FIGHTING THE SUBMARINE

Evening Star, Issue 23376, 20 September 1939, Page 6

FIGHTING THE SUBMARINE

SUCCESS OF CONVOY SYSTEM ADMIRALTY'S NEW WEAPONS The attack on the Mooltan and the torpedoing of some 15 British ships within the first 10 days of the outbreak of war is convincing evidence that the Nazi Government has embarked upon a campaign of destruction similar to that which was waged by German U-boats during 1916-18 (says a special correspondent of the ‘ Sydney Morning Herald ’). To-day, however, the Admiralty is far better armed by experience and with counteracting weapons to protect the Empire’s shipping and destroy the raiding submarines. The exact naval measures now being enforced to combat submarines are necessarily secret. Towards the end of the Great War the U-boat campaign, which, in 1917, had come within reach of bringing Britain to her knees, was defeated by a variety of devices used in conjunction with large fleets of destroyers, sloops. P boats, Q boats, trawlers, and drifters. At the same time, nets, booms, mines, depth charges, and a whole series of ingenious scientific instruments were called into being. Great as are the advances which have taken place since 1918 with anti-sub-marine weapons, the basic defensive strategy to be employed in meeting the underwater menace is f still the convoy system. That system is now being rapidly put into effect by the British Admiralty. The value or it, however, was painfully learned. EXAMPLE OF 1917, In April, 1917, one ship out of every four which left the British Isles never came home. In that one month the Allies lost nearly 1,000,000 tons of shipping, 60 per cent, of it British. The largest part of it was lost in the approaches to the English Channel and the Irish Sea, which became a maritime cemetery. The German General Staff believed at that stage that “ an unrestriced U-boat war, started at the proper time, will bring about peace before the harvesting period of the 1917 summer, that is, before August 1.” In this view the British Admiralty concurred. It was not only that German submarines were sinking 600,000 tons of Allied and neutral shipping a month, sending millions of tons of food and raw materials to the bottom, but that neutral shipping was being so terrorised that shipowners and masters were disinclined to take the risk of supplying an island whose ap-> proaches were so perilous. Between September. ,1916, and January, 1917, inclusive, 170 Norwegian, 29 Swedish, and 50 Danish ships were destroyed by German submarines. In vain the British Navy multiplied the means of combating the submarine. More than .3,000 destroyers and light craft were devoted to the task, aided by new devices to detect the presence of the hidden foe, but the results were negligible compared with the mighty effort.

In the words of the British military historian, Capain Liddell Hart: “There was one method still untried, the most obvious method of all—that of bringing the ships to port in convoy. But the Admiralty had a fixed professional opinion that convoy was theoretically unsound, and this opinion, like all doctrinal beliefs, was hard to shake, growing stiffer the more the idea was urged from outside.’’ LLOYD GEORGE’S IDEA. At a conference on November 2, 191 C, the possibility of using the convoy method was suggested by Mr Lloyd George. In reply, Lord Jellicoe declared that “ they would never be able to keep merchant ships sufficiently together to enable a few destroyers to screen them.” The First Sea Lord, Sir Henry Jackson, said that, in any case, it would be impossible to “ protect by escort even a small proportion of the sailings.” in February, 1917, Lord Hankey (then Sir Maurice Hankey), who has now been added to Mr Chamberlain’s War Cabinet, actively supported those younger officers who had been advocating the introduction of the convoy system, and, in a memorandum, said: “ Perhaps the best commentary on the convoy system is that it is invanaoly adopted for our main fleet and for our transports.” But the Admiralty stood its ground until, at the end of April, Lord Jellicoe had to write: “We are carrying on the war at the present time as if we had absolute command of the sea: whereas we have not such command or anything approaching it.” Britain was “ heading straight for disaster.” At that stage Lloyd George intervened. He visited the Admiralty and warned them that he intended to consult any officers he wished, irrespective of rank. As a result of this action, the first convov left Gibraltar on May ll>. and a transatlantic convoy proved equally successful toward the end of the month. The system adopted was for a group of steamers, collected at a port of assembly, to be escorted by a cruiser or armed merchant cruiser_ to a rendezvous outside the submarine danger zone, whence the convoy was brought into port by an escort of destroyers. TRIUMPHANT SUCCESS. In a few months it was clear to the world that the system had been triumphantly successful. Sinkings were enormously reduced. By September the British losses had fallen to 200,000 tons a month, and the loss in the convoys was reduced to a bare 1 per cent. As the system developed it increased immensely in efficiency. Toward the end of the war the convoys adhered to an elaborate time-table, which enabled an escort which had' taken an outwardbound convoy clear of the danger zone to steam immediately to a new rendezvous, pick up an inward-bound convoy, and escort it safely to port. The svstem threw an immense strain on the Convoy section of the Ad-

miralty, but it economised the forces available as destroyer escorts. It is interesting to study the effects of this system in the light of the Admiralty’s earlier criticism. The grouping of the ships in convoys diminished the number of targets offered to attack. Moreover, since the convoys followed carefully chosen and carefully varied routes, and could be deflected hv wireless from areas of known submarine activity, they proved as valuable in their power to evade attack as in the actual protection provided by the escort When they were located by a submarine the convoys proved far less vulnerable than the opponents of the system had supposed. They were able, for one thing, to manoeuvre in concert on a broad front, thus hampering the movements of the submarine, which, at the same time, was subjected to instant retaliation by the armed -escorting vessels. The following official figures, relating to the entire period of. the war, speak for themselves: — Ships escorted safely 16,5119 Torpedoed in convoy 102 Lost by marine peril 16 Lost after parting company 36 Total sailings 16,693 Equally impressive was the success of the convoy system as it was applied to the transport of American troops to France. More than 1,100,000 American soldiers were carried across the Atlantic in British ships, with a _ total loss, from war and marine perils, of 637. NEW SAFEGUARDS. In the last five years naval experts have been principally exercised to assess the possible peril to Empire sea communications should Germany, in addition to a ruthless undersea campaign, succeed in despatching her pocket battleships on commerce raiding missions to the principal sea lanes in the Atlantic and possibly the Indian and Pacific Oceans. In the last war German surface raids upon British commerce were undertaken by light cruisers and armed merchantmen, which did not dare to attack convoys escorted by war vessels of greater fighting power. Were she able to allot this kind of work to capital ships the position would be altered.' - But unless they were at sea when war broke out, it is most unlikely that any' of the German pocket battleships could escape through the blockade which the British Navy has alreadydrawn tight around the German naval bases. Meanwhile the Navy, is to-day equipped with new devices for detecting and destroying submarines—particularly the apparatus known as the “ asdig ” —which are clearly already proving effective in counteracting the submarine peril. The relative smallness of the losses sustained in the first .16 days of the war provide convincing evidence that the Admiralty has not been unduly sanguine in its belief that Britain can never again be put ™ serious jeopardy by submarine warfare. ’