Conquest of America: A Romance of Disaster and Victory, U.S.A., 1921 A.D.

by Cleveland Moffett

  CHAPTER XXVII

  DECISIVE BATTLE BETWEEN GERMAN FLEET AND AMERICAN SEAPLANES CARRYINGTORPEDOES

  I did as he bade me and was rewarded a week later for my faith andpatience. I subsequently learned that this week (the time of my wonderfulexperience with Mary Ryerson) was spent by the Committee of Twenty-one inexplaining to the Crown Prince exactly what the Widding-Edison inventionwas. Models and blue prints were shown and American and German expertswere called in to explain and discuss all debatable points. And theconclusion, established beyond reasonable doubt, was that German warshipscould not hope to defend themselves against the Widding-Edison method oftorpedo attack. This was admitted by Field Marshal von Hindenburg and byProfessor Hugo Muensterberg, who were allowed to bring scientists of theirown choosing for an absolutely impartial opinion. Unless terms were madethe German fleet faced almost certain destruction.

  The Crown Prince was torn by the hazards of this emergency. He could notdisregard such a weight of evidence. He knew that, without the support ofher fleet, Germany must abandon her whole campaign in the United Statesand withdraw her forces from the soil of America. This meant failure andhumiliation, perhaps revolution at home. The fate of the Hohenzollerndynasty might hang upon his decision.

  "Gentlemen," he concluded haughtily, "I refuse to yield. If I cable theImperial Government in Berlin it will be a strong expression of my wishthat our new army of invasion, under convoy of the German fleet, sailfrom Kiel, as arranged, and join in the invasion of America at theearliest possible moment."

  And so it befell. On January 24th a first section of the new Germanexpedition, numbering 150,000 men, sailed for America. On January 29thour advance fleet of swift scouting aeroplanes, equipped with wirelessand provisioned for a three days' cruise, flew forth from Grand Island inthe Niagara River, and, following the St. Lawrence, swept out over theAtlantic in search of the advancing Teutons.

  Two days later wireless messages received in Buffalo informed us thatGerman transports, with accompanying battleships, had been located offthe banks of Newfoundland and on February 1st our main fleet ofaeroboats, a hundred huge seaplanes, equipped with Widding-Edisontorpedoes, sailed away over Lake Erie in line of battle, flying towardsthe northeast at the height of half a mile, ready for the struggle thatwas to settle the fate of the United States. The prayers of a hundredmillion Americans went with them.

  And now Mr. Edison kept his promise generously by securing for me theprivilege of accompanying him in a great 900-horse-power seaplane fromwhich, with General Wood, he proposed to witness our attack upon theenemy.

  "We may have another passenger," said the General mysteriously as westamped about in our heavy coats on the departure field, for it was acold morning.

  "All aboard," called out the pilot presently from his glass-shelteredseat and I had just taken my place in the right hand cabin when the soundof several swiftly arriving motors drew my attention and, looking out, Iwas surprised to see the Crown Prince alighting from a yellow car aboutwhich stood a formal military escort. General Wood stepped forwardquickly to receive His Imperial Highness, who was clad in aviatorcostume.

  "Our fourth passenger!" whispered Edison.

  "You don't mean that the Crown Prince is going with us?"

  The inventor nodded.

  I learned afterwards that only at the eleventh hour did the imperialprisoner decide to accept General Wood's invitation to join thismemorable expedition.

  "I have come, General," said the Prince, saluting gravely, "because Ifeel that my presence here with you may enable me to serve my country."

  "I am convinced Your Imperial Highness has decided wisely," answered thecommander-in-chief, returning the salute.

  An hour later, at the head of one of the aerial squadrons that stretchedbehind us in a great V, we were flying over snow-covered fields at eightymiles an hour, headed for the Atlantic and the German fleet. Ourseaplanes, the most powerful yet built of the Curtiss-Wright 1922 model,carried eight men, including three that I have not mentioned, a wirelessoperator, an assistant pilot and a general utility man who also served ascook. Two cabins offered surprisingly comfortable accommodations,considering the limited space, and we ate our first meal with keenrelish.

  "We have provisions for how many days?" asked the Crown Prince.

  "For six days," said General Wood.

  "But, surely not oil for six days!"

  "We have oil for only forty-eight hours of continuous flying, but YourImperial Highness must understand that our seaplanes float perfectly onthe ocean, so we can wait for the German fleet as long as is necessaryand then rise again."

  The Prince frowned at this and twisted his sandy moustache into sharperupright points.

  "When do you expect to sight the German fleet?"

  "About noon the day after to-morrow. We shall go out to sea sometime inthe night and most of to-morrow we will spend in ocean manoeuvres. YourImperial Highness will be interested."

