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Rh of unrestricted warfare in Hindenburg and Ludendorff. The topic was again discussed on Sept. 3 1916 at Great Headquarters at Pless in the presence of the Chancellor, Hindenburg, Luden- dorff and Adml. von Holtzendorff, and it was finally decided to postpone it till an effort had been made to come to terms. Then followed the note of Dec. 12 1916 calling on the Allies to avoid further bloodshed, and on Dec. 22 the naval staff presented another memorandum in which it was hoped to reduce British shipping by 39% in five months, on a basis of 600,000 tons monthly, an estimate which turned out to be excessive, for by June 1917 British shipping had been reduced only from 18-2 to 16-6 million tons, a reduction of only 9-1 %. The offer to negoti- ate was rejected by the Allies, and it was decided on Jan. 9 to commence unrestricted warfare on Feb. i 1917. All Germany was waiting for the decision. The Reichstag listened to the Chancellor's announcement in breathless silence, and on Feb. 3 the American ambassador left Berlin. Germany now had 148 submarines, of which 28 were in the Mediterranean and some 20 in Flanders. She had commenced with 28 and had lost 51. The repairs incurred at Jutland, the provision of patrol vessels and the vacillations of policy had reacted on submarine building, and von Capelle had only laid down 90 boats to Tirpitz's 186, but during 1917 269 more were ordered and it was hoped to keep pace with the demand. The barred zone announced by Germany on Jan. 31 1917 in which all shipping was liable to be sunk extended roughly from Terschelling (Holland) to Udsire (Norway) , thence to the Faroe Is. and passing down the meridian of long. 20 W., 350 m. from the coast of Ireland, went on to Finisterre. It also included the Mediterranean with the exception of its western portion round Majorca and a narrow track 20 m. wide as far as Greece. The area round Archangel was added to it

NAVAL SUBMARINE CAMPAIGNS

GERMAN BARRED ZONES

in March 1917, and on Jan. n 1918 it was extended to the meridian of long. 30 W., 720 m. from the coast of Ireland, and two large areas were added round the Azores and C. Verde Is.

The effects of the new campaign were quickly felt. The sys- tem under which traffic approached Great Britain on routes patrolled by ships and trawlers with a sprinkling of destroyers proved incapable of meeting the emergency. Losses of Allied merchant ships rose from 171 in Jan. to 234 in Feb., 281 in March and 373 in April. This was the black month of the war. At this rate one ship in every four that left British shores did not

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return, and by Nov. 1917 the irreducible margin of shipping would probably have been reached. The effects were most severely felt in the Channel, Mediterranean and the routes south of Ireland (called the Fastnet and Scilly approaches), which were strewn with the hulls of sunken ships. The outlook was dark and perplexing to those who saw the Grand Fleet remaining mistress of a sea which was becoming a cemetery for British shipping, and had not realized the fact that the battle fleets were becoming subsidiary factors in a new form of the guerre de course. The efforts to deal with the situation took a threefold form. Firstly, a convoy system (see CONVOY) was introduced involving the escort of merchant shipping at sea and the control of all shipping movements; secondly, the naval staff was reorganized so as to insure a due status for the convoy system," and a planning section and anti-submarine division were added to it (see ADMIRALTY ADMINISTRATION) ; thirdly, invention and research were speeded up in the technical fields of mines,, depth charges and hydro- phones. These efforts were successful. Gradually the losses of ships went down and the losses of submarines crept up.

The enemy's operations can only be broadly described; his principal areas were the approaches to the Channel and Irish Sea, the North Sea (particularly off the Yorks. coast), the Chan- nel and Mediterranean. The number of submarines operating varied. As a rule there might be two or three (converted mercan- tile) operating in the Azores and on the Dakar (W. Africa) coast, 8 or 9 U boats in the Atlantic approach (from longitude 7 to 12 W.) and on their way there and back, 4 or 5 (including a couple of Flanders UC) in the Channel and its approach, with 5 UB (Flanders) and 2 UC (Flanders) in the North Sea. In the Mediterranean there were usually 4 to 6 submarines at work, i including i or 2 on the N. African coast, i or 2 round Italy, i perhaps off Salonika, 2 off Egypt, Syria and Crete. This gives a total of some 25-30 submarines at work. The tonnage sunk per submarine varied. Curiously enough the average bag was con- siderably more in the time of restricted warfare than it was in 1917-8. In the former period it was probably something like 16,000 tons a trip. U49 on her first trip in Nov. 1916 in the Channel and Bay of Biscay sank 40,000 tons, and Forstmann, Arnauld de la Periere and Max Valentiner in the Mediterranean thought little of 20,000 tons a trip in 1916. But in 1917 the average bag was probably not much more than 8,000 tons for a U boat and 3,000 for a UB or UC. In the North Sea in Jan. 1918 a U boat was fairly fortunate to get 4,000 tons, and in the Chan- nel 6,000 tons had become a fair bag.

Progress of Counter Measures. In the anti-submarine campaign great progress was made in technical devices, and larger depth charges were supplied in greater quantities. Type D charge (300 Ib. T.N.T.) entirely superseded type D x (120^.), and the output was increased. Destroyers carried five or s'x instead of one or two; some were equipped with as many as 20 or 30, and the number of submarines sunk by depth charges rose from 8 in 1917 to 15 in 1918. Decoys (generally designated Q ships) continued effective in 1917, and five submarines were sunk by them during the year. These were merchant ships manned with a trained crew and armed with guns carefully concealed by special devices. On a submarine opening fire the ship would stop and a portion of the crew called the " panic party " took to the boats, lowering them carelessly and hurriedly in the hope that the submarine would approach and board the vessel. If she did the bulwarks fell and a deadly fire was poured into her at close quarters. Capt. Gordon Campbell was the most successful exponent of this stratagem. Utf fell to his ship, the " Pargust," on Feb. 17 1917 off the southwest of Ireland, and UC2g was sunk by her on June 7 in the same area, bringing him a V.C. His last ship, the " Dunraven," sank on Aug. 10 after a heroic action with U6i, in which the after gun's crew remained steady at their post with the poop blazing under them and were blown up with the gun rather than betray the nature of their ship. The "Prize," (Lt. Wm. Sanders) and the " Stonecrop " (Comdr. Morris Blackwood) were also gallant ships, the former sinking U88 out in the Atlantic on Sept. 17 and both being sunk by submarines. By Sept. 1917 the decoy had lost its efficacy, though four were