Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/95

1917] necessary for the submarine always to play safe, to fight only under conditions in which it had the enemy at such a disadvantage that it ran little risk itself ; and this was the reason why it preferred to attack merchant and passenger ships rather than vessels, such as the destroyer, that could energetically defend themselves.

The comparatively light draft of the destroyer, which is about nine or ten feet, pretty effectually protects it from the submarine's torpedo, for this torpedo, to function with its greatest efficiency, must take a course about fifteen feet under water ; if it runs nearer the surface than this, it comes under the influence of the waves, and does not make a straight course. More important still, the speed of the destroyer, the ease with which it turns, circles, and zigzags, makes it all but impossible for a torpedo to be aimed with much chance of hitting her. Moreover, the discharge of this missile is a far more complicated undertaking than is generally supposed. The submarine commander cannot take position anywhere and discharge his weapon more or less wildly, running his chances of hitting ; he must get his boat in place, calculate range, course, and speed, and take careful aim. Clearly it is difficult for him to do this successfully if his intended victim is scurrying along at the rate of thirty or forty miles an hour. Moreover, the destroyer is constantly changing its course, making great circles and indulging in other disconcerting movements. So well did the Germans understand the difficulty of torpedoing a destroyer that they practically never attempted so unprofitable and so hazardous an enterprise.

Torpedoes are complicated and expensive mechanisms; each one costs about $8,000 and the average U-boat carried only from eight to twelve ; it was therefore necessary to husband these precious weapons, to use them only when the chances most favoured success ; the U-boat commander who wasted them in attempts to sink destroyers would probably have been court-martialled. But while the submarine had practically no means of successfully fighting the destroyer, the destroyer had several ways of putting an end to the submarine. The advantage which really made the destroyer so dangerous, as already intimated, was its excessive speed. On the surface the U-boat made little more than fifteen miles an