Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/214

196 several types, the whole making a formidable gauntlet, which the submarines had to run before they could get from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean. First came a line of British destroyers; it was their main duty to act as protectors and to keep the barrage from being raided by German and Austrian surface ships a function which they fulfilled splendidly. Next came a line of trawlers, then drifters, motor launches, and chasers, the whole being completed by a line of kite balloon sloops. Practically all these vessels, British as well as American, were provided with the American devices; and so well did these ingenious mechanisms function that it was practically impossible for any submarine to pass through the Otranto barrage in calm weather without being heard. In fact, it became the regular custom for the enemy to wait for stormy weather before attempting to slip through this dangerous area, and even under these conditions he had great difficulty in avoiding detection.

From July, 1918, until the day of the armistice, our flotilla at this point kept constantly at work; and the reports of our commanders show that their sound contacts with the enemy were very frequent. There were battles that unquestionably ended in the destruction of the submarines; just how much we had accomplished, however, we did not know until the Austrians surrendered and our officers, at Cattaro and other places, came into touch with officers of the Austrian navy. These men, who showed the most friendly disposition toward their American enemies, though they displayed the most bitter hostility toward the r German allies, expressed their admiration for the work of our subchasers. These little boats, the Austrians now informed us, were responsible for a mutiny in the Austrian submarine force. Two weeks after their arrival it was impossible to compel an Austrian crew to take a vessel through the straits, and from that time until the ending of the war not a single Austrian submarine ventured upon such a voyage. All the submarines that essayed the experiment after this Austrian mutiny were German. And the German crews, the Austrian officers said, did not enjoy the experience any more than their own. There was practically no case in which a submarine crossed the barrage without being bombed in consequence; the moral of the German crews steadily went to pieces,