The Story of Our Submarines

Early in the war the U-boats were faster than the E's by quite two knots. Later our patrol boats became two knots faster than the later U's, while, of course, our Fleet submarines were much faster still. In gun-power the U-boats were always better, because they wanted guns more for their work. This implied that our boats were always the faster under water. In speed of diving, i. e. in time of getting under, there was practically no difference between the two types. In endurance the types were, ton for ton, the same, though our boats were probably far more comfortable and roomy to live in. In torpedo armament (i. e. in number of tubes) there was no comparison – our boats were always the more heavily armed. In wireless installations we were behindhand in 1914-15, but were ahead in 1918. In general steadiness of diving and control and in under-water handling we were always ahead. In structural strength and capacity to resist the pressures of great depths of water the enemy were probably slightly better. In hydroplane installations the American boats seem to be ahead of both of us. Neither the English nor German boats recorded a success due to the use of hydrophones, and they appear to have been little used by either Submarine Service. Both, however, used the under-water sound-signalling gear (of Fessenden type) with success, and it was found to be a useful adjunct to submarine work. Each Navy was fitting larger torpedoes and warheads in 1918 in view of the fact that the modern surface war-ship was found to be difficult to sink with the usual eighteen-inch weapon.

It will be gathered from the above that we had and still have a lead in design and construction. What is far more important, however, is the lead we have kept in training and quality of the officers and men. The Germans improvised a Submarine Service – we had one already before the war, and we simply expanded it "according to plan," as more boats were needed.

On the outbreak of war, the Submarine Service, as did the surface fleet, added to its personnel by the use of Royal Naval Reserve officers, and "hostilities only" ratings, the latter being usually men with experience as motor mechanics or workshop engineers. These ratings were employed either in the depot ship workshops or in the engine-rooms of sea-going submarines, and they there justified their presence by the sound and keen work they performed under strange and often dangerous circumstances. The R.N.R. officers were used as watch-keepers and navigators in the boats, and their history in the war is shown in their long list of decorations and casualties. They were not expected to learn much of the technicalities of submarines – there were other officers aboard who could look after that side of the business – but in many cases they taught themselves far more than had been expected, with the result that they were able to substitute on occasions the regularly trained officers. Their chief duty, however, lay in watch-keeping and navigating: nothing could approach the air of calm detachment with which an R.N.R. would go forward to his bunk to turn in, after he had – half-way through his night-watch on deck – pressed the button of the diving alarm at sight of an enemy patrol boat close aboard, closed the lid, descended with a rush, and reported the cause of the alarm to the captain. By the time the captain had checked the descent and levelled the boat at sixty feet, the R.N.R. lieutenant would be snoring peacefully, the matter being out of his head once he had taken his decision to give the "crash-dive" order. All through the war we carried an R.N.R. officer aboard every sea-going submarine as a "third-hand," and the Service owes a very great deal to the help of these competent and loyal auxiliaries.

The following is written of a combination of two or more true war incidents. It is intended to illustrate what the writer considers to be the true strategic use of patrol submarines.

After 1916 the Submarine Patrol flotillas that watched the exit of the Heligoland Bight were given certain orders, which altered altogether their duties and their raison d'être. These were to the effect that no outward-bound ship of the enemy was to be attacked or fired at until a signal had first been made by the sighting submarine, to report such enemy's presence and movement; only homeward-bound ships could be fired at, and if outward-bound ships were seen, the reporting signal was to be made at all costs. This alteration detracted somewhat from the interest of submarine war, but it added largely to the strategic usefulness of our patrol boats. It is of no use to torpedo an enemy ship and thereby lose a chance for the Grand Fleet of cutting off the whole enemy force, and a torpedo fired meant that an hour or more of depth-charging would follow the shot, and prevent the signal being made before the news of the enemy's position had grown cold.

