Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X
A Signalman on a Submarine
DON’T think for a moment that Germany was the only country that had a fleet of submarines. The reason that her U-boats came to be so well known was because they had torpedoed the Lusitania and sunk helpless ships right and left no matter who was on them or what they carried.
England and France had fleets of submarines, too, but as their warships had blockaded Germany’s ports there was nothing to torpedo. And when we declared war on the Kaiser, Uncle Sam began to build submarines just as he did chasers, merchant ships and everything else. Except airplanes, did you say? There was no such fizzle made of building submarines as for a time was made of building airplanes in the beginning of the war. Within a short time after we got started our Navy Department was able to turn out a brand-new submarine every two weeks. Think of it! Once the kind and the size of the submarine we needed had been agreed upon by our naval experts, that is, standardized as it is called, machines and jigs were made by which each part was stamped out of a solid sheet of metal, and this was done, not in one or a dozen factories, but in hundreds of factories scattered all over the country and each of which made a single part.
These parts were shipped to docks at various ports on the Atlantic seaboard and there artificers of all kinds were ready to assemble them, that is, to put them together. Thus it was that in two weeks after the ore was mined it was made into parts, assembled and the submarine was ready for its perilous cruise.
While the building of submarines was thus speeded up there was another factor that made for their efficiency as a destructive engine of war which was just as important as the boats themselves and that was the crews to man them. Aye, and there was the rub, for a crew could not be trained for this highly specialized work in less than two months’ time and sometimes it took three or four months.
Because the submarine job was considered an extra-hazardous one, volunteers were called for to man the boats and as an inducement for bluejackets to do so a good bonus, that is, extra pay was offered. Now Bill Adams knew all about submarines, as I think I told you before, for he had worked for the Holland Submarine Boat Company long before the world-war started.
“Let’s me and you go to it, matey,” he said, in one of his bursts of patriotism; “it isn’t quite as soft a snap as we’ve got on this here chaser but we gets more time ashore and then we helps our Uncle Sammy. Besides I’ve made up me mind to buy me mother a flivver; all the washladies in our neighborhood is ridin’ to and from work in them baby land-tanks of Mr. Ford’s, and I guess what they can do she can do, eh, matey?”
“Why not?” I allowed. “She’s got a better right to ride in a motor car than a lot of those high-falutin’ women who live in glass conning towers on Fifth Avenue and never had a son to fight for Uncle Sam. They take everything and they give nothing.”
“Well, I wouldn’t quite say that, matey,” Bill answered thinking hard within the limits of his ability; “I used to be a kind of anarchist myself, I guess, as I always felt as how I’d like to throw a bomb—no, not a bum—into some of them swell places, but I’ve got all over it. Why? Because if it wasn’t for them big bugs, them rich Janes, there wouldn’t be any Red Cross, see? Every last one of ’em that is over eight and under eighty is handin’ out the coin, givin’ the glad hand and workin’ like gobs holystonin’ the decks and scrapin’ cable for us guys what’s in the navy and army. But I’m askin’ you, as man to man, matey, will you volunteer with me for submarine duty?”
“I’m willing to try anything once, Bill, and I’ll take a chance with you on this submarine deal,” I told him.
So Bill and I signed up for submarine service and after the crew to which we belonged had had intensive training for several weeks we were assigned to the H-24 and we went down to Newport to man her. There the first time I saw her she was swinging from a crane high in the air for this was the way they launch these sea babies. She was simply lifted bodily from the dock where she was assembled, swung over the water and gently deposited on the surface.
It was a good thing that I had had experience on a submarine chaser for the quarters of this submarine were so small I couldn’t for the life of me see how her complement of men, of whom there were 36, including officers and seamen, could get into the boat, much less live and do their work. I suffered a good deal at first because when we were all inside her there wasn’t anywhere to go, not even out, when she was submerged. In fact I felt very much as though I was riding in the drawing room of a Pullman, or locked up in jail, which is about the same thing.
