Another American who suffered an enforced voyage on an unterseeboot made public later some of his experiences. His captor's craft was a good sized one--about 250 feet long, with a crew of 35 men and mounting two 4-1/2 inch guns. She could make 18 knots on the surface and 11 submerged and had a radius of 3200 miles of action. Her accommodations were not uncomfortable. Each officer had a separate cabin while the crew were bunked along either side of a narrow passage. The ventilation was excellent, and her officers declared that they could stand twenty-four hours continuous submergence without discomfort, after that for six hours it was uncomfortable, and thereafter intolerable because of the exudation of moisture--or sweating--from every part. At such times all below have to wear leather suits. The food was varied and cooked on an electric stove. The original stores included preserved pork and beef, vegetables, tinned soups, fruits, raisins, biscuits, butter, marmalade, milk, tea, and coffee. But the pleasures of the table depended greatly on the number of their prizes, for whenever possible they made every ship captured contribute heavily to their larder before sinking her. Of the tactics followed the observer writes:
It appears that 55 per cent., or more than half, of the torpedoes fired miss their mark, and with this average they seem satisfied. Once they let go at a ship two torpedoes at 3000 yards' range, and both missed, the range being too long but they did not care to come any nearer, as they believed the ship to be well armed.
They prefer to fire at 500 to 700 yards, which means that at this range the track or "wake" of a projectile would be discernible for, say, twenty-five to thirty seconds--not much time, indeed, for any ship to get out of the way. At 100 yards' range or less they do not care to fire unless compelled to, as the torpedo is nearly always discharged when the submarine is lying ahead of the object, i. e., to hit the ship coming up to it; it follows that a gun forward is more useful than one aft, the gun aft being of real service when a submarine starts shelling, which she will do for choice from aft the ship rather than from forward of her, where she would be in danger of being run over and rammed.
SUBMARINE WARFARE
At the moment of writing these words the outcome of the greatest war the world has ever known is believed by many to hang upon the success with which the Allies can meet and defeat the campaign of the German submarines. The German people believe this absolutely. The Allies and their sympathizers grudgingly admit that they are only too fearful that it may be true.
To such a marvellous degree of military efficiency has the ingenuity of man brought these boats which so recently as our Civil War were still in the vaguest experimental stage and scarcely possessed of any offensive power whatsoever!
Nevertheless these machines had reached a degree of development, and had demonstrated their dangerous character so early in the war that it was amazing that the British were so slow in comprehending the use that might be made of them in cutting off British commerce. It is true that the first submarine actions redounded in their results entirely to British credit. In September of 1914 a British submarine ran gallantly into Heligoland Bay and sank the German light cruiser Hela at her moorings. Shortly after the Germans sought retaliation by attacking a British squadron, but the effort miscarried. The British cruiser Birmingham caught a glimpse of her wake and with a well-aimed shot destroyed her periscope. The submarine dived, but shortly afterwards came up again making what was called a porpoise dive--that is to say, she came up just long enough for the officer in the conning tower to locate the enemy, then submerged again. Brief, however, as had been the appearance of the conning tower, the British put a shell into it and in a few minutes the submarine and most of her crew were at the bottom of the sea.
