Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/205

 with fellows who know and can and will answer his questions intelligently. Bill was ignorant when it came to book-learning but he knew all about submarines and submarine chasers from their bottoms up.

I had asked him why it was that a torpedo from a U-boat couldn’t hit a submarine chaser and also to tell me something about the fighting qualities of U-boats.

“You see, matey,” explained Bill wisely, “the torpedoes made for the Kaiser’s U-boats are adjusted so that after they are shot from their tubes they run through the water at an even depth of between 8 and 9 feet below the surface. Now a boat of any size draws far more water than this and, of course, if the torpedo hits her at all it will be below the water line and she goes down. But this chaser of ours draws only 4 feet of water and so a torpedo, if it behaves itself, would pass clean under her and never touch her.

“The trouble is,” he went on, “that there never was a torpedo made that stuck to its course and it is liable to shift to the port or starboard or to come to the surface and for this reason we never take a chance but dodge them.