VALUE OF SUBMARINES.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 April 1920, Page 9

VALUE OF SUBMARINES.

DRASTIC CHANGE IN SEA POWER. UNITED STATES EXPERT'S VIEW. The New York correspondent of the Daily News wrote to his paper a few weeks ago:— l have had conversations with an engineer, scientist, and Inventor, who played an important part in the war as chairman of the Engineering Committee of the Submarine Defence Association, to which all leading British and American shipowners and insurance underwriters doing business in the threatened areas entrusted the duty of analysing and developing proposed devices for minimising the menace. For this purpose he had placed at his disposal the funds and opportunities that were needed. His conclusions about the future of naval warfare are thus based upon full official data and complete first-hand information.

For Great Britain these conclusions are of startling significance, and, if upheld, they change the entire outlook for our foreign policy, "Tho war," said he, "was won on land. At sea, the submarine had proved itself potentially supreme. In the last week of hostilities the Germans, who had concentrated on tankers, sank nine. If Germany had had one thousand Üboats in August, 1914, nothing could have saved Britain and the Allies. As it was, she had only some 30 U-boats at first, and usually only eight or nine were in use at any one time. On the average, each U-boat sunk cost the Allies £20,000,000 at least in loss and expenditure, a total of .£4,000,000,000. Yet the cost of the U-boat is comparatively negligible. "Civilisation cannot stand such casualty. In years to come submarines will have a wider range of activity. When small (hey will be also hydroplanes, nearly able to fly. When large their improved engines will enable them to remain submerged for -indefinite periods. Whatever headway was made against submarines was largely because they had to rise to the surface. If this necessity is reduced, the submarine will become to that extent more formidable.

"In four and a half years of intensive effort with, at the last, 000 destroyers, besides oilier naval units, and 6000 patrol and searching vessels, only 205 submarines were sunk or captured."

I asked him about methods of coming submarines. "We have had to observe three conditions," he replied. "Nothing that we proposed must limit either the speed of a vessel, or its radius of action, or its ability to manoeuvre. Nearly all suggestions had thus to be set on one side. Camouflage, of course, helped some. The visibility of the- Tuscania was reckoned at 14. We got that reduced to 0.2, that is one-seventieth, largely by directing the work of artists, in applying low visibility and deceptive color schemes, evolved by research work conducted at Eastman's laboratories at Rochester, New York. The aim of camouflage is, first, to promote low visibility beyond the immediate danger area from a torpedo, and, secondly, to deceive the eye and brain within that radius. Both objects were harmonised with good results.

"Again, instead of ships steering zigz.iss, whose straight, courses enable the U-boat to calculate the vessel's position in advance, we developed an instrument to enable a succession of logarithmic curves to be steered which renders such calculation impossible. Yet, with all such devices, the depletion of tonnage was appalling. "Depth bombs ,were used containing at first 300, shen 000, and. finally 1200 pounds of super-explosive. Over a hundred were said to have been released in one attack on a submarine, and then they could not be sure that they had got the U-boat. No fewer than 2500 vessels were patrolling the Irish Sea when the armistice was signed, yet they could not guarantee safety. The one hope lay in finding an apparatus which would, from a speeding destroyer, discover the submarine and locate it within a radius of four miles, and follow It up. "Imagine a destroyer proceeding at full speed, darting this way and that in and about a -big convoy, with its many underwater noises. No instrument fo'r recording sound was then of value. One had to try with ether waves. By associating waves of different lengths, a beat-tone was secured which enabled one to locate marching troops or passing barges. That instrument was nearly perfected just as peace came. It revealed whatever intruded into no man's land. But the trouble with it was that on the Ihigh seas, with a destroyer plunging about, one cannot accurately analyse the aural impressions. "I am bound, therefore, to tell you that, as invention now stands, the submarine has the best of it. Building big battleships," he declared, with emphasis, "is now sheer waste of money. Ten years after the fight between the Monitor and the Merrimac, navies were constructing obsolete wooden ships. So will it be with the Dreadnoughts until the taxpayer stops in. Remember that submarines can be cheaply built on inland waterways like the Volga, far from observation."

"This seems to modify Admiral Maban's theory of sea power?" "Yes, it eihanges it entirely. No great army can be maintained across the ocean against a fleet of submarines. Aaainst attack, Australia and New Zealand can make.themselves absolutely secure, given enough submarines. * The United States is now a distinct and impregnable military unit. And so Js the Old World. If war breaks out there again, it will be fought on land behind a ring fence."

"Will Britain be able to keep open her trade routes?"

• "I am very doubtful of it. It seems to me that, obviously, she. should build her Channel Tunnel without delay and establish, as a matter of imperative precaution, a store of at. least one year's food suply. Many will, of course, put up a big fight for the retention of' battleships. No crew likes taking service on a submarine. But, In my judgment, (he United States and Britain should face the facts and save their money. The future is serious enough without the waste of resources on useless varieties of armaments."