SUBMARINE TRAPPED.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 June 1918, Page 2

SUBMARINE TRAPPED.

SEAPLANE AIDS TRAWLERS. AN EXCITING CONTEST. An interesting acocunt of the work of submarine hunters is given by a writer in the Liverpool Journal of Commerce. He says: A seaplane had "spotted'' a submarine lying 011 the sea bed. Instantly the observer's finger commenced to tap a key, and 10 miles away a long lean destroyer and four squatty trawlers detached themselves from a pack of Aounds working a covert and hastened to the kill. Meanwhile the seaplane circled around, but when the suruii;ships arrived her instructions, delivered by wireless, were curt and precise. Acting upon thein the trawlers stationed themselves at the four corners of a wet 'quadrangle, while the destroyer kept her guns ready to talk to the enemy should be appear above the surface.

The trawlers at the corners of the quadrangle got out their sweeps—long wire hawsers of an incredible stoutness, with a heavy "kite" in the centre to keep their bights down on the sea bed —and commenced to steam toward each other. As the pairs of vessels met, their wires simultaneously engaged themselves under the U boat's bow and stern and commenced to work their sinuous way between her hull and the sea bottom.

Then the strange thing happenfd. Two round, black objects seemed to detach themselves from her hull and float sur-face-ward, to hover a second and then to commence bobbing down the tide—bobbing down a lane much frequented by those ships that rought food, munitions of war and hundreds of other things to England's shore. "Mine layer, eh?" called the seaplane's observer.

"That's it, lad," came the telephoned answer, "but her eggs can wait for a minute.'' The trawlers now crossed their dependent cables and thus held the U-boat in a kind of cat's cradle. She seemed suddenly to wake up to her danger, for with a bound she tried to disengage herself from the meshes which held her. But it was no use; the trawlers had been too long at the game to leave any loopholes and the submarine was doomed.

"fiot him," signalled the seaplane. "Thanks," replied the destroyer. "We'll give him five minutes to come up and breathe, but no longer." That time passed but still the submarine made no further move.

At a flagged signal from the destroyer the port foremost trawler and the starboard after one clipped a small rod tin of high explosive to the bar-taught wire and allowed it to slide down till it touched the U-boat's hull. It was the seaplane's turn to wave a flag, and immediateley there followed the crashing of two fists upon two firing keys; the uprising of two grev mounds of water and a rumbling, muffled explosion. The seaplane circled twice above the patch of rising oil. ascertained that the German had been destroj-ed and notified the destroyer of the fact. Then, with her observer slipping a drum of cartridges into his machine-gun, she sped on after those objects bobbing down the tide. A burst of rapid firing, and the first of the devil's eggs, its buoyancy chamber punctured, sank with a gurgle; the second gave a better show, for it exploded grandly and harmlessly as tlie bullets reached it.