temporary character, failed at several critical points, permitting attacking ships to come within less than 4,000 yards of one important battery.

[96] Usually the firing zones are: first, 6,000 yards to the extreme range of biggest guns; second or intermediate, 3,000 yards to 6,000 yards; third (mine field zone), 3,000 yards. The order of fire is worked out absolutely for every condition that is possible. The movements of attacking ships, and their combinations, although very numerous, can be predicated with some accuracy beforehand.

[97] Estimated number of shots required at night from ships afloat at 6,000 yards: to destroy position-finding tower which is visible, 22 12-inch shells, 250 4-inch shells or 2,500 3-inch shells; to destroy invisible station without tower, 400 12-inch shells, 5,000 4-inch shells; to destroy search-light, 24 12-inch shells, 300 4-inch shells or 3,000 3-inch shells. This fact makes it feasible to protect outlying and secondary range stations perfectly if sufficient troops can guard each station to fight off landing parties. An enemy will surely land men to destroy them unless he knows they are well defended.

[98] Actual records of American harbor batteries: three 6-inch guns on disappearing carriages, 15 shots in 1 minute, 27 seconds.

[99] From an actual maneuver performed successfully by a destroyer division attempting to destroy a base station during a mock battle on the Atlantic coast.

[100] The Weir River would enable assailants to reach the inner harbor and take the defenses in the rear.