Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/102

84 very slight. Indeed, a much shorter distance than that was desirable if the torpedo was to accomplish its most destructive purpose. So valuable were these missiles and so necessary was it that every one should be used to good advantage, that the U-boat's captain had instructions to shoot at no greater distance than 300 yards, unless the conditions were particularly favourable. In the early days, the torpedoes which were fired at -a greater distance would often hit the ships on the bow or the stern, and do comparatively little damage; such vessels could be brought in, repaired in a short time, and again put to sea. The German Admiralty discovered that in firing from a comparatively long distance it was wasting its torpedoes; it therefore ordered its men to get so near the prey that it could strike the vessel in a vital spot, preferably in the engine-room; and to do this it was necessary to creep up within 300 yards. But to get as close as that to the destroyers which screened the battleships meant almost certain destruction. Thus the one method of attack which was left to the U-boat was to dive under the destroyer screen and come up in the midst of the battle fleet itself. A few minutes after its presence should become known, however, a large number of destroyers would be dropping depth charges in its neighbourhood, and its chances of escaping destruction would be almost nil, to say nothing of its chances of destroying ships.

The Germans learned the futility of this kind of an operation early in the war, and the man who taught them this lesson was Commander Weddingen, the same officer who had first demonstrated the value of the submarine in practical warfare. It was Otto Weddingen who, in September, 1914, sank the old British cruisers, the Hogue, the Cressy, and the Aboukir, an exploit which made him one of the great popular heroes of Germany. A few months afterward Commander Weddingen decided to try an experiment which was considerably more hazardous than that of sinking three unescorted cruisers; he aspired to nothing less ambitious than an attack upon the Grand Fleet itself. On March 18th a part of this fleet was cruising off Cromarty, Scotland ; here Weddingen came with the U-29, dived under the destroyer screen and fired one torpedo, which passed astern of the Neptune. The