THE SUPER U

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2747, 15 April 1916, Page 13

THE SUPER U

GERMANY'S MONSTER SUBMARINE RECENT RUMOURS DISCUSSED (By Bichard Thirkell, in the "Daily ' Mail.")

■ It is just sixteen months since we first began to receive from neutral capitals vague reports of now and exceedingly formidable that woro said to have been put in hand ill German shipyards within a few weeks of the outbreak of war. From that timo onwards intermittent reports have como to hand tending to confirm the suggestion that our enemies were preparing a novel development of 'the submarine for our discomfiture. Last July the Countess von Dagenfeld, a niece of Count Zeppelin, declared in Now York that "Germany lias now twenty-two submarines large enough to voyage to New York and stay outside the harbour for two months before turning."Sincu then several neutral merchants have reported seeing these craft in the Baltic, and apparently, .-_ as a result of thoir observations, various descriptions of them have been built up. They are said to be of high speed, and to have a displacement of 5000 tons — making tliem exactly one-third heavier than the Avethusa —while their powerful armament is carried in a turret which, surmounted by_ the couningtower, would alone project above the surface when the vessel was attacking a ship by gun-fire. A New Force on the Sea. In all existing gun-armed submarines of which details are available the guns are mounted on the deck forward and abaft of the conning-tower, so that the whole length of the upper part of tho submarine must bo exposed when ihey are in action. In theory at least, however, the turret systom is not new. The American Lake Torpedo Boat Company, from whom the Germans are said' to -havo stolen the designs from which the majority of their submarines are built; havo for a decade included among their specifications a "submarine cruiser" built on precisely the lines described. What is tho significance of these new super-submarines, more than six times as heavy as our own E class? Since i tho beginning of August last year only one British warship, tho armed liner India, has been sunk by a submarine in Horthern Europe, and in tho same period the Admiralty havo announced the destruction of only two enemy submarines, sunk off tho Belgian coast by aircraft bombs on August 26 and November 28 respectively. _ If the published accounts of the now TJ-boats are correct, it cannot he denied that they will modify the existing state of affairs very considerably. Working only upon.the meagre information that is allowed to come to our knowledge, it is known that the most successful methods of fighting the submarine have been pr&vided by. destroyers and drifters, to 'which vessels Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon attributed the immunity of his fleet from loss by submarine attack during his operations off tho Belgian coast. A submarine of 5000 tons, however, ivould easily hold her own in combat with a destroyer, while the drifters, whose mode of operation cannot he described, would find themselves severely handioapped when tackling a vessel of the power which a 5000-ton submarine would necessarily possess. The fast motorboat, too, would be useless. ■ It may well be, therefore, that tlfe advent of the super-submarine, assuming it to possess tho characteristics with which it has been credited, will necessitate a Complete revision of. the methods' by which smaller' craft were' circumvented, and becauso of this their appearance at sea may at first be attended by. an appreciable ' measure of success. This would especially bo the ca'se if ihe Admiralty's acquaintance with what has been going on in Gorman shipyards is "necessarily speculative"—the phrase and the- confession are the First Lord's._ On the other hand there are considerations which render the big submarine more vulnerable than the smaller. Its motivepower when ■ submerged must be enormously greater and the noise of the motors correspondingly easier to detect, while the increased bulk and speed when cruising beneath the surface would further help to betray its whereabouts more distinctively than in the case of a smaller vessel. 'In any event, the Navy which so quickly came to grips with the submarine problem when it was absolutely new in warfare is not likely to be nonplussed by a mere development of it after an experience that now approaches the end of its nineteenth month.

"Unslnkablo" Ships. A word, may, be said in conclusion regarding a description of an ''uqsinkable" German battleship wiich has appeared in the Italian "Bevista Marittima," and of which a summary has been cabled to this country. -The leview in question is one of high standing,- not. given to 1 idle gossip, and it is therefore; premature to dismissthe story—as one. Rome correspondent does—as a German bogey "presumably intended to frighten and not to amuse the world." The ship, it is said, lias three skins, the two outer ones consisting of substantial armour, and the space between them is filled with a secret material which, resists or absorbs the shock of an explosion, such as that caused by a torpedo. It is difficult to understand why any English newspaper should have treated this story as a joke. It simply means that the Germans are taking the same steps to protect their ships against torpedo attack as the British Admiralty lias already takon. Mr. Ashmead-Bart-lefct is so far tlie only person who lias been allowed to give any sort of description of the monitors that have been so offcctivelj' employed on the Belgian coast and off Gallipoli, and lie has mentioned that just beloiv the level of the water-line an artificial hull bulges'.out to a distance of 10ft., the space between that and the hull' proper being filled with "a variety of-- substances," whore a torpedo would explode without doing any damage to the 6hip itself. "They fear no submarine," ho wioto of them, and although at the time he described the system as a secret arid a mystery, it is evident that.it is neither one nor the other to the Qermans. Whether they evolved it out of their own inventiveness or were inspired to imitation by "Mr. Asamead Hartlett's description we liavo as yet no means of knowing.