The submarine was a J boat, and her station was at the western end of the North Dogger Bank-Heligoland swept channel. The weather had been rough and wet for the first four days of her patrol, reducing the periscope visibility to a few hundred yards' range across grey and foaming seas. The boat had patrolled at twenty feet depth (which is shallow for a big boat) in order to see anything at all, and because of the steep seas she had kept always beam to them, except for the turns at the end of her ten-mile beat. Each turn had caused her to either break surface or slip down to eighty feet, owing to the quick inclinations given her as the waves met her end-on. The weather cleared suddenly on the fourth night, and next morning she dived at dawn, under a gentle swell that hourly died down to a calm deep blue ocean. The visibility was good – how good her captain had hardly realised until through his high-power periscope he picked up the unmistakable line of brown blurs to the east that meant an approaching enemy squadron at a range of at least ten miles. He turned and dived at half-speed towards them, calling his crew to "action stations" at once. He knew that his orders forbade him to fire, but there was always the chance of his having to use his torpedoes in self-defence – self-defence, that is, of a legitimate kind, not of the type said to be used in certain districts where only mad elephants are allowed to be killed, but where all the elephants are said to became indubitably mad "after the first shot." As the smoke-blurs grew he eased speed to "dead slow"; the enemy was shown by the rate of change of his bearings to be steering a course which would take him past the J boat at easy range. The periscope slid along very slowly, only about a foot of its length showing above water; the captain knew that he could see Zeppelins if they were about, but an aeroplane, especially against the sun, is a different proposition, and he did not want to risk being observed before his wireless had done its work. Twenty minutes from sighting the smoke he turned to east to pass parallel to the enemy, and he moved slowly past their line. Looking closely at them with the high-power instrument, and with his periscope top now a bold three feet above the surface, he spoke rapidly and briefly to his third officer, who, notebook in hand, stood at his elbow —

… "Four light cruisers —Pillau, Königsberg, and two more – line ahead two cables – speed twenty – course west. A destroyer screen on each bow – two a side. Away to starboard of them at five miles are five battle-cruisers – the usual lot with a big screen – too smoky to count. Cut that down, make a signal of it and get it coded, quick!"

He trained the periscope to eastward again, stared for a minute at the horizon, and then lowered the big instrument down into its well. There was apparently nothing following the two squadrons, and he intended to rise and snap in his wireless signal as soon as they had left him far enough astern – say seven miles – to make it fairly safe for him to do so. After ten minutes he raised his periscope for a look, then lowered it and studied his watch for ten minutes more. Another searching sweep of the horizon and – "Stand by for surface – Smack that signal off the moment the aerial's up, Pilot – all ready there? Surface…"

The lid swung open as the top of the hull showed, and the captain nipped straight up on to the bridge rail and looked astern towards the haze of brown smoke that marked where the German battle-cruisers were steaming on. After one glance he twisted round to look forward and raised his glasses; lowering them, he gave a general look round and overhead, then beckoned to the messenger (a seaman who stood in the conning-tower with his head just below the lid of the hatch). "Tell the first lieutenant to stop blowing and to come up…"

Twenty seconds later his subordinate was beside him, and he spoke over his shoulder, watching the horizon to the east. "More of 'em coming out – tell the operator to get a hustle on – I'll have to dip in five minutes or they'll see us."

The first lieutenant nodded and turned to jump down the ladder. "Zeppelin to starboard," he said as he vanished; "long way up."

The captain nodded – glanced at the distant airship, and continued his watch on the approaching ships. He had a mild contempt both for a Zeppelin's offensive powers and for her capability of seeing submarine conning-towers at anything but short range. In any case, she was five minutes' flight away at least, and he hoped to be under water again by that time. The enemy squadron appeared at long range to be composed of four more light cruisers with no destroyer screen, and steaming in either quarter-line or line abreast – a formation perhaps adopted as a precaution against submarine attack. After three minutes he began to tap his hand impatiently against the periscope standard; after five, he stepped down and looked anxiously down the conning-tower. The first lieutenant was just coming up the ladder.

"Well?"