  In spite of roaring propellers and my cramped bunk I slept excellentlythat night and did not waken until a sudden stopping of the two enginesand a new motion of the seaplane brought me to consciousness. The day wasbreaking over a waste of white-capped ocean and we learned that CommodoreTower, who was in command of our main air squadron, fearing a storm, hadordered manoeuvres to begin at once so as to anticipate the gale. We wereplaning down in great circles, preparing to rest on the water, and, as Ilooked to right and left, I saw the sea strangely covered with the greatwinged creatures of our fleet, mottle-coloured, that rose and fell as thegreen waves tossed them.

  I should explain that these seaplanes were constructed like catamaranswith twin bodies, enabling them to ride on any sea, and between thesebodies the torpedoes were swung, one for each seaplane, with a simplelowering and releasing device that could be made to function by the touchof a lever. The torpedo could be fired from the seaplane either as itrested on the water or as it skimmed over the water, say at a height often feet, and the released projectile darted straight ahead in the lineof the seaplane's flight.

  With great interest we watched the manoeuvres which consisted chiefly inthe practice of signals, in rising from the ocean and alighting again andin flying in various formations.

  "From how great a distance do you propose to fire your torpedoes?" theCrown Prince asked Mr. Edison, speaking through a head-piece to overcomethe noise.

  "We'll run our seaplanes pretty close up," answered the inventor, "so asto take no chance of missing. I guess we'll begin discharging torpedoesat about 1,200 yards."

  "But your seaplanes will be shot to pieces by the fire of ourbattleships."

  "Some will be, but not many. Our attack will be too swift and sudden.It's hard to hit an aeroplane going a mile in a minute and, before yourgunners can get the ranges, the thing will be over."

  "Besides," put in General Wood, "every man in our fleet is an Americanwho has volunteered for duty involving extreme risk. Every man will givehis life gladly."

  About ten o'clock in the morning on February 3rd our front line flyers,miles ahead of us, wirelessed back word that they had sighted the Germanfleet, and, a few minutes later, we saw smoke columns rising on the fareastern horizon. I shall never forget the air of quiet authority withwhich General Wood addressed his prisoner at this critical moment.

  "I must inform Your Imperial Highness that I have sent a wireless messageto the admiral of the German fleet informing him of your presence here asa voluntary passenger. This seaplane is identified by its signal flagsand by the fact that it carries no torpedo. We shall do everything toprotect Your Imperial Highness from danger."

  "I thank you, sir," the prince answered stiffly.

  General Wood withdrew to his place in the observation chamber beside Mr.Edison.

  Swiftly we flew nearer to the enemy's battleships, which were advancingin two columns, led by two super-dreadnoughts, the _Kaiser Friedrich_ andthe _Moltke_, with the admiral's flag at her forepeak and flanked bylines of destroyers that belched black smoke from their s
quat funnels.With our binoculars we saw that there was much confusion on the Germandecks as they hastily cleared for action. Our attack had evidently takenthem completely by surprise and they had no flyers ready to dispute ourmastery of the air.

  Presently General Wood re-entered the cabin.

  "I have a wireless from Commodore Tower saying that everything is ready.Before it is too late I appeal to Your Imperial Highness to prevent thedestruction of these splendid ships and a horrible loss of life. WillYour Highness say the word?"

  "No!" answered the Crown Prince harshly.

  General Wood turned to the cabin window and nodded to the assistantpilot, who dropped overboard a signal smoke ball that left behind, as itfell, a greenish spiral trail. Straightway, the Commodore's seaplane, amile distant, broke out a line of flags whereupon six flyers from sixdifferent points leaped ahead like sky hounds on the scent, shootingforward and downward towards their mighty prey. The remainder of the skyfleet circled away at safe distances of three, four or five miles,waiting the result of this first blow, confident that the _Moltke_ wasdoomed.

  Doomed she was. In vain the great battleship turned her guns, big andlittle, against these snarling, swooping creatures of the air that cameat her like darting vultures all at once from many sides, but swerved atthe twelve hundred yard line and took her broadside on with theirtorpedoes, fired them and were gone.

  Six white paths streaked the ocean beneath us marking the course of sixtorpedoes and three of them found their target. Three of them missed, butthat was because the gunners were excited. There is no more excuse for atorpedo missing a dreadnought at a thousand yards than there is for apistol missing a barn door at twenty feet!

  The _Moltke_ began to sink almost immediately. Through our glasses wewatched her putting off life boats and we saw that scarcely half of themhad been launched when she lurched violently to starboard and went downby the head. Her boats, led by one flying the admiral's flag, made forthe sister dreadnought, but had not covered a hundred yards whenCommodore Tower signalled again and six other seaplanes darted intoaction and, by the same swift manosuvres, sank the _Kaiser Friedrich_.

