My Year of the War: Including an Account of Experiences with the Troops in France and the Record of a Visit to the Grand Fleet Which is Here Given for the First Time in its Complete FormPalmer, Frederick
History
My Year of the War: Including an Account of Experiences with the Troops in France and the Record of a Visit to the Grand Fleet Which is Here Given for the First Time in its Complete Form
Palmer, Frederick
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
On shipboard there must be shipshapeness; and that capacious,
one-time popular Atlantic liner had undergone changes to prepare it
for its mothering part, with platforms in place of the promenades
where people had lounged during the voyage and bombs in place of
deck-quoits and dining-saloons turned into workshops. Of course,
one was shown the different sizes and types of bombs. Aviators
exhibit them with the pride of a collector showing his porcelains.
Every time they seem to me to have grown larger and more
diabolical. Where will aerial progress end? Will the next war be fought
by forces that dive and fly like fishes and birds?
"I'd like to drop that hundred-pounder on to a Zeppelin!" said one of
the aviators. All the population of London would like to see him do it.
And Fritz, the submarine, does not like to see the shadow of man's
wings above the water.
Seaplanes and destroyers carry the imagination away from the fleet
to another sphere of activity, which I had not the fortune to see. An
aviator can see Fritz below a smooth surface; for he cannot travel
much deeper than thirty or forty feet. He leaves a characteristic ripple
and tell-tale bubbles of air and streaks of oil. When the planes have
located him they tell the hunters where to go. Sometimes it is known
that a submarine is in a certain region; he is lost sight of and seen
again; a squall may cover his track a second time, and the hunters,
keeping touch with the planes by signals, course here and there on
the look out for another glimpse. Perhaps he escapes altogether. It is
a tireless game of hide and seek, like gunnery at the front. Naval
ingenuity has invented no end of methods, and no end of
experiments have been tried. Strictest kept of naval secrets, these.
Fritz is not to be told what to avoid and what not to avoid.
Very thin is the skin of a submarine; very fragile and complicated its
machinery. It does not take much of a shock to put it out of order or a
large charge of explosives to dent the skin beyond repair. It being in
the nature of submarines to sink, how does the hunter know when he
has struck a mortal blow? If oil and bubbles come up for some time in
one place, or if they come up with a rush, that is suggestive. Then, it
does not require a nautical mind to realize that by casting about on
the bottom with a grapnel you will learn if an object with the bulk and
size of a submarine is there. The Admiralty accept no guesswork
from the hunters about their exploits; they must bring the brush to
prove the kill.
With Admiral Crawford I went to see the submarine defences of the
harbour. It reminded one of the days of the drawbridge to a castle,
when a friend rode freely in and an enemy might try to swim the moat
and scale the walls if he pleased.
"Take care! There is a tide here!" the coxswain was warned, lest the
barge should get into some of the troubles meant for Fritz. "A cunning
fellow, Fritz. We must give him no openings."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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