"He's burnt out a coil, sir, and it'll take a few minutes; signal's not started yet."

The captain swore shortly; then – "Open up engines – "

The captain watched the first lieutenant's cap vanish below, then turned to watch the approaching enemy. He was going to cut it rather fine, and the knowledge of the chances he was taking removed his impatience and anxiety. Now that he had made up his mind he felt quite cheerful again. If luck was against him he might get sunk, but the enemy's chance of damaging him in five minutes was small. As he raised his glasses he saw the dull red flash he had been expecting break out from the bows of three of the four cruisers, followed a couple of seconds later by the flame of the fourth. Each cruiser was hidden a moment in a brown ball of smoke, which dissipated before she had passed through it. Through his glasses he saw, high up over their mastheads, a group of little black dots that rose and grew larger; the dots seemed to swerve a little to the left in their flight, as a low-sliced cleek-shot would do, then they slowly descended towards him. When they were some ten degrees above the horizon he lost sight of them, and at the instant the water, four hundred yards short of the J boat, leaped up in fifty-foot spouts to the sound of great cart-whips cracking. A big lump of broken shell passed over with a rhythmical whine and stutter – a lump obviously of bad stream-line shape for flying at high speed. The fourth shell pitched a long way short, failed to burst, and came over in a high ricochet, making a noise like a goods train passing. The J boat's helm went over, and she steered for the white mist that still hung where the first shells fell. As she steadied on her course the water under her bows – fifty yards off – turned white, and leaped up in a high solid pillar to the impact of the next salvo. Her helm went hard over, but too late to avoid her bath; she passed through the edge of the waterspout and took the full rain of it over her bridge and conning-tower. The first lieutenant arrived on deck in time to receive a full douche of spray, and to see, a moment later, the fourth ship's erratic contribution fall explosively two hundred yards on the bow and short again. He wiped the water from his face with the sodden sleeve of his sweater and spoke quickly: "Signal's passing now, sir. Shall he wait for an acknowledgment?"

"No, make it twice and stand by to dip. We can stand another salvo or two…"

"Are they only using bow guns?"

"Yes; if they turn and fire all guns it won't be safe. They'll be astern next salvo…"

The first lieutenant had vanished again – the boat had spun round (on the principle of steering for the last general splash, and trusting to the meticulous routine of German gunnery corrections) when, with a vicious crack, the three shells passed over the bridge and burst on the water close aboard beyond the hull. The captain ducked – not so much from surprise, but to avoid what he knew was coming; he looked down the conning-tower and saw the third officer's mouth frame the words, "Signal passed"; he jumped down, pressing the diving alarm with one hand as he reached up with the other to close the lid. Then number four shell came, falling a few yards short of his saddle tanks, and sending a shower of water and small splinters across the boat: as usually happens, the bad shot had come nearest, though splinters are not of much use against a submarine hull. The lid snapped down and the tail kicked up a little, and a ragged salvo of shell from the broadsides of four light cruisers whitened the sea where the target had been. The ships tinned again and started on a wide sweep round the spot before edging back to their leader's course. (No ship unattended by destroyers will risk approaching the place where a submarine has dived.) Up the ladder to the leader's bridge ten miles ahead a messenger ran, and stood panting as he held out a signal from the wireless office for the Rear-Admiral to read. The Admiral nodded and looked astern – "No doubt of its origin," he said, frowning. "They call that their Submarine Emergency Reporting Code. We shall alter course – "

