Part 4

The success of this scheme of U-boat hunting depended, of course, entirely on the secrecy maintained as to its existence; it was therefore unfortunate that the prisoners from U 23 were allowed to mix with interned German civilians who were about to be repatriated--a mistake which was excusable in the midst of the general confusion caused in the authorities' minds by the change from peace to war. At that date the disposal of prisoners was out of the Admiralty's hands, and on this mistake being discovered, steps were taken that prisoners having secrets to tell should be prevented from telling them to Germany. The trawler scheme of hunting, however, had to be given up for some time.

In 1916 U-boats again became active against the fishing fleets on the Dogger, and C boats were again sent out to work with the trawlers. On August 28, "C 29" (Lieut. Schofield), while being towed submerged, struck a mine off the Humber and was lost with all hands. The method was continued for a few more trips, but the U-boats being by then too careful, it was abandoned before the end of the year.

There were eighteen German boats in all sunk by torpedoes from our submarines, while others were hit but were able to get home. I will try to imagine a typical case of submarine _v._ submarine, in order to give an idea of what lies behind the bare despatches of the victors.

III

The E boat was working a "beat" ten miles to the north of the North Dogger Bank Lightship--a dull beat, too, as in 1918 the U-boat captains had long ago given up the idea of passing near lightships in surface trim. The patrol was not there for enemy submarine strafing, however. The E boat was a unit of the watching semicircle that dived eternally, from the Haaks light off the Dutch coast to Hiorn's Reef off Jutland, watching for a cloud of smoke to the east that would tell of the coming of the High Sea Fleet. The boat had been on the billet two days, and had five more to wait before she started her run home to Harwich. She had spent the short spring night jogging about on the surface at six knots, charging her batteries, and at 4 A.M. she slowed up and slipped under. It was her thirtieth patrol trip, and she expected it to be as dull as most of the others had been; there was a kind of yawning, done-it-all-before air in the way the crew took her under that morning, that showed, besides good training, a familiarity with intricate mechanism that had developed into something approaching contempt. The boat settled to her day's dive at twenty feet, her periscope moving slowly along at a speed of about two knots, leaving a very faint rippling line on the smooth North Sea surface. The Captain swung the periscope round, wiped the eyepiece with a nominally clean chamois-leather pad, and then leaned back against the diving gauge, finishing the fag-end of a cigarette. It was still twilight in the world above him, and the bad light, combined with the fact that periscopes are very apt to "fog" for some minutes after diving, when the engines are still hot enough to make the air in the boat steamy, would prevent him seeing anything clearly for twenty minutes. It was a rule of his to keep the early morning periscope watch himself, as he believed that if anything exciting was going to happen it would always occur at dawn. Certainly, as far as U-boats go, his ideas were right, as a boat on passage is humanly liable to hold on to her surface speed and trim as long as there is a hint of darkness left to protect her, and in submarine war it is the one that gets under earliest that lives longest.

The Captain took another look through the periscope, and saw the familiar level floor of the sea blending with the pink and grey of the dawn just as he had seen it on so many previous mornings. He looked forward along his boat and saw the sleeping forms of sailors all the way along the battery deck cloths till his eye was attracted by a pair of sea-boots that projected through the gap in the wardroom curtain. Those were his First Lieutenant's boots, and his First Lieutenant, he knew well, was snoring loudly beyond them. He threw his cigarette end impatiently down the periscope well and began slowly moving the heavy periscope round, shuffling around with it as he swept the clearing horizon. It seemed a silly thing to be keeping the morning watch, of all watches, when he had two young and lazy officers to work for him. Their eyes were younger than his, and his were more valuable to the country anyway. It seemed absurd that only he and four "diving hands" should be awake, while all the rest snored. Why should he, an experienced and skilled officer, be at work at half-past four on a dull morning? Why, when he was a junior Lieutenant ... he straightened up from the eyepiece....

"Call the First Lieutenant!"

