SUBMARINE PERIL

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20921, 28 September 1939, Page 9

SUBMARINE PERIL

BRITISH MEASURE IMPORTANT NEW INVENTION APPARATUS FOR TRACKING “Science has made great advances —so much so that I think it is possible to say that the chances of the submarine surviving against our methods of detection and hunting have been reduced by 30 per cent in the last six months.” That state- : ment (writes Sir Archibald Hurd, noted English naval expert) was re- j cently made by Lord Mottistone, who is in close touch with naval affairs. A new apparatus known as the “asdig” has come into the possession of the British naval authorities. The First Lord of the Admiralty himself, while refraining from any description of the new device, has declared that under ordinary conditions a submarine, even when proceeding under water, can now be pursued with the certainty that it will be found and then destroyed. Encouraged by the possession of this new device, the Board of Admiralty has for some time been creating a great “mosquito fleet” of small craft which will track down submarines and then blow them up with depth charges. Trials have proved that no submarine can survive the force of such an explosion. Hitherto the difficulty has been to discover its whereabouts, even though its speed when under water is only about ten knots. That problem having been solved, the next step is the provision of a large number of “hunting vessels.” The Mosquito Fleet The Navy Estimates in recent years have made provision for escort vessels and motor torpedo boats. The latter can discharge their torpedoes when travelling at high speed, in some cases as high as 46 knots. Since the present financial year began, a supplementary programme has been announced which will increase the strength of the mosquito fleet by 180 vessels, a large proportion of which are intended for tracking down submarines. At successive naval conferences it has been claimed that the submarine is the weapon of weaker naval Powers which cannot afford to build battleships, cruisers and destroyers. The truth is that of all men-of-war, the submarine, in relation to its size, is the most costly to build, to maintain, and to operate. A modern submarine of only 1000 tons cannot be built for less than £400,000. The training of the crew of such a vessel takes two years, while a commander is not regarded as efficient under four years, and officers and men have to be highly paid, owing to the dangers to which they are exposed, receiving “hard lying money,” as it is called by seamen. The casualties among such vessels are, moreover, more numerous than in the case of surface craft. The smaller maritime nations, in spite of these incontrovertible facts, have continued to add to their flotillas in ignorance, presumably, of the remarkable progress which has been made in the methods for detecting their movements and destroying them. Foreign Flotillas So far as the great naval Powers are concerned, the new device proves the wisdom which has dictated British naval policy since the end of the Great War. While the naval authorities of other countries have been concentrating on the construction of submarines, the Board of Admiralty has built relatively few of such craft —nothing approaching the twoPower standard. Italy, with her eyes on the defence of the narrow waters of the Mediterranean, has no fewer than 107, the United States, nervous as to the safety of her long coastlines, possesses 106, France 93, Germany 71, and Japan 60, so that these five countries have at their disposal nearly 450 submarines, ■ apart from the flotillas which Russia has built, which are known to be large, although their exact strength has never been revealed. The new device which the British Admiralty has exclusively at its disposal must I result in a radical change in naval policy throughout the world. I The new device for tracking down submarines may, in association with the improved depth charges which are now being made, prove decisive in its influence. British naval authorities recognise that the danger in war time lies not so much in the landing of troops in any part of the Empire, but in the destruction of merchant shipping, and that an j enemy would concentrate his atten- 1 tion on the weak link in British defences. In the Great War, the Ger- ! man submarines sank 7,000,000 tons of British shipping. By that means they came very near to winning. Decrease of British Tonnage

In 1914 the British Merchant Navy consisted of 9240 ships of 19,256,766 tons gross; now, according to Lloyd’s Register Book, which has recently been published, the number is only 7009 and the gross tonnage is 17,984,158. So it is weaker by 2231 vessels, and there has been a decrease of 1,272,608 tons gross. The decline in numbers is more serious than the falling off in tonnage because every unit destroyed represents a more serious loss of carrying power. While the strength of the British Merchant Navy has been reduced owing to the uneconomic competition of foreign countries, with their large subsidies and other expedients, the potential strength of a possible enemy has increased, as the great number of submarines which have been built in the last 20 years or so proves, apart from the growth in foreign destroyer flotillas. If it had not been for the invention of the “asdig,” the situation would be extremely grave. As it is, it is now realised that the tonnage available is too small to assure complete safety.

For some years the British Government ignored the decline of British merchant tonnage, but when the situation was reviewed at the time of the Munich crisis in September. 1938. Ministers became alarmed. Their awakening led not only to the proposals for the encouragement of the building of new merchant ships by means of grants and loans, but tc the decision to insist that older

ships should not be broken up or sold to the highest foreign bidder, as in the past. It was made compulsory for all ships for which shipowners had no further use to be offered to the Government.

A New Departure

| A committee under the chairmanship of Sir David Owen, late general manager of the Port of London Authority, was formed to decide which vessels should be purchased. The committee was authorised to buy tonnage up to the maximum of £2,000,000, the ships to form a national reserve to be used at sea only in a great emergency. The decision of the Government to create this reserve of cargo ships, which was an entirely new departure, was an expression of the anxiety of Ministers as to the possibility of such heavy losses of shipping in war as would again endanger the communications of the people of the British Isles and, indeed, of the whole Empire. In these circumstances, the invention of the new device for hunting down submarines and the measures which are being taken to arm merI chant ships with defensive weapons,

' train their officers and men in their use, and to prepare a skeleton scheme for the organisation of convoys, represent welcome factors of security. Every possibility which can be envisaged has been provided for by the Admiralty on the one hand and, on the other, by the Board of Trade, which has been working in harmonious co-operation with an advisory committee of ship-owners.