Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/234

216 from that of the Commander-in-Chief down, upon whose activities they were not at liberty to submit the fullest and the frankest reports. If anything could be done in a better way, we certainly wanted to know it. Whenever any specific problem of importance came up, it was always submitted to these men for a report. The value of such a report depended upon the completeness and accuracy of the information available, and it was the business of the Intelligence Department of the staff to supply this. If the desired information was not in their files, or the files of the Allied admiralties, or was not up to date, it was their duty to obtain it at once. The point is that the Planning Section had no other duties beyond rendering a decision, based upon a careful analysis of the facts bearing upon the case, which they submitted in writing. There was no phase of the naval warfare upon which the officers of the Planning Section did not give us reports. One of their favourite methods was to place themselves in the position of the Germans and to decide how, if they were directing German naval operations, they would frustrate the tactics of the Allies. Their records contain detailed descriptions of how merchant ships could be sunk by submarines, and these methods, our officers believed, represented a great improvement over those used by the Germans. Indeed, I think that many of these reports, had they fallen into the hands of the Germans, would have been found by them exceedingly useful. There was a general impression, in our own navy as well as in the British, that most of the German submarine commanders handled their boats unskilfully and obtained inadequate results. All these documents were given to the responsible men in our forces, as well as to the British, and had a considerable influence upon operations. The British also established a Planning Section, which worked harmoniously with our own.

A subject upon which our Planning Section liked to speculate was the possible sortie of the German fleet. The possibility of a great naval engagement filled the minds of most naval officers; and, after we had sent five of our battleships to reinforce Admiral Beatty's fleet, this topic became even more interesting to American naval men. Would the Germans ever come out? What had they to gain or to lose by such an undertaking ? What were their chances of victory? Where would the engagement be