An hour later the situation in the E boat was the same, except for the fact that a gloomy officer in a soiled sweater and a pair of still more soiled grey flannel trousers plodded round the periscope pedestal, while a pair of stockinged feet showing through the curtain showed whither the Captain's train of thought had led him. The crew still dozed fore and aft the boat. At regular intervals the hydroplane motors buzzed noisily as a turn of the wheels corrected her depth; from right aft came the monotonous ticking of a main motor that slowly turned the port propeller and urged the boat lazily along. In the wardroom the Captain, supremely oblivious to a monotonous drip of leaking water from a seam directly over his outthrown left hand, was back in the days before the war, when the Berkeley Hounds had had three forty-five minute bursts in a day, and he had ridden all three on the same horse. In his dreams he seemed to hear the drumming of many horses' hoofs on the sloping pastures, and the clash and tinkle of stirrups touching as the crowded field fought for room at the first fence. Then he woke and lay propped on one elbow, with a leg thrown over the side of his bunk, while his heart missed two complete beats. He had not heard the order of "action stations," that came from the periscope position, but he knew well the only possible order that could send men rushing past him to man the bow tubes. He pulled his sea-boots on as he sat up, then jumped down and covered the distance aft to the periscope in half a dozen swift strides. The First Lieutenant, his face alight with suppressed emotions, stepped clear and spoke: "Fritz--bow-on, I think--big one"--then dashed forward to superintend the men at the bow tubes. All along the boat a clatter and ring of metal on metal told of preparation for firing. Amidships a hiss and splutter of air showed that the beam tubes were flooding, till a spurt of water coincided with a sharp cry of "Tubes full, sir!" The Captain spoke into the voice-pipe at his side, and the ticking sound from the main motors rose to a steady hum. He lowered the periscope till the eyepiece was level with the deck, and stood drumming his fingers against the hoisting wires. The matter of seeing the tubes cleared away and of keeping the boat's trim right lay now with his officers. His head was to be concerned only with the attack and the shot. He alone would be to blame for a miss now, and he had too well-trained a staff for him to need to worry over any diving details during an attack. His brain was working outside the boat in the early sunshine, where a big and confident U-boat was bound out for her station in the Irish Sea. The enemy was heading straight at him, and he himself was crossing her bow from port to starboard, heading north. To get his bow tubes to bear meant a quick rush to the north to get to a fair range, and then a turn to port till his head was south and the enemy ran across his sights. He was, in view of the glassy state of the sea, keeping his periscope out of sight as long as possible, and intended to keep the instrument lowered till, on his estimate of the U-boat's course and speed (gauged in his first rapid glance) and his submarine sixth sense, he had turned inwards from a point on his target's starboard bow. In sixty-five seconds from the first sighting of the enemy, peace and quiet reigned again in the E boat. Except for the occasional slight hiss and gurgle as a tube-vent was tested, there was no sign to tell that the whole boat was on a tiptoe of expectant emotion. Three minutes from his first order to increase speed he starboarded his helm and--still with his periscope lowered--began his turn through west to south. His hands fidgeted now on the taut hoisting wires before him, and every nerve in his body cried for a glance at the enemy just to check his mental estimate. His first glance when his turn was half through would show him whether he had judged rightly, or whether he had made a miscalculation which would be heavy on his soul till the end of his days. But his nerves were well in hand and his will strong; the repeater of the gyroscopic compass had ticked slowly round under his gaze until it showed 275°--a trifle north of west. Then the periscope rose with a sigh and a creak of straining wires. He stooped and pressed his eye to the instrument as it rose, waiting for the very earliest glimpse of the upper world. All along the boat the men leaned from their stations to watch, for they knew exactly what depended on the quick decision based on that first glimpse he had taken. To his eye the green flickering circle lightened, paled, and then changed to a clear pale-blue sky and a sparkling stretch of sea. He had hoisted the periscope trained to south-west by south, and his heart gave a jump in gratitude to the training that had given him brains to judge rightly. The U-boat--very near and big--with a little foaming line falling away from her bows, was sailing slowly across the periscope, and he winced as he saw on her bridge the little group of figures that seemed to be looking straight at his face. Instantly he lowered the periscope and forced himself--for he felt that he ought to whisper, in fear of his enemy hearing--to shout the order to "stand by bow tubes." A few seconds later he spoke again as the periscope rose--"Midships--steady on one-eight-five--stop starboard."

As the surface view showed again he carefully jerked the great instrument a fraction round as he set it at his "deflection"--the angle of lead ahead of the enemy, based on a guess at her speed, that corresponds to the "swing in front" of a rabbit-shooter. Then he lowered his hands from the training-handles lest he should be tempted to move the instrument again, and with the order to fire trembling on his lips, waited as the grey stem of the U-boat slid evenly into the view, and the conning-tower and the vertical spider-hair line that formed his actual sight drew together.

