ADMIRALTY AND SUBMARINE WARFARE.

Taranaki Daily News, 12 September 1917, Page 6

ADMIRALTY AND SUBMARINE WARFARE.

' « CHARACTER OF PROBLEM. 1 (By Archibald Hurd in tho London Daily Telegraph). _ It will bo a great advantage if the nation at large gains ail accurate conception of the character of the problem which has to be solved, for it must and will be solved. Germany has carried out preparations for the campaign over a period of two years; tin.' present naval administration has been seriously engaged in the task of combating the peril arising from the use of submarine and mine without restraint for a period of a little over three months. Mark that contrast. It is sometimes suggested that the British Navy was caught unready. Was it? Who foresaw the possibility of such a campaign as is now in progress, unless it be Admiral 'Sir Percy Scott,. and he was convinced that humane feeling and fear of intervention by neutrals would check any such manifestation as we are witnessing. The opinion of Lord .Sydenham, a former Secretary of the Committee of ■lmperial Del'i-iice, may be mentioned as typical of the general view of the submarine which was held 011 the eve of the war. He was in agreement with Lord Bere'sfniid in regarding the submarine as of slight military value. He remarked, on .June 0, 1914: "On the surface the submarine is a most inferior destroyer, slow, supremely vulnerable, and unsuitable for long habitation. When it is submerged it can be navigated only by the periscope. . . .

111 this position it would be not wholly invisible, and if caught by a destroyer it would be sent to the bottom. . . .

On the high seas the chances (of employing submarines successfully) will be few, and submarines will require for their existence parent ships." ANTICIPATION/ AND REALISATION. All that easy optimism has been overlaid by the actual perfodnance of Gorman submarines, which have surprised no one more than the Germans themselves. Three years ago their opinion of the value of under-water craft mav be judged from the fact that they possessed only 27. about one-third the number in our Navy. Indeed, no officers in any fleet sneered so consistently at the submarine as those of the German Navy, and they meant it. It was only when all their war calculations miscarried on land, and when the submarine as a warweapon, used in accordance with the traditions of the brotherhood of the sea, had failed to reduce our fleet to parity with the German fleet, that they determined to use under-water craft for outrage and piracy. They have met .with some success, as thev did at first when they sent battle cruisers in the night to bombard our coasts, and when Zeppelins cruised over these islands, dropping bombs 011 peaceful towns and villages. But tho triumph in each case wa3 only temporary, and, though the submarin-. owing to the vast area of water in whicn it operates and its invisibility, has raised new and most difficult problems, it is unthinkable that these problems will not ultimately be solved. As has already been explained, the Admiralty set up several months ago an Anti-Submarine Department, which has been studying the matter day by day and experimenting in all directions. In includes about a score of the ''brightest'' officers of the Fleet, to borrow an Americanism. It is developing offensive-defensive measures, which take time to reach fruition, and the character of which is necessarily secret; the publication of three recent notices in the London Gazette announcing new minefields off the German coast is significant of the trend of policy, so far as mining can be mad? a danger and embarassment to "bacilli of the sea."

THE MENACE OF THE SUBMARINE. The type of submarine employed is not a "small boat,'' but a big vessel requiring no base for supplies, and operating for weeks on end in deep water, where nets and other devices, employed earlier in the war, are useless. Each submarine mounts two 4.lin guns, firing a shell of 3il!>. It a]so carries a most efficient type of torpedo, which can be used with deadly accuracy at a range of a mile or more when the submarine is submerged. That is a point to bear in mind. Our puns have driven the submarine below the surface, but the Germans have evidently been able to send such an increased number of under-water eraft to sea as to compensate for this disadvantage. The submarine, moreover, has a surface speed as high as 17 knots, about equivalent to that of an ordinary passenger train, and submerged the submarines travel at 10 or more knots. The merchant ship is slow: many of thf>m do not travel more than five knots, and few exceed 15. Speed means money, and there was no object in the past to exaggerate the rate of steaming of the ocean tramp. Those are the conditions which prevail at a moment when the Germans have pushed out to sea the accumulated resources ot two years of frantic efforts to build vessels and train crews. The merchant ship is always on the surface —a conspicuous target. The submarine is sometimes on the surface, but in the course of a comparatively few seconds it can dive and evade attack. In many cases officers and men never catch a glimpse of the under-water craft, but know of the attack only bv the shock of the torpedo's explosion. In these circumstances it can be understood by those who are least acquainted with the trackless wastes in which the merchant navy operates how great are the difficulties which confront the Navy. with many tasks on hand in every sea, in dealing with this menace. The problem of combating the menace lies, then, in the development of ti'c -nbmarine from a small, slow /hip, ac- xinied by a parent ship, into a and comparatively swift vessel with all the capabilities of a cruiser—guns as well as torpedoes—and, in addition, the power of hiding when in danger of attack, leaving on the surface of the sea only one or two periscopes, each about the size of a dinner plate, which enables vision to bo maintained of al! that is occurring. Those are developments which were not foreseen in anv eountry. The Germans have taken the fullest advantage of them by setting aside all law and human feeling; they have seized the triumphs of physical science and harnessed theni to the spirit of the pirates of the dead past. That is a conjunction wluci. pated. SUCCESS AND CONFIDENCE. Confidence in any naval administration depends finally upon success. The present Board of Admiralty, and the large number of officers, fresh from the sea, working under its direction, may justify the hopes of the nation, or they may not. But the time has not come for final judgoutlook full ot

passed to-day must be passed on the work, not of the present board, but of boards which preceded it. But let it be added that former administrations, if they exhibited a lack of prevision in some respects, could at least claim, if put on their defence, that it was not until February 1 of this year that the Germans, defying the United States, doterinined, after two years of energetic preparation for the campaign, upon a policy which it was conlidenlly believed 110 country would ever adopt. At the beginning of February the Admiralty was not caught unprepared, but the preparations which it hud made in the course of a few weeks to meet an offensive prepared for over many months had not developed sufficiently. As has been stated, sea power is a plant ot slow growth. It takes the best part of a year to build even a small vessel for fighting a submarine; scientific experiments occupy many weeks. In spite of what German submarines and mines have done, we hold the command of the sea in the sense in which that term has always been employed, to-day it is subject to limitations, it is true, but it would be a grave error to overlook the fundamental fact that all our war activities depend upon .the maintenance of the constriction which the Grand Fleet has placed upon the High Seas Fleet. If, owing to the pressure of public opinion, the Grand Fleet were risked with untoward results the war would be over, not only so far as this country is concerned, but so far as the Allies are concerned. Our naval policy reflects the best thought of the service. Naval officers have been brought to a realisation that the Grand Fleet is the keystone of the allied cause. It would be a disaster of the first degree if anything were done to weaken the stranglehold which we have obtained upon Germany and her partners. We are confronted with an embarrassing situation, but in due course the work which is being done will bear its fruit, and the enemy will stand defeated under the sea, as he has been defeated on the sea.