Submarines to Foil Submarines
The Germans showed us how to meet the submarine menace and we haven't learned the lesson they taught us yet!
By Simon Lake, M. I. N. A.
(Mr. Simon Lake, the author of this article, ranks with John P. Holland as a pioneer in the development of the submarine. His reputation as an inventor and builder of submarines and his vast experience as an advisor on submarine questions to the United States Government as well as to the leading European powers entitles the following suggestions of his to very serious consideration. — Editor.)
��DURING the months of September and October, the German sub- marines sank only twenty vessels a week, according to the dispatches. Only twenty ships per week! How many realize that this is the equivalent of 2,808,- 000 tons in a year, assuming that the average vessel is about 2,700 registered tons? We actually congratulate our- selves that only about three million tons a year are sent to the bottom by a method of warfare against which the world is at present powerless.
Despite the five thousand submarine hunting and destroying vessels which Great Britain is reputed to have in the waters of the North Sea and the north Atlantic, despite the nets strung across narrow straits, despite the arming of merchant ships with powerful naval guns, despite convoying torpedo boat destroy- ers, despite all the experience gained in two and a half years of submarine war- fare, the neutral and belligerent seafaring powers of the world are helpless to pro- tect their shipping. The best inventive brains of two hemispheres have been racked in the effort to sweep the German menace from the high seas. And what is the result. Only twenty ships a week have been sunk on an average in the months of September and October!
It is obvious that this cannot go on if the United States and her allies are to win the war. We have decided that we must build ships, more ships and still more ships huild them faster than they can be destroyed by submarines. To me, the process is like shoveling coal into a fiery furnace in the vain hope that in some Providential way the fire will be choked. The public and some of our officials lose
��sight of the fact that the German fleet of submarines must be increasing by leaps and bounds, probably at the rate of about one hundred and fifty vessels a year. If the sinkings are fewer in number than they were, this is due to the fact that to- day merchant ships, like hunted beasts, take devious courses.
It is not likely that the lost ships will diminish in number; artful dodging on the high seas has its limits. Any device available to a surface ship for detecting and destroying submarines is equally available to the submarine for the detec- tion and destruction of the surface ship. In such competition, the odds are im- mensely in favor of the submarine; it has the power of becoming invisible at will, while the surface ship is always visible and therefore vulnerable. The nets, shields and protective walls, with which one class of inventors would surround a surface ship, are useless. They slow down the speed so that the ship becomes an easy prey for mines planted ahead by a sub- marine. I am convinced, moreover, that no object can be made to float on the surface of the sea that cannot be de- stroyed by the U-boat. I do not believe that any way will be found which will make travel safe for surface ships until a method of seeing through the water for distances of several miles has been per- fected, so that submarines can fight each other beneath the surface.
When the Germans sent the Deutschland to the United States, they taught us a lesson which we have failed to learn. Here is a ship which made two successful voyages to the United States under condi- tions that were the severest that could be imagined for a belligerent cargo-carrier.
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