NAVAL WAR SECRET OUT

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 172, 15 April 1919, Page 5

NAVAL WAR SECRET OUT

One ■of the Navy's most jealouslyguarded war secrets has been disclosed. While the Germans were boasting of the huge undersea cruisers with which'they proposed to control the seas, the British Admiralty, on its part, was quietly jjerfecting a real submarine cruiser capable of matching the . largest destroyer afloat, and even of fighting surface cruisers. The secret of these IC boats, as thet are called, was in their size and speed, and the fact that while on the surface they used steam as their propelling power and carried two funnels like.an ordinary surface warship. The biggest submersible craft in the world, they are 340 ft. long,, and 261 ft. in beam, have a displacement of 2000 tons on the surface and 2700 under water, can maintain a speed of 24 knots, and have an endurance of 3000 miles. Steam is generated in boilers heated by oil fuel, and internal combustion tngines are carried for use in bad weather, when the sea would swamp the funnols. Under water the power is provided by electric motors. Originally the armament consisted of eight or 10 torpedo tubes and two or three guns of 3iri. afii 4in. oalibre, but some of tho latest of the tyj>e carry much bigger guns, the dimensions of whioh are still a secret. They need no parent ship, and the crew of 55' officers and men lives entirely on board. It is said that tho construction of these vessels has revolutionised submarine warfare. How far they were responsible for keeping the German Nnvy in tho Kcil Canal after tho Jutland fight is not known. But the enemy was certainly aware of their elistcnce and of the inferiority of his own submersible craft.