Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/350

332 concentration of effort is at present being pursued by the enemy and not by the Allies.

6. We are dispersing our forces while the enemy is concentrating his. The enemy's submarine mission is and must continue to be the destruction of merchant shipping. The limitations of submarines and the distances over which they must operate prevent them from attacking our naval forces, that is, anti-submarine craft. They cannot afford to engage anti-submarine craft with guns; they must use torpedoes. If they should do so to any considerable extent their limited supply would greatly reduce their period of operation away from base, and the number of merchantmen they could destroy. Their object is to avoid contact with anti-submarine craft. This they can almost always do, as the submarine can see the surface craft at many times the distance the surface craft can see a periscope, particularly one less than two inches in diameter. Moreover, the submarine greatly fears the anti-submarine craft because of the great danger of the depth charges. Our tactics should therefore be such as to force the submarine to incur this danger in order to get within range of merchantmen.

7. It therefore seems to go without question that the only course for us to pursue is to revert to the ancient practice of convoy. This will be purely an offensive measure, because if we concentrate our shipping into convoys and protect it with our naval forces we will thereby force the enemy, in order to carry out his mission, to encounter naval forces which are not embarrassed with valuable cargoes, and which are a great danger to the submarine. At present our naval forces are wearing down their personnel and material in an attempted combination of escorting single ships, when they can be picked up, and also of attempting to seek and offensively engage an enemy whose object is to avoid such encounters. With the convoy system the conditions will be reversed. Although the enemy may easily know when our convoys sail, he can never know the course they will pursue or the route of approach to their destinations. Our escorting forces will thus be able to work on a deliberate prearranged plan, preserving their oil supplies and energy, while the enemy will be forced to disperse his forces and seek us. In a word, the handicap we now labour under will be shifted to the enemy; we will have adopted the essential principal of concentration while the enemy will lose it.

8. The most careful and thorough study of the convoy system made by the British Admiralty shows clearly that while we may have some losses under this system, owing to lack of adequate number of anti-submarine craft, they nevertheless will not be critical as they are at present.

9. I again submit that if the Allied campaign is to be viewed