CRUSHING THE SUBMARINE.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 30 July 1917, Page 2

CRUSHING THE SUBMARINE.

Boston. —Additional confirmation has arrived of our recent statement that England has solved the German submarine problem. We have the details, geographical, nautical and hydraulical but must report only in general terms. The British admiralty has wisely (refrained and will continue to refrain from figures, details or any announcement that would in any way guide Germany. Our latest report is that a single recent month the destroyers of the allied navies ended the career of more than 40 German submarines. The remedy for the submarine is so I simple that it is most remarkable it was not" applied almost from the beginning. I The submarine is an egg-shell and it can be crushed like an egg-shell, and that is what is being done with them. At first they were netted. Then netcutting apparatus was supplied to the submarine and the netting device quickly became ineffective. Then aeroplanes and submarine chasers co-operated. In clear waters the submarine can be detected from an aeroplane at a depth of more than 100 feet. Submarine chasers studied surface bubbles and surface indications. Locating a submarine, groups of destroyers and chasers were summoned to the spot and then the territory for miles around was covered as by spokes from a wheel. Now a submarine location on beingdiscovered is netted most effectively. It is circled by bombs lowered under the water over a wide area. The simul- ! taneous explosion of these mines by [electrical devices will crush any under water craft.

Water is of course incompressible. Th e entire ocean weight, millions of tons, resists and the explosive power must effectively crush everything nearby that is not as solid as the ocean itself. Without waiting for U-boat activities the destroyers now fish for and crush tr\em just as effectively as a piece of dynamite is used on a pond by a poacher to stun or kill all nearby fish. It has been known for many years, and therefore laws have been passed forbidding the practice, that an explosion in water will ,stun all the fish nearby or cause their air bladders to burst. The allies' ever increasing flotilla of chasers and destroyers, supplemented by an increasing number of hydroplanes, has resulted in detecting . and crushing submarines under this system so that in the past week the submarines caught only one-third of 1 per cent of the sailings or 19 vessels as compared with LOG per cent of the sailings, or : 55 boats, in the week ending April 22. We are also informed that so successful has been the campaign against the submarines that the German admiralty is now finding the greatest difficulty in securing crews for' them. The men are not lacking in ordinary courage and are perfectly wiling to go into the first line trenches exposed to the normal dangers of war, but there is natural horror of imprisonment and death under water with no fighting chance. — "Baston News."