A Naval History of World War I
Page 76
The troopship convoys suffered relatively few losses, although they were not unscathed. In the British-controlled convoys from New York and Halifax, the Tuscania (14,348 tons) in Halifax convoy HX.20 carrying 2,000 American and Canadian troops was torpedoed and sunk by UB.77 on 5 February, 7 miles north of Rathlin Island light vessel off the northern Irish coast—166 troops and 44 crew were lost. The armed merchant cruiser Moldavia also had been carrying troops when she was sunk in May while escorting convoy HC.1 in the English Channel. Not all losses were due to enemy action. The armed merchant cruiser Otranto (12,124 tons) was carrying troops while escorting New York convoy HX.50. On 6 October, while in the Irish Sea, she was rammed by the P&O liner Kashmir (8,985 tons), also carrying American troops, whose steering had broken down. The Otranto, sinking, grounded off the Isle of Islay, but 362 troops and 69 crew lost their lives.
The American-controlled convoys enjoyed better luck. The losses tended to be where routes converged on the approaches to French ports. All were westbound ships returning for more troops and, consequently, more lightly protected than on their troop-laden voyage eastbound. German submarines torpedoed five American troop transports, of which three sank. The smaller, former Southern Pacific Railway Company New York-New Orleans steamer Antilles (6,800 tons) was torpedoed and sunk, 17 October 1917, the former Hamburg-Amerika liner President Lincoln (18,162 tons) on 31 May 1918, and the former Hamburg-Amerika liner Cincinnati, now the transport Covington (16,339 tons), on 1 July. The two liners torpedoed by submarines that managed to make port were the former Red Star liner Finland (12,222 tons), torpedoed 28 October 1917, and the former North German Lloyd liner Kronprinzessin Cecilie, now the Mount Vernon (19,503 tons), torpedoed 5 September. The American convoys had their share of mishaps, including fire at sea and collisions in convoy, usually when a ship’s steering failed. They also evaded or beat off submarine attacks. The loss of life in the ships torpedoed was mostly among crew rather than troops and, tragic as it might have been, was trifling compared to the vast number of men moved across the Atlantic. The losses caused by the great influenza epidemic of 1918 were much worse. There were probably close to 15,000 cases of influenza and pneumonia that developed during the Atlantic voyages, which are estimated to have claimed more than 2,000 lives, more than 700 of them soldiers. The situation grew serious enough for the War Department to reduce the number of troops embarked on each liner by 10 percent.103
The last word on the Atlantic bridge might be given to a young British naval officer, Sub-Lieutenant G. M. Eady, who had been first lieutenant in the sloop Hollyhock in the Mediterranean for more than a year. The Hollyhock was one of those hard-worked, ubiquitous Flower-class sloops that did yeoman service in the antisubmarine war and that had paid off at Gibraltar for a long refit. Eady was on his way home through France for leave in mid-October 1918 and described how his train made such slow progress and with frequent halts so that it was possible to get out and walk without fear of being left behind:
The chief cause of our delays were the movements of huge numbers of Americans across France. In fact we scarcely saw any Frenchmen in the country, all the soldiers were Americans, and more than half the rolling stock and Red Cross trains were also from America. The whole of France seemed to have been bought up by the Yank. He had built his own camps, railways, stores, everything. It was a pity some of the German submarine commanders could not see the stuff that was slipping by them.104
There could be no clearer testimony to the final failure of the U-boat offensive.
THE NORTHERN BARRAGE
The Northern barrage was a major—one is tempted to say prodigious—effort to bar exit from the North Sea to submarines by means of minefields laid between the Orkney Islands and Norwegian territorial waters in the approaches to Hardanger Fjord to the south of Bergen. It was similar to the effort to bar the Straits of Dover but on a much larger scale. The idea of a great North Sea minefield was advanced by the Bureau of Ordnance in Washington shortly after the American entry into the war. Sims had been opposed; they needed all the surface craft they could assemble for the convoy system, and “to have started the North Sea barrage in the spring and summer of 1917 would have meant abandoning the convoy system”—which would have been “sheer madness.” The idea nevertheless had strong support in Washington and surfaced again at an inter-Allied conference in London in September 1917 at which Admiral Mayo, commander of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, was present. The General Board of the U.S. Navy was won over to the project, and Benson, who was originally opposed, became a strong advocate when he visited London later in the fall.105 The Northern barrage was agreed to in principle, but its execution was contingent on the availability of sufficient patrol craft, minelayers, and, of course, reliable mines. Jellicoe estimated its completion would require 100,000 mines, and as British factories were fully committed, American industry would have to be used. The Northern barrage became for the U.S. Navy what one historian terms “the one naval effort of its own devising that it succeeded in merchandising to the western coalition.”106 The technical preparations, however, took considerable time, and the British did not commