GRIM LIFE

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20955, 7 November 1939, Page 11

GRIM LIFE

CREWS OF U-BOATS FACE UNSEEN PERILS At the Nuremberg Party Congress and other places where the great ones of the Reich foregather, I have seen middle-aged naval officers wearing on I the left breast of their uniforms, just j above the waistline, a bronze badge bearing the device of a submarine. These are the “ stars ” of the German Navy, the men who were U-boat commanders in the last war, wrote Mr G. Ward Price, in a recent issue of the Daily Mail. From them I have heard something of the life on board a submarine engaged in the German Navy’s present occupation of destroying merchant ships. Grim and Not Congenial It is a grim mission, and one which I gather was‘not congenial either to the officers or naval ratings engaged upon it. There is a certain sympathy between all seafaring men, born of their common experience of the perils of the deep, and I have always found that the U-Boat commanders were more ready to talk of the dangers which they faced from the British anti-submarine devices than to boast of their own exploits in sinking defenceless merchantmen. The German submarines in the last war were manned by volunteers, who returned again and again to their nefarious task. I believ r e it is right to say that there were never more than a score or two officers found capable of standing the strain of the hunted life which German submarines led in search of their prey. Each time they put out from Kiel or Zeebrugge, or the other bases that they used, they regarded themselves and their crews as doomed to destruction. If that were so in the last war it must be fqr worse for the German submarines that are now at sea. One of the admitted mistakes of the British Admiralty in 1914-15 was that it had not reckoned sufficiently with the possibilities of the submarine as a commerce destroyer. That is not the case today. What are Germany’s resources in this form of naval action? Brassey’s Naval Annual, published at the beginning of this year, places the number of German submarines of 500 tons or over at 31. No smaller craft would be effective for deep-sea work, the remainder of the German submarine flotilla being designed as coast defence vessels for use in the Baltic. It is, of course, possible, • and even probable, that Germany has been secretly building submarines for some years past. They could be manufactured in sections at inland factories, ready for assembly at German ports when war broke out. A German Disability But, however many submarines Germany may possess in her dockyards, one thing which is certain is that she is short of the highly-trained technicians required to handle them effectively. A submarine is the most difficult of all craft to na\;gate, and if she had been training officers and crews to man them on anything like the scale of the last war this would certainly have become known to the outside world. In recent years I have several times been a guest on board flagships of the Royal Navy and have heard senior officers discuss among themselves the problem with which the Fleet has now principally to deal. Their confidence is absolute and it would be a mistake to doubt the efficiency of the measures they have taken if, in the very first week of a three years* war, they have not reached their maximum effectiveness. The silence which the Admiralty is preserving as to the number of enemy submarines it has sunk already is part of a system which will have a progressively demoralising effect upon those members of the German Navy who have yet to set out on similar missions. Admiral Raeder, the Commander-in-Chief of the German Fleet, would greatly welcome such figures, however disastrous they may be for the force under his command, as they would inform him what replacements he will be called upon to make.