At the bow tubes three men and an officer crouched, the pulses of certainly one of them working at abnormal pressure. The actual firing of the tubes would come suddenly, electrically controlled by the Captain sixty feet away. _Thud!_ the port bow torpedo left with a faint roar and rattle--_Thud!_ the heavy ball of the starboard firing-gear came down decisively, and another "18-inch short range--high speed setting" went away on its last run. Two men by the tubes jerked up the vents to let the water rush back into the space that the torpedoes had left vacant, and each of the crouching group held his breath in agonising expectation. It was really only ten seconds (but it must have felt like a hundred) before the great question was answered: and the answer was savagely and brutally clear. A great clanging report shook the E boat, and the hull quivered as if she had lightly touched something forward. A torpedo man leaned across and closed the two spouting tube-vents, then looked aft and, grinning with relief, sang a pæan of victory along the glittering tunnel of the E boat--"_Wow!_" he said. "Good-bye-ee-ee!"

IV

The sinking of U-C 65 by "C 15" (Lieutenant E. H. Dolphin) provides an odd case. There is a story behind the official despatch:--

"2.43 P.M.: Sighted enemy submarine on the surface five points on the port bow. Dived and flooded both tubes.

"3.12: Sighted submarine in periscope steering estimated course of N. 70 E, bearing 40° on starboard bow.

"3.15: Fired double shot at 400 yards--one torpedo hit--the other appeared to pass under.

"Submarine sank immediately--noise of explosion slight.

"3.17: Surface--picked up five survivors of U-C 65."

The position was about 25´ south of Beachy Head. "C 15" was on patrol in rather misty weather, and at the time of sighting the enemy both boats were on the surface, U-C 65 steering home up Channel, "C 15" steering N. by E. across her bows. Both boats saw each other at the same time, and the German watched the English boat go under to attack. The obvious reply was to either dive also or to alter course and pass round the "danger-radius" of the torpedoes on the surface. The German Captain had two mental handicaps--over-confidence and (having just finished a long trip) over-anxiety to get home on leave. He decided not to alter course or delay his passage, but explained to his First Lieutenant that it was quite easy to dodge a torpedo if a good look-out was kept and the helm moved quickly. The First Lieutenant appears to have had philosophic doubts as to the wisdom of the proceeding, his doubting being justified when, on seeing the firing-splash as "C 15" fired, the Captain neatly dodged one torpedo and received the other fairly amidships. Lieutenant Dolphin had fired two--"spread" slightly for deflection; not having "declared to win" with either, the question of which one hit did not trouble him. U-C 65 probably won a moral victory, but--"C 15" sank her.

The C boats working round the N. Hinder Light-vessel were liable to make sudden "contacts" with the enemy, usually in thick weather or at night. Both sides would be trying to make the lightship to fix their positions, and on occasions two belligerent submarines would make the lightship together.

On March 1st, 1917, "C 19" (Lieutenant A. C. Bennett) was steering east from the Hinder Light, when she sighted (by moonlight) a small submarine right ahead steering straight at her. "C 19" decided that this looked like another British C boat, several of which were in the vicinity. Each boat turned to north and flashed a challenge. The German then made I.M.I. (the Morse signal to "repeat," common knowledge to all nations). The boats were then beam to beam at 100 yards' range, and the German hailed in his own language. "C 19" had no gun, and was trying to swing round to bring the bow tubes to bear, having no doubt as to what to do in the matter. The enemy continued to make I.M.I., and turned away to get out of the line of fire. This made it a stern-chase with "C 19" close up and gaining; the German then fired a starshell, and "C 19" replied with rifles and automatic pistols. That was too much for the Hun; he kicked his tail up and dived, with the bullets smacking on his conning-tower as he went, and "C 19's" starboard torpedo--fired as he dived--racing over the top of him. The U-boat's periscope showed once on the bow, and "C 19" turned to ram and passed over it, without, unfortunately, hitting anything solid. "C 19," on the 5th March, met another Flanders Flotilla boat, this time with a heavy sea running, which prevented torpedoes being fired with any hope of accuracy. The C boat charged at once, using rifles and pistols as she came in. The enemy dived, and "C 19" passed over her, the bump being slightly felt below. It is possible that the German's periscope was damaged, but he saved his skin by getting under in time.

