Since submarines must be hunted, there is something specially attractive in the idea of setting other submarines to hunt them; it seems peculiarly just that while the pirate is lying in wait under water for his victim, he should himself be ambushed by an avenger hiding under the same waters and possessed of the same deadly weapons of offence.

But this method, satisfactory as it is to the imagination, is involved in several practical difficulties. If we put ourselves in the position of a submarine commander with orders to go out and kill U-boats, we shall quickly come up against some of the more obvious of these. The sea is a large place; the submarine moves about it slowly, and therefore takes a long time to patrol a given area. Also the very worst point of view from which to survey that area is the eye-piece of a periscope raised only some two feet above the surface. The strain upon the eye is very severe, when hour after hour is spent in looking for ships of ordinary size, with freeboard, funnels and streamers of smoke. How much more severe, when the object to be looked for is a conning-tower at most, with waves tumbling about it, or possibly only a periscope 4 inches in diameter!

Let us suppose, however, that all the preliminary257 conditions are as good as they can be; that the commander is in the best of health, with sound nerves and good instruments, and that he is lucky enough to sight a chance near the beginning of his cruise, while his eye is unwearied and his judgment alert. He will still be hampered by two considerations—he must make sure that the boat he is about to attack is an enemy and not a friend, and he must take the not very remote risk of being rammed, bombed, or depth-charged by a British destroyer or a German seaplane, while his attention is fixed entirely on the chase.

Finally, there are the purely technical difficulties of the attack. Man?uvring for position is not easy, even when the enemy is a large and visible ship of war; it is ten times harder when he is a submerged or nearly submerged vessel, and not steaming straight ahead, but cruising about with sudden and erratic changes of course, as he searches for or sights his intended victims. And here the nature and habits of the torpedo have also to be considered. A periscope, or even a conning-tower, is not a very good object for a distant shot. On the other hand if the range is too short, say less than 250 yards, the torpedo is very likely to miss. This is due to the fact that a torpedo requires a certain length of run before it can settle to its course evenly at the depth for which it is set. It begins by plunging, then rises, sometimes even breaks surface, and finally takes its proper depth, which may be set for anything from 6 to 22 feet. A torpedo fired at a periscope must be set deep, for the submerged part of the boat will be 15 feet or more below the surface. If it were fired at so short a distance as 100 or 120 yards it would reach the target while still on its upward bound, and might258 easily leap clean over the U-boat’s rounded back. At a still less range, it would probably dive under the enemy altogether. Moreover, up to a distance of 200 yards—or even more—the explosion of a torpedo is dangerous to the attacker as well as to the attacked. Water, being much less elastic than air, conveys the shock of a blow far more completely; and of course, in such a case, a submarine vessel, being entirely surrounded by water, would suffer much more from the concussion than a ship with only part of its hull below the surface.

If we take account of these obvious difficulties, and remember that there are others of which we know nothing, we shall realise that the destruction of a U-boat by one of our own submarines can only be accomplished by a combination of skill, courage, and good fortune. The examples which follow will make this clear.

Let us take first the case of E. 54, Lieutenant-Commander Robert H. T. Raikes, which shows a record of two successes within less than four months—one obtained with comparative ease, the other with great difficulty. The first of the two needs no detailed account or comment. E. 54, on passage to her patrol ground, had the good fortune to sight three U-boats in succession before she had gone far from her base. At two of these she fired without getting a hit; but the third she blew all to pieces, and picked up out of the oil and debris no less than seven prisoners. Her next adventure was a much more arduous one. She started in mid-August on a seven-day cruise, and in the first four days saw nothing more exciting than a neutral cruiser carrying out target practice. On the morning of the fifth day, a U-boat was sighted at last; and after twenty-259five minutes’ man?uvring, two torpedoes were fired at her, at a distance of 600 yards, with deflection for 11 knots. Her actual speed turned out to be more nearly 6 or 7 knots, and both shots must have missed ahead of her. She dived immediately, and a third torpedo failed to catch her as she went down.

An hour and twenty minutes afterwards she reappeared on the surface, and Lieut.-Commander Raikes tried to cut her off, by steering close in to the bank by which she was evidently intending to pass. E. 54 grounded on the bank, and her commander got her off with feelings that can be easily imagined. Less than an hour after, a U-boat—the same or another—was sighted coming down the same deep. Again Lieut.-Commander Raikes tried to cut her off, and again he grounded in the attempt. He was forced to come to the surface when the enemy was still 2,000 yards away. To complete his ill-fortune, another U-boat was sighted within an hour and a quarter, but got away without a shot being possible.

Twenty-four hours later the luck turned, and all these disappointments were forgotten. At 2.6 P.M., Lieut.-Commander Raikes sighted yet another U-boat in open water, on the old practice ground of the neutral cruiser of three days before. He put E. 54 to her full speed, and succeeded in overtaking the enemy. By 2.35 he had placed her in a winning position on the U-boat’s bow, and at right angles to her course. At 400 yards’ range he fired two torpedoes, and had the satisfaction to see one of them detonate in a fine cloud of smoke and spray. When the smoke cleared away, the U-boat had entirely disappeared; there were no survivors. Next day, after dark, E. 54’s time being260 up, she returned to her base, having had a full taste of despair and triumph.