As when we were on the chaser, I was the wireless man and Bill was the gunner whose business it was to work the rapid fire gun on deck. Bill didn’t mind being in the close quarters of the submarine at all and I took it that he must have been one of those kids who thought it great fun to snake his way through a fifteen foot length of gas-pipe main that was just big enough around to let his body pass providing he didn’t get stuck.
Do you know I always thought I was a sailor until I went on my first cruise in that submarine. But no, I’m no sailor and you can-take it from me there were precious few of the others of our crew besides the commanding officer and Bill who were sure-enough tars of the old Neptune stripe. I’ll bet you a dollar to a glass of grape-juice that of the thirty-six men on board—or shall I say in board—thirty of them were sea-sick. Of all the rolling and pitching a boat ever did I’ll give the cake to H-24.
Not only that but when we were running light, that is when she was as high out of the water as she could get with all the water out of her ballast tanks, and we had rough weather I had to strap myself in my chair to keep from being thrown around the room. As one of the torpedo men used to sing, “Mr. Captain, stop the ship I want to get out and walk,” and, indeed, I would have given my pay and the bonus to boot to have had my old job back again on the chaser. It was all Bill’s fault and I didn’t mind telling him so either.
“I should worry, matey,” he would say, and that’s all the satisfaction I could get out of him.
After the rookies got over being seasick we went out on practise trips when each man was taught all about the machinery and how to work it. This was done so that in case a man was put out of action another could take his place. It didn’t take me very long to get hep to all the tricks for I already knew the A B C of oil engines, which again came in handy; storage batteries were right in my line and the rest of the machinery was pie for me.
The H-24 has a hull that is very much like a huge catfish, that is it has a blunt round head and the torpedo tubes, one on either side, look for all the world like a pair of great eyes; the body tapers off gracefully to a point at the tail and on this the direction rudder is attached. Two horizontal rudders, or hydroplanes as they are called, by which the submarine is given its diving angle, are fastened one to each side of her head and give the appearance of a pair of great lateral fins.
Her hull is built up of thin but exceedingly strong sheets of steel and these are riveted together in the same fashion as the hull of any steel ship. When you consider that the hull of a submarine must be able to stand a pressure of at least 200 pounds to the square inch—as much as a high pressure steam boiler—without collapsing when it is fully submerged it must be clear that the strongest steel plate which can be made must be used.
A steel deck, or superstructure as it is called, covers the top of the hull from bow to stern, nearly, and on its middle sets the conning tower. A steering wheel and compass are fixed to the side of the conning tower so that the boat can be steered from the outside when she is running light or awash.
A short mast, called a stanchion, is also fixed to the conning tower and this carries the signal lights and holds one end of the aerial, the other end being fastened to the stern. It isn’t much of an aerial but as our submarine was built for coast patrol cruising we were never very far from shore.
The inside of the hull is partitioned off into rooms, or compartments, and these can be shut off from each other by means of bulkhead doors and so made watertight. The purpose of these watertight compartments is to prevent the water from filling the whole boat if she should be unlucky enough to be hit by a shell or rammed by a ship. To my way of thinking watertight compartments seem to be of little use whether the boat be a submarine or the largest ship. For instance when the Titanic was scrapped by an iceberg and the Lusitania was hit by a U-boat torpedo they both went down in a few minutes.
I won’t try to tell you what all the different compartments have in them but some of them are most uncommonly interesting and these you should know about. The first is the conning tower with its periscope. When the submarine is running either light or awash and the weather is good the commander can see what’s what around him from the deck or from the bridge, as we call the top of the conning tower. When the weather is rough or an enemy is nigh he takes a look around through the ports, that is, watertight windows, in the conning tower.
Should, however, the boat be submerged and the captain wants to size up the situation he permits only the top of her periscope to project out of the water and through this he scans the sea. Whenever I got a chance I used to look through the periscope. At first it was hard for me to make out a vessel on the surface because the field of view was small and what with the boat rolling from port to starboard it seemed to me I was always looking at the water or the sky; but after awhile I got so I could take in whatever there was to see in between times.