The fight between the submarine and its enemies has been waged throughout the war with great intensity of feeling. The submarine weapon aroused hatred aboard surface ships just because it made them feel helpless (I am not referring to acts outside the pale of International or Human laws). The submarine felt – well, not hatred, but fear. There is a ruthlessness of action which is apparently born of cruelty, but which is really due to instincts of self-preservation alone. When U 18 torpedoed and sank "E 22," she rose, in spite of the danger of attack by other E boats near, and picked up the survivors; she could, in view of the fact that her enemies were three miles off, risk doing this. Our own boats have on practically every occasion picked up the survivors of the U-boats they have sunk, – this because, having command of the sea, we could be sure in local waters of nothing hostile interfering. When Lieutenant D'Oyley-Hughes, however, sank U 153 off Cape St Vincent, and rose to pick up the men in the water, he saw another U-boat dive at him from close quarters, which forced him to go under also. In consequence the survivors were drowned – a contingency which might have been avoided if the two belligerent submarines diving round the spot could have trusted each other sufficiently to rise with a white flag flying. As things were, neither would risk being torpedoed on the surface. This spirit was induced early in the war (the incidents which started the feeling need not be quoted), and it is regretted that there was throughout no International arrangement by which a submarine could "go out of play" for a while with a white flag hoisted. The fact that the enemy's War-Book directly permits a breach of rules, if such breach is of vital necessity, is a great bar to the drawing up of humane and decent laws on the subject; while, of course, a breach of the rules by an angry surface vessel (no unlikely thing to occur) would at once abrogate all the rules in the minds of submarine people. There is no doubt that a new weapon calls for new laws to control and guide its use. The enemy boats were used illegally because the enemy Government ordered such use. In certain cases the U-boat captains exceeded their instructions and acted yet more illegally. In such cases it rests with the enemy Government to repudiate or approve their subordinates' actions. In our submarine service we had no orders to be "frightful," and therefore we were humane and acted legally; if we had had such orders as the enemy gave, we would have carried them out, and, from a technical point of view, carried them out much better. But we would have had no instances of personal excess in such acts, just because that sort of thing would not have appealed to our officers. I should mention that the cases of "excess" among U-boat captains were confined to a few, in comparison with the numbers employed, and certain of those few met their deaths before they could return to tell of their deeds.

If submarines are allowed to navies of the future, they must have a code of rules to work by. The code should be drawn up by people who know their subject, and who are also influenced in their ideas by the laws of chivalry and not by the ideas of the German War-Book. Apart from questions of right or wrong, unnecessary killing in war does not pay. Anybody can think of instances of this, but to suggest a case: if a U-boat had been sunk by our patrol vessels while she was in the act of picking up survivors from a torpedoed ship, well, the Germans would have lost a U-boat, but would have gained a splendid piece of propaganda. The patrol vessels could not be blamed, but the U-boat Service would have had a good grievance for the rest of the war. It is not only what you do in war that counts – the way you do it has a lot of influence also on the ultimate result. It is true that war is the negation of ethics, and that expediency is the ruling motive in all war-like acts, but it is a mistake to think, as the enemy did, that ruthlessness pays – decency may very often pay better. In war, a nation must take the blame for the acts of its militant servants; it sometimes pays to disavow such acts, and to sacrifice a subordinate, but in the main all blame must fall on the Government giving the orders. The essence of a military or naval force is discipline, and owing to that discipline all responsibility must in the end be shouldered by the Governments, except in the cases where individual officers have exceeded their orders or interpreted them to the dissatisfaction of their seniors. In our Submarine Service no boat left harbour without definite written orders, and the exact spirit in which her duty was to be carried out was fully understood. If any officer at any time had departed from his orders to the extent of "frightfulness," he would have found himself at once in a serious position: as nobody ever tried the experiment, I cannot quote any cases.

I cannot do better, in speaking of the crews of our boats, than to quote from a despatch of Commodore Keyes (as he was then), written in 1914: —

"When a submarine is submerged, her captain alone is able to see what is taking place; the success of the enterprise and the safety of the vessel depend on his skill and nerve, and the prompt, precise execution of his orders by the officers and men under his command. Our submarines have been pioneers in waters which might well have been mined. They have been subjected to skilful and well-thought-out anti-submarine tactics by a highly-trained and determined enemy, attacked by gun-fire and torpedo, driven to lie on the bottom at a great depth to preserve battery-power, hunted for hours at a time by hostile torpedo craft…

"Sudden alterations of course and depth, the sound of propellers overhead, and the concussion of bursting shells, give an indication to the crew of the risks to which they are being exposed; and it speaks well for the morale of these young officers and men, and their gallant faith in their captains, that they have invariably carried out their duties quietly, keenly, and confidently under conditions which might well have tried the most hardened veteran.