Earlier in the year, Lieutenant Bradshaw, in G. 13, had had a somewhat similar experience. He went out to a distant patrol in cold March weather and had not been on the ground five hours when his adventures began. At 11.50 A.M. he was blinded by a snow squall; and when he emerged from it, he immediately sighted a large hostile submarine within shot. Unfortunately the U-boat sighted G. 13 at the same moment, and the two dived simultaneously. This, as may easily be imagined, is one of the most trying of all positions in the submarine game, and so difficult as to be almost insoluble. The first of the two adversaries to move will very probably be the one to fall in the duel; yet a move must be made sooner or later, and the boldest will be the first to move. Lieutenant Bradshaw seems to have done the right thing both ways. For an hour and a half he lay quiet, listening for any sign of the U-boat’s intentions; then, at 1.30 P.M., he came to the surface, prepared for a lightning shot or an instantaneous man?uvre. No more complete disappointment could be imagined. He could see no trace of the enemy—he had not even the excitement of being shot at. On the following day he was up early, and spent nearly eleven fruitless hours knocking about in a sea which grew heavier and heavier from the S.S.E. Then came another hour which made ample amends. At 3.55 P.M. a large U-boat came in sight, steering due west. Lieutenant Bradshaw carried out a rapid dive and brought his tubes to the ready; courses and speeds as requisite for attack. (These reports often omit superfluous details, while they bristle with intention.) The261 man?uvring which followed took over half an hour, and must have seemed interminably long to everyone in G. 13. At 4.30 the enemy made the tension still greater by altering course some 35°. It was not until 4.49 that Lieutenant Bradshaw found himself exactly where all commanders would wish to be, 8 points on the enemy’s bow. He estimated the U-boat’s speed at eight knots, allowed 18° deflection accordingly, and fired twice. It was a long shot in rough water, and he had nearly a minute to wait for the result. Then came the longed-for sound of a heavy explosion. A column of water leaped up, directly under the U-boat’s conning-tower, and she disappeared instantly. Ten minutes afterwards, G. 13 was on the surface, and making her way through a vast lake of oil, which lay thickly upon the sea over an area of a mile. In such an oil lake a swimmer has no margin of buoyancy, and it was not surprising that there were no survivors to pick up. The only relics of the U-boat were some pieces of board from her interior fittings. G. 13 completed her patrol of twenty-eight days, and returned to her base without sighting another enemy—she had cleared that area for a month.

A successful hunt by Lieutenant North, in command of H. 4, resembles G. 13’s exploit in many respects, but has this picturesque difference, that it took place in southern waters and in a bright May midnight. It was more than forty-eight hours since H. 4 had cast off from the pens before she sighted the quarry she was looking for, 3 points on her port bow. The hour was 11.10 P.M. and the moon was nearly full. Lieutenant North at once turned towards the enemy and went to night action stations. The distance between the two262 boats was about 1,000 yards, and it was desirable to reduce this to a minimum—say to 250 yards—in order to make sure of a hit in the circumstances. The enemy was a large U-boat and was going about 8 knots, in a course which would bring her across H. 4 almost too directly. But she had not advanced more than 300 yards when she altered course 8 points to starboard. Lieutenant North instantly saw his opportunity, turned first to port to cut her off; and then, when his superior speed had made this a certainty, 8 points to starboard to close her. Within four minutes after sighting her, he had placed himself on her port beam at the desired range of 250 yards. He fired two torpedoes. Both hit and detonated, one under the conning-tower, and one in the engine-room. The enemy sank immediately—in fifteen seconds she had gone completely. Then came the usual search for survivors, and two were eventually rescued; they were the captain of the boat and his quartermaster. H. 4 combed out the surrounding area thoroughly; but no more could be found; and in view of the presence of prisoners, Lieutenant North at once returned to his base.

It is not to our purpose to enumerate successful shots of the simple and easy kind; one or two examples will stand for a number of these. C. 15, for instance, sighted an enemy submarine at 2.43 on a November afternoon, dived and flooded tubes; sighted the U-boat again in the periscope at 3.12; at 3.15 fired at 400 yards. The noise of the explosion was slight, but the enemy—U.C. 65—sank immediately, and C. 15 picked up five survivors. D. 7, Commander C. G. Brodie, sank U. 45 only twenty-two minutes after sighting her, at a range of 1,200 yards. Lieutenant A. W. Forbes, in C. 7, sighted263 a large U-boat on his port quarter, at 3.32 A.M. of a dark and misty April night. He immediately attacked on the surface, and sank her with a single shot at 400 yards. These prompt and successful shots deserve full credit; but every now and then some exceptional circumstance will add a special reason for satisfaction. For example, it is always good to catch a pirate red-handed. Lieut.-Commander G. R. S. Watkins, in E. 45, was beginning his day’s patrol at 6.15, on a dim October morning, when he observed flashes on his starboard bow. He altered course in that direction, and after five minutes sighted an unhappy merchantman under fire from a U-boat. He dived at once and approached. At 6.37, he was near enough to see through his periscope that the vessel was a steamer with Dutch colours painted on her side. She was a neutral, and of course unarmed, but such considerations meant nothing to the U-boat pirate, who had ceased fire and was coolly waiting for his victim to sink. He was a large submarine, partially submerged, and by way of further caution he was steering about in figures of 8, with his gun still manned. But, ............