Our submarine had two periscopes, one of the older kind that you have to turn around in order to see the whole horizon, and the other, which was the latest style, showed the whole horizon at once with a magnified view of the ship or other vessel in the distance in the center. This scheme was a great invention as it prevented us from being attacked from behind unawares. It was like having a third eye in the back of your head.
Inside the conning tower are also speaking tubes and an electric system of lights and bells worked by pushbuttons and these run into all the compartments; by means of these intelligence transmission systems our captain could get in touch instantly with the chiefs of the crew in the engine, diving, torpedo and wireless rooms.
There are also several instruments in the conning tower and among these is a depth meter, that is, a device that shows just how far below the surface of the water the boat is. An inclinometer which points out the angle at which the diving rudder, or hydroplane is set, and a tell-tale, that is a bank of miniature lamps, each of which is connected to a detector in a compartment. Now if the boat should spring a leak the detector closes the current and the lamp is hit.
Then there is another electrical system that closes all the bulkhead doors by electricity. The instant the tell-tale lamp lights up and shows that a compartment is leaking the commander presses a button which rings a bell in it and this warns any of the crew who may happen to be in it to get out; by throwing a switch the current operating the motors which work the bulkhead door is cut in and the door is screwed down watertight. Should a shell put the conning tower out of commission the boat can still be steered from the navigating room in her hull.
The power plant that drove the H-24 was a big 12-cylinder oil burning engine that developed, I should say, about 3,000 horse-power and it worked on the same general plan as a motor car engine. Now when the boat runs light or awash the engine drives her propeller direct and at the same time the engine runs a dynamo and this charges a large storage battery.
But when the boat is running submerged the engine has to be shut down because the burnt gases cannot exhaust into the water as the pressure of the latter is too great. A powerful electric motor is coupled to the propeller shaft and this is energized by the current from the storage battery.
The ballast tanks into and from which water is pumped to make the boat sink and rise is in the middle of the bottom of the hull. The torpedo room is for’ard in the bow of the boat, our sleeping quarters aft of this and my wireless room lay between our sleeping quarters and the navigating room.
While life on the submarine was not exactly what you would call a pleasure bout still we were all keyed up to the point where we wanted to get in our fine work on the boches. Finally the time came when we received orders to move and while only the officers knew where to or for what purpose at the time of departure we were all let into the secret after we had got under way.
At the beginning of the war the Germans had vessels of various sizes in all parts of the world. Those that were in our ports were interned while some of the smaller ones that were at sea became pirate ships, technically known as raiders. They flew the flag of Germany when it suited them to do so but they hoisted any flag that would best help out their diabolical plans.
These raiders scoured the seven seas and whenever they ran across an unarmed merchant ship bound for any port of the Allies they promptly shelled and sunk her and, more often than not, without giving the ill-fated crew enough time to take to the life boats. As Bill Adams used to say, “I calls it murder.”
Of course if the raiders could have taken their prizes to their own ports they would gladly have done so for Germany sorely needed whatever cargoes they carried, but the raiders could not do this for the Allies had blockaded every port of the Central Powers. This being true the next best thing to do from the German point of view was to sink the ship and drown the crew.
There were two or three of these German raiders steaming up and down our Atlantic coast and they operated a few hundred miles off shore and out of the beaten paths. It seemed likely that they worked, part of the time at least, in conjunction with U-boats for whenever a ship went forth armed a torpedo sank her but if she was unarmed the raider’s guns sent her to the bottom.
Uncle Sam was getting mighty tired of this sort of business and so he hatched up a little scheme. A small steamer, the Henrietta, was fitted out without guns, painted a sea-gray and flew the stars and stripes when she was sent to sea. Our submarine was sent with her, not exactly as a convoy for she was not sailing for any overseas port but instead she was sent out simply as a decoy.
