THE SUPER U.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 233, 8 December 1916, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE SUPER U.

GERMANY'S MONSTER. SUBMARINE.

RECENT RUMOURS DISCUSSED. (Bv Richard Thirkell, in the Daily Mail ) It is just 20 months since we first began to receive from neutral capitals vague reports of new and exceedingly formidable submni uses, that were said to have been put in hand in German shipyards wKUin a few weeks of the outbreak of war. From that time onward intermittent reports have come to hand '.ending to contain the suggestion that our enemies were preparing a novel development cf the submarine for our discomfiture. Last July the Countess ven Dagenfeld, a niece of Count Zeppelin, declared in New York that "Germany has now 22 submarines large enough to voyage to New York and stay outside the harbour for two months before returning.' \ Since then several neutral merchants have repoited seeing these craft in the Baltic, and apparently, as- a result of their 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 them exactly one-third heavier than the Arethusa—whiie their powerful armament is carried in a turret which, surmounted by the conning tower, 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 cunningtower, so that the whole length of the upper part of the submarine must be exposed when they are in action. In theory at least, however, the turret system is not new. The American Lake Torpedo Boat Comt.any, from whom the Germans are said to have stolen the designs frcm which the majority of their submarines are built, have for a decade included among their specifications a "submarine cruiser" built on precisely the lines described. What is the significance of thc-ie new super-submarines, more than six times as heavy as our own E class? Sinco the beg'nniiig of August last year only one British waiship, the armed liner India, has been sunk i.y a submarine iu Northern Europe, and in the same period the Admiralty have announced the destruction of only two enemy submarines, sunk off the Belgian coast by aircraft bombs on August 26 and November 28 respectively. If the published accounts of the new U-boats are correct, it cannot be 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 provided by destroyers and drifters, to which vessels Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon attributed the immunity of his fleet from loss by submarine attack during his opelations off the Belgian coast. A submarine of 5000 tons, however, would easily hold her own in combat with & destroyer, while the drifters, whose mode of operation cannot be described, would find themselves severely handicapped when tackling a vessel of the power which a 5000-ton submarine would necessarily possess. The fast motor-boat ,too, would be useless.

It may well be, therefore, that the advent of the super-submarine, assuming it to possess the characteristics with which it has been credited, will necessitate a complete revision ol the methods by which smaller craft were circumvented, and because of this their appearance at sea may at first be attended by a considerable measure of success. This would especially be the case if the Admiralty's acquaintance with what lias been going on in German ship>ards is "necessarily speculative"— the phrase and the confession are i!:i- First Lord's. On the other hand there are considerations which reni'er tiie big submarine more vulnerable than The smaller. Its motivepower when submerged must be enormously greater, and the noise of tie motors correspondingly easier to detect, while the increased bulk and Kjieed when cruising beneath the surface would further help to betray its

whereabouts more distinctively than in the case of a smaller vessel. In r.ny event the navy, which so quickly tame, 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 mouth.

"UXSIXKABLE" SHIPS. A word may be said in conclusion ri garding a description of an "unsinkable" Herman battleship which has appeared in the Kalian Kevista .Mariimia. and of which a summary h.as been tabled to this country. The review in question is one of high standing", not given to idle gossip, end it is therefore premature to dismiss the 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, has 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.