GERMANY'S SUBMARINE FLEET

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 292, 13 July 1917, Page 4 (Supplement)

GERMANY'S SUBMARINE FLEET

AX AMERICAN ESTIMATE. The "Scientific American'* suggests that at the time of the Jutland fight —when the German High Seas Fleet was driven hack, with heavy losses, and in a badly battered condition, to its naval bases —Germany, realising the hopelessness of any attempt to defeat or break through the British Fleet, determined to cease all work upon the construction of capital ships, and bend its whole ship-and-ongine-b'.'ilding capacity to the creation of a great fleet of submarines for war upon enemy and neutral commerce. Saving and except tlut this was an utterly illegal form of warfare, the Germans were perfectly right in stating that herein lay their "last chance of victory." Wh.it is the German submarine building capacity? Is it sufficient to enable her, say. within the year, to build, equip, and man a thousand or twelve hundred boats? Nobody out- '•> of Germany can answer that question: but The "Scientific American" believes that she is well able to do this, provided, of course, that she is not herself brought to her knees through collapse cf her finances, through starvation, or by absolute overthrow of her armies.

investigation of the capacity of the German yards as regards buiiding ways discloses the interesting fact that, without laying down any additional ways, she co 'ld have under construction at any time about 530 submarines of the size of the U53. which went to Newport last year. The Central Powers may have two hundred submarines .nflcat. and if, as is more than likely. the>; have some five hundred on the wavg at the present time, thir would mean that in s'-x months they would have seven hundred F-boats available, and twelve hundred by next spring.