We followed her at a distance of about a mile and as long as there were no other ships in sight we ran light, though the way the waves broke over her she seemed to be running awash most of the time. This made no difference to us and it was a great relief to come up from our stuffy holes and walk the deck. Of all my sea-going experiences I liked this much the best.
Why? You know how a city chap with a drop of red blood in his veins likes to get out in the woods and walk, eat and sleep on the ground. He does it simply because he gets as close to nature as he ever can and know about it. Well, when I walked the bit of deck of the H-24 I got just as close to the sea as I could and yet stay above water and there was a mighty fascination about it too.
We cruised about most of the time in a light condition, though we occasionally had to sub- merge and tagged around after the Henrietta which acted as a base, or mother-ship to us. It was a curious thing how merchant ships that made every effort to keep out of the way of raiders would run right into them and that the Henrietta who was out for this very purpose couldn’t meet up with anything more dangerous than a sea-gull.
But hold, matey, what’s that the Captain of the Henrietta sends over by wireless? We can’t see the ship for we set too close to the water but he can make it out very well with his glasses. We dive until we are completely submerged but still following in the wake of the Henrietta according to a prearranged scheme.
“Ship headed for us,” the Henrietta’s Captain signaled our Commander by our sound conduction system.
“She flies the French flag,” he sent to us next.
Then later on I got this and handed it to our commander:
“Believe she’s a German raider.”
Every man was at his post and ready and anxious to do his duty. When the raider, which was the Koln and one of the worst offenders of her kind, was within half-a-mile of the Henrietta she sent a shot over her bow and signaled her to stand by. This she did and then the Captain of the Koln signaled that he would send his officers to examine her papers and cargo—to get whatever gold she might have —and this he promptly did. At the same time he had her guns trained on the helpless Henrietta to prevent her from trying to steam away or putting on all speed and ramming her with her sharp bow.
Just as the officers of the Koln were being lowered in a launch the Captain of the Henrietta signaled our commander just two words and these were: “Torpedo her.”
We came to the surface about a thousand feet from and on the port side of the Koln and took her completely by surprise Her gunners began blazing away at us but they had evidently not been trained in the gentle art of
swatting submarines for the trajectory of their shells was way too flat, that is it was not curved enough and with, possibly, two exceptions they struck the water and instead of sinking they ricocheted, that is they were thrown from it again on the same principle that a flat stone skips along on the water when you throw it nearly parallel to its surface.
Bill was right there with his semi-automatic and dropped a couple of shells on the deck of the Koln. In less time than it takes to tell it to you our commander had swung our submarine round so that one of her torpedo tubes was pointed directly at the Koln and gave the signal to the officer of the torpedo crew to shoot the torpedo. He turned on the compressed air which drives the torpedo from its tube and it shot out and into the sea. We watched it with all eyes as it traveled like a blue streak under its own power below the surface and dead on for the broadside of the Koln.
The German crew saw the white trail it left behind and they must have become panic-stricken for some of them jumped overboard, others manned the lifeboats and bungled the job so that two of the boats capsized before they ever touched the water. In less than a minute the torpedo struck the hull amidships, passed through it to the inside and exploded with a terrific report.
It looked to me as if the whole ship was thrown bodily out of the water by the sheer force of the explosion and then parted in her middle. As she settled down on the water a great black cloud of smoke poured out of her hold and when the air struck her she caught fire and was soon a solid, seething sheet of flame. It was the most magnificent spectacle I have ever seen from longitude 0 to 70 degrees west of Greenwich and from the Equator to the Pole.
Different from the German idea of kultur, instead of letting the crew of the Koln drown, the Captain of the Henrietta sent out boats and stood by until all of them were picked up and on board his ship.
We then sailed back to our naval base where the German crew was taken off and interned in a concentration camp until the war ended. Their fighting days were over while on the other hand mine had just commenced.