On the 14th May 1917, in thick weather, "C 6" (Lieutenant Brookes) was feeling for the Hinder Light-vessel. She found it at 7.30 A.M. close aboard, and at the same time a German submarine found it, and, appearing 300 yards away, dived at once. "C 6" went under also and pursued by the use of hydrophones. In about half an hour the enemy's motors were heard to slow up and stop, and "C 6," thinking he had gone to the bottom to avoid the chase, came to the surface to get the mast down, as it had been left standing in the hurry of getting under. The visibility was only 200 yards, and there was nothing in sight. "C 6" dived again, and, as she did so, heard the rattle and hum of propellers as a torpedo missed her over the top. The German had evidently come up for a look instead of taking bottom. The exasperated "C 6" pursued by hydrophone for another quarter of an hour, but the sound of the enemy's motors was then lost.

The list of "Contacts" with enemy submarines shows that in seven cases the enemy was sunk less than five miles from a headland or navigational mark. When proceeding between mine-fields, or when bound for dangerous waters, it is natural for submarines to get a good departure or landfall if possible, but all such strategic points are unhealthy to approach. The following two cases illustrate this. In each of them the U-boat Captain closed a light in order to get a good navigational departure, and in each case his precaution had fatal results:--

On the 5th April 1917, "C 7" (Lieutenant A. W. Forbes) was waiting at the Schouwen Bank gas-buoy, watching the channel that led to Zeebrugge. She lay on the surface with half-buoyancy, and was undoubtedly, as can be guessed from the despatch, on the "top-line" in the matter of being ready for action. Lieutenant Forbes' First lieutenant was on the sick-list most of the trip, so that he himself was pretty well worn out on his return to harbour by continual watch-keeping and anxiety.

"3.32 A.M.: Sighted submarine on port quarter steering about north, distant 400 yards. Turned and at once fired port torpedo at a range of about 250 yards. Torpedo hit forward with loud explosion, sending up a large column of water. Submarine turned to port and sank in a few seconds. The night was very dark and misty, and no survivors or debris could be seen."

In "E 52's" (Lieutenant P. Phillips) case, U-C 63 was caught as she passed a well-known light-buoy north of the Dover Net Barrage. "E 52" (with her conning-tower only showing) attacked so as to keep the enemy against the moonlight. The only survivor was a Petty Officer, who gave the following account:--

"The night being very cold, the Navigating Warrant Officer, who was on watch, sent the A.B. below to get some coffee. In the meantime the engineer of the boat came on the bridge and stood talking to the officer of the watch, who, in consequence, failed to keep a proper look-out. The Petty Officer himself, chancing to look to port, suddenly saw a submarine on the surface.... U-C 63 had just started to turn when she was struck by a torpedo amidships."

And that survivor's statement would be a good thing to frame and put on every ship's bridge in war-time! The critical time when a bad look-out was being kept could not have been more than a few seconds, but it was long enough to cause death to all but one of the submarine's crew.

The U-boats during the war torpedoed five of our boats, viz.: "E 3" in the Bight in August 1914, "E 20" in the Sea of Marmora in November 1915, "E 22" in April 1916 off Yarmouth, "C 34" off the Shetlands in July of 1917, and "D 6" in the Channel in June of 1918. Of these, "C 34" was hit when almost under--the German U 52 firing at the top of his conning-tower as it went down. "E 22" was attacked while beating up and down waiting for orders to proceed to any threatened area on the day of the Yarmouth raid. She saw U-B 18's periscope and tried to ram it, actually bending down the enemy's bow "net-cutters" (the big steel saw that stands up in the bows of U-boats). The German, however, passed under her and got his torpedo in as she turned back.

As far as is known, none of our boats were sunk by enemy submarines apart from the five named. On several occasions U-boats fired torpedoes and used guns against our boats, but the low hulls of English submarines provide very small targets. I suppose the majority of shells fired at English submarines came from English guns. Certainly the boats were far more nervous about approaching our own harbours than they were of working in enemy waters. The shooting was usually wild and could be treated as amusing, but on occasions fatal results precluded any joking. The surface anti-submarine vessels drew no fine distinctions, and the submarines at times used to deplore their own side's excessive zeal. There is a short extract from a certain boat's signal-log which begins, "Can you give me my position?" and which continues, punctuated by nine rounds of gun-fire, by way of injured protests, to "What did you do in the Great War, Daddy?" as, her identity established and the patrol ship's attentions deflected, the submarine continued her way up harbour.

Out on the patrol areas, however, a British boat diving had to stand her chance. No surface ship could be expected to differentiate between our own and enemy periscopes, and the potency of British depth charges was highly spoken of by those of our boats that had experience of them.

III