  In this action we lost two seaplanes.

  Now General Wood, white-faced, re-entered the cabin.

  "Has Your Imperial Highness anything to say?" asked the Americancommander.

  Silent and rigid sat the heir to the German throne, his hands clenched,his nostrils dilating, his lips hard shut.

  "If not," continued General Wood, "I shall, with great regret, signalCommodore Tower to sink that transport, which means, I fear, the loss ofmany thousands of German lives." He pointed to an immense dark greyvessel of about the tonnage of the _Vaterland_.

  The Crown Prince neither answered nor stirred and again the AmericanCommander nodded to the assistant pilot. Once more the smoke ball fell,the signal of attack was given and a third group of seaplanes spedforward on their deadly mission. The men aboard this enormous transportequalled in numbers the entire male population of fighting age in a citylike New Haven and of these not twenty were saved. And we lost two moreseaplanes.

  We had now used eighteen of our hundred available torpedoes and had sunkthree ships of the enemy.

  At this moment the sun's glory burst through a rift in the dull sky,whereupon our fleet, welcoming the omen, threw forth the stars andstripes from every flyer and sailed nearer the stricken fleet hungry forfurther victories. I counted twenty transports and half a dozenbattleships. Proudly we circled over them, knowing that our power ofdestruction meant safety and honour for America.

  In the observation chamber General Wood watched, frowning while thewireless crackled out another message from Commodore Tower. Where shouldwe strike next?

  In the cabin sat the Crown Prince, his face like marble and the anguishof death in his heart.

  Suddenly, a little thing happened that turned Frederick William towards adecision which practically ended the war. The little thing was a burst ofmusic from the _Koenig Albert_, steaming at the head of the nearerbattleship column two miles distant. On she came, shouldering great wavesfrom her bows while hundreds of blue-jackets lined her rails as if tosalute or defy the tragic fate hanging over them.

  As General Wood appeared once more before his tortured prisoner, therefloated over the sea the strains of "Die Wacht Am Rhein," whereupon up onhis feet came the Crown Prince and, head bared, stood listening to thisgreat hymn of the Fatherland, while tears streamed down his face.

  "I yield," he said in broken tones. "I cannot stand out any longer. Iwill do as you wish, sir."

  "My terms are unconditional surrender," said the American commander, "tobe followed by a truce for peace negotiations. Does Your ImperialHighness agree to unconditional surrender?"

  "Those are harsh terms. In our talk at Chicago Your Excellency only askedthat I prevent this expedition from sailing. I am ready to order theexpedition back to Germany."

  General Wood shook his head.

  "Conditions are different now. Your Imperial Highness refused my Chicagosuggestion and chose the issue of battle which has turned in our favour.To the victors belong the spoils. These battleships are our prizes ofwar. These German soldiers in the troopships are our prisoners."

  "Impossible!" protested the Prince. "Do you think five hundred men inaeroplanes can make prisoners of a hundred and fifty thousand inbattleships?"

  "I do, sir," declared General Wood with grim finality. "There's aperfectly safe prison--down below." He glanced into the green abyss abovewhich we were soaring. "I must ask Your Imperial Highness to decidequickly. The Commodore is waiting."

  Every schoolboy knows what happened then, how the Prince, in this crisis,turned from grief to defiance, how he dared General Wood to do his worst,how the American commander sank the _Koenig Albert_ and two moretransports in the next half hour with a loss of five seaplanes, and how,finally, Frederick William, seeing that the entire German expeditionwould be annihilated, surrendered absolutely and ran up the stars andstripes above German dreadnoughts, transports and destroyers. For thefirst time in history an insignificant air force had conquered a greatfleet. The Widding-Edison invention had made good.

  * * * * *

  I need not dwell upon details of the German-American Peace Conferencewhich occupied the month of February, 1922. These are matters of familiarrecord. The country went from one surprise to another as Germany yieldedpoint after point of her original demands. Under no circumstances wouldshe withdraw her armies from the soil of America unless she received ahuge indemnity, but at the end of a week she agreed to withdraw withoutany indemnity. Firmly she insisted that the United States must abrogatethe Monroe Doctrine, but she presently waived this demand and agreed thatthe Monroe Doctrine might stand. Above all she stood out for theneutralisation of the Panama Canal. Here she would not yield, but at theclose of the conference she did yield and on February 22nd, 1922, Germanysigned the treaty of Pittsburg which gave her only one advantage, namely,the repossession of her captured fleet.

  It was not until a fortnight later, after the invading transports hadsailed for home and the last German soldier had left America, that weunderstood why the enemy had dealt with us so graciously. On March 4th,1922, the news burst upon the world that France and Russia, smartingunder the inconclusive results of the Great War, had struck again at theCentral Empires, and we saw that Germany had abandoned her invasion ofAmerica not because of our air victory, but because she found herselfinvolved in another European war. She was glad to leave the United Stateson any terms.