"The Commanding Officers of the submarines are of the opinion that it is impossible to single out individuals when all performed their duties so admirably, and in this I concur…"

That description of the submarine sailor held good throughout the war, as in 1914.

There is another despatch of 1914, which gives a clear picture of Heligoland patrol work in the winter months: —

"During the past week these submarines have experienced very heavy westerly gales … a short steep sea which made it impossible to open the conning-tower hatch, vision limited to that obtained through the periscopes (i. e. only a cable or two between the seas that continually broke over them). The submarines were thus an easy prey to any surface vessel falling in with them, and it was therefore necessary to keep submerged; also, to make an offing, as there were no means of obtaining the position except by sinking to the bottom and obtaining soundings. There was no rest on the bottom even at a depth of 22 fathoms, as the submarines were rolling and bumping there in spite of considerable negative buoyancy, and it was therefore necessary to keep under way at a depth clear of the keels of possible ships. At this depth motion was considerable, and pumping (i. e. vertical motion) was 20 to 30 feet. When battery-power became low, it was necessary to come to the surface, as lying on the bottom was dangerous. On the surface, it was necessary to keep a ventilator open to run the engines, in order to keep head to sea; through this ventilator much water was shipped… No good purpose can be served in maintaining the close blockade of the Bight in such weather. Even if the enemy emerged, which is unlikely, it would be almost impossible to bring off a successful attack."

I have in this history only quoted typical despatches and incidents in the work of our submarines. It would take many books to quote them all. I feel that I have dealt with a great story in an inadequate way, but only a great writer could deal with it faithfully. Trying to sum up impressions of four years of war, I find that two memories stand out and hide the rest: one is of the face of a hydroplane man as he sat leaning forward to watch his gauge – his whole attention fixed on the movement of the needle and on his own job – oblivious of the rushing sound of turbine-driven propellers as German destroyers passed overhead; the other is of the salvage of one of our boats three weeks after she sank, when we found each officer and man at his station as they had died after every detail of their drill had been carried out, and of the feeling of respect – even, perhaps, of envy of men who had passed such a test without a failure – with which one raised and carried them away. One wanted to be able to tell them so, but I think they did know, at any rate before they died, that their fellow-craftsmen would approve, as the men of Major Wilson's patrol must have known at the Shangani river in '93, that those who came to bury them would recognise that they had died well.

The Submarine Service was good before the war. The many who have died in the boats since have given it a tradition that will ensure its standard being always maintained: such men have given the survivors a high code to live up to. I will conclude by quoting a message from the Commodore of Submarines, which was promulgated to all the boats after the Armistice: —

12th November 1918.

"Now that a General Armistice is in force, I wish to lose no time in tendering my personal tribute to the officers and men of the Submarine Service.

"Having had a good deal to do with this Service in its early stages, it has been a great honour and a great pleasure to command it in war, and it must be a source of great pride and satisfaction to you, as it is to me, that our peace organisation and training have withstood the supreme test, and that you have so splendidly carried out the many and varied services demanded of you.

"Submarines were the first at sea on the outbreak of war, they have been continuously in action while it lasted, they will be the last to return to harbour.

"You have, in addition to the invaluable outpost, patrol, mine-laying, fleet duties, and other services, the sinking of 54 enemy warships and 274 other vessels to your credit, and you have done more to counter the enemy's illegal war upon commerce than any other single means; at the same time you have been called upon to man new and intricate types of submarines, demanding the highest standard of knowledge and efficiency. Your steadiness and grit, whilst the toll of your gallant fellows was heavy, has been beyond all praise, and will form glorious pages in naval history when this comes to be written.