Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star THURSDAY, JANUARY 29th, 1920. WAR REMINISCENCES.

Hokitika Guardian, 29 January 1920, Page 2

Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star THURSDAY, JANUARY 29th, 1920. WAR REMINISCENCES.

The latest sailor to unburden himself of his reminiscences and to take us behind. the scenes at the Admiralty is Admiral Sir Percy Scott, whose “ Fifty Years in .the Royal Navy ” is an interesting pendant to iLord Fisher’s memoirs recently noticed. Sir Percy Scott entered the service in 1866, and joined the old Britannia ; the cadet who passed ip pfle place above him was one John Fr.ench, who .subsequently abandoned the sea and became a soldier. After leaving the Britannia Sir Percy Scott )V. a S appointed to the Bristol, and during tjjp next f,ew years saw a good deal of fighjtipg o ftp way an,d another. He chased Arab ?’®vp dhows off the the Arabian coast, accopipapipd p.unitiv'P expeditiops up African rivers, topk part *#*• the Ashanti war ns

a volunteer, and was a ipembpr of the juuyal fore.e which bombarded Alexandria during Arajbi Pasha’s revolt. . It was here that hjsi attention was drawn fo the subject of gunnery; he was sirnt-k bv the poorness of the pritish shooting, ftncl from this dates his successful endeavours to improve it. In those days and for years afterwards gunnery was it neglected science,in the navy. The highest importance was at % taehed to what Sir Percy Scott calls

“ housemaidhig point and polish mid smartness of appearance ware fetishes. “To be the cleanest ship in the fleet was the objective of everyone ; nothing else-piajbtered,” and the author speaks ficafhjlngly of commanders who were more concerned jfchajt a pair of trousers should never be seen frying iff an improper place than tiiat their guppjjry record should be good, forget practice was frankly regarded as a nuisance. The quarter’s allowance of ammunition Jiad to be expended somehow, and svhftu ihi? order came the ship s dispersed and shot it as quickly as possible. “How it was expanded did not matThus when the fleet t> ” lto action, as at Alexandria, and scored o iidicuisusly low percentage of lifts, no one was surprised, ])0 one was hauled oyer the coals, nothing pise wap expected, This attitude was anathema to Sir Percy Scott, With b?> it was axiomatic that the business of a. gup was to hit, and that it was tisele/i* Jf,WPS fhe

I greatest ships and the most [ fif'dinanee if they usually missed their targtet!. fjlhjs: contention seems eminently reasonably, lie had difficulty in persuading the powers that bo to accept it. He complains bitterly of flip hostility and obstruction he piet with, both from the Admiralty and from the old school of sailor. However, jig was I aide to work out liis theories on dils I independent commands, and the performances of his ships were such as to convince all save the most sceptical. lie is the originator of the system of fire control, by which one man from his evrio, where he l; a/i see the target and the effect of the shots, pap aim ail the guns and fire simultaneously, As A result .of his training, the gunners of the Terrible became so efficient that in !f)f)0 they scored -80 per ec,nt of hits,

n record which -it tliajt (time was so unprecedented (hat puipy so-called “exports’’ refilled to believe that it VMM genuine. By his methods pof; only .lie accuracy of fire, but its speed, w«« mproved out of nil recognition, ami (this did not always find favour in the eyes of tile conservatives. - In 1911, the First Civil Lord r.eii<,j)’ked to him that ” the Neptune had attained such a rapidity of fire tha,t. she would expend all her ammunition in thirty mpiutes, which would never do.” Sir Percy Scott pointed out that “ if the phulls hit their targets the enemy might be sunk in thirty seconds. This was a view of the matter which was appm-, eni/ly new to him.” Sir Percy Scott gives .numerous instances of the stupidity and obstructionism of officialdom. In the Dreadnought the observation station for the fire control was placed behind the funnel ” so that the unfortunate officer controlling the fire of the guns would be roasted.” ■Tlic same mistake was made with the Orlou class, and the author heard it was go. in# to: ba repeated in the newest typo

of battle-cruiser. This decision “ prac-| tically meant that the ships would be of no use for fighting purposes unless they 1 went stern first into action.” He protested vehemently and, he adds', got * himself very much disliked for.. his ' pains. Eventually the masts -wac j placed forward of the funnel, but despite the author’s representations were so light that they would not carry a I director-tower. Subsequently they had ali to be taken out and strengthened. Sir Percy- Scott has plenty of oppor- > tunities for saying “ I told you so ” and he does not let them slip. In 1913 he warned the Admiralty of the possi- I bilities of submarines, but when war , broke out Britain did not possess a single submarine-proof base or any effective provision for combating the U-boats. He mentions that when on a visit to Seapa Flow, in saying goodnight to Admiral Jellicoe, he added: “Shall we be here in the morning? ” And Jellicoe’s laconic reply was “ I ■wonder.” He cannot understand why the Germans missed the chance of attacking the Grand Fleet, and believes, with Von Tirpitz, that if early in the war they had sought a decisive naval action they would have won. He confirms ’Lord Jellicoe’s statement that

even by the middle of 1916 the British ships were defective in material in many important respects. “At the Battle of Jutland the Commander-in-Chief had only six ships of his fleet completely equipped with director firing; he had not a single cruiser fitted with director firing; he had no Zeppelins as eyes for the fleet; his guns were outranged by those of the Ger-

mans. He had to use projectiles inferior to those used by the Germans, and in firing at night he was utterly outclassed by the enemy.” Sir Percy Scott most emphatically approves of Lord Jellicoe’s decision to avoid a night action in • such circumstances. In the war Sir Percy Scott’s mechanical ingenuity found plenty of scope. He was appointed adviser in gunnery in November, 1914, and at once got busy. He knew that the army in Franco was badly in want of heavy artillery, and proposed that he should mount naval guns and send them over. He had done this successfully during

the Roer war when the gups of the Powerful did such good work in the defence of Ladysmith, but Kitchener re, fused the offer. A year later it was accepted. Subsequently he organised the anti-aircraft defences of London, which after more than a year of warfare were still utterly inadequate. Again he has some nasty things to say about the delays and red tape of the Admiralty, with whom, lie frankly admits, he is by no means a persona grata. Oil can understand that the tart and plain-spoken letters with which he bombarded it would not add |to his) popularity. Lord) Fisher, in his recent book, held that a sailor is in his wrong element at Whitehall; what is wanted are bright caught young and trained up in the way they should go. Sir Percy Scott .takes the opposite view; he attributes everything that goes wrong to the infiuencp of tlie civilians—and frequently tells then, so.