  A few weeks later in Washington (now happily restored as the nationalcapital) I was privileged to hear General Wood's great speech before ajoint committee of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Thediscussion was on national preparedness and I thrilled as the generalrose to answer various Western statesmen who opposed a defence plancalling for large appropriations on the ground that, in the present warwith Germany and in her previous wars, America had always managed to getthrough creditably wit
hout a great military establishment and alwayswould.

  "Gentlemen," replied General Wood, "let us be honest with ourselves inregard to these American wars that we speak of so complacently, thesewars that are presented in our school books as great and glorious. Howgreat were they? How glorious were they? Let us have the truth.

  "Take our War of the Revolution. Does any one seriously maintain thatthis was a great war? It was not a war at all. It was a series ofskirmishes. It was the blunder of a stupid English king, who never hadthe support of the English people. Our revolutionary armies decreasedeach year and, but for the interposition of the French, our cause, in allprobability, would have been lost.

  "And the war of 1812? Was that great and glorious? Why did we win?Because we were isolated by the Atlantic Ocean (which in these days ofsteam no longer isolates us) and because England was occupied in a deathstruggle with Napoleon.

  "In our Civil War both North and South were totally unprepared. If eitherside at the start had had an efficient army of 100,000 men that sidewould have won overwhelmingly in the first six months.

  "Our war with Spain in 1898 was a joke, a pitiful exhibition ofincompetency and unreadiness in every department. We only won becauseSpain was more unprepared than we were. And as to our great navalvictory, the truth is that the Spanish fleet destroyed itself.

  "Gentlemen, we have never had a real war in America. This invasion byGermany was the beginning of a real war, but that has now beenmarvellously averted. Through extraordinary good fortune we have beendelivered from this peril, just as, by extraordinary good fortune, wegained some successes over the Germans, like the battle of theSusquehanna and our recent seaplane victory, successes that were largelyaccidental and could never be repeated.

  "I assure you, gentlemen, it is madness for us to count upon continueddeliverance from the war peril because in the past we have been lucky,because in the past wide seas have guarded us, because in the past ourenemies have quarrelled among themselves, or because Americanresourcefulness and ingenuity have been equal to sudden emergencies. Topermanently base our hopes of national safety and integrity upon suchgrounds is to choose the course adopted by China and to invite for ourdescendants the humiliating fate that finally overwhelmed China, whichnation has now had a practical suzerainty forced upon her by a muchsmaller power.

  "There is only one way for America to be safe from invasion and that isfor America to be ready for it. We are not ready today, we never havebeen ready, yet war may smite us at any time with all its hideousslaughter and devastation. Our vast possessions constitute the richest,the most tempting prize on earth, and no words can measure the envy andhatred that less rich and less favoured nations feel against us."

  "Gentlemen, our duty is plain and urgent. We must be prepared againstaggression. We must save from danger this land that we love, this greatnation built by our fathers. We must have, what we now notoriously lack,a sufficient army, a satisfactory system of military training,battleships, aeroplanes, submarines, munition plants, all that isnecessary to uphold the national honour so that when an unscrupulousenemy strikes at us and our children he will find us ready. If we arestrong we shall, in all probability, avoid war, since the choice betweenwar and arbitration will then be ours."

  Scenes of wild enthusiasm followed this appeal of the veteran commander,not only at the Capitol, but all over the land when his words were madepublic. At last America had learned her bitter lesson touching the follyof unpreparedness, the iron had entered her soul and now, in 1922, thepeople's representatives were quick to perform a sacred duty that hadbeen vainly urged upon them in 1916. Almost unanimously (even SenatorsWilliam Jennings Bryan and Henry Ford refused to vote againstpreparedness) both houses of Congress declared for the fullest measure ofnational defence. It was voted that we have a strong and fully mannednavy with 48 dreadnoughts and battle cruisers in proportion. It was votedthat we have scout destroyers and sea-going submarines in numberssufficient to balance the capital fleet. It was voted that we have anaerial fleet second to none in the world. It was voted that we have astanding army of 200,000 men with 45,000 officers, backed by a nationalforce of citizens trained in arms under a universal and obligatoryone-year military system. It was voted, finally, that we have adequatemunition plants in various parts of the country, all under governmentcontrol and partly subsidised under conditions assuring ample munitionsat any time, but absolutely preventing private monopolies or excessiveprofits in the munition manufacturing business.

  This was declared to be--and God grant it prove to be--America'sinsurance against future wars of invasion, against alien arrogance andinjustice, against a foreign flag over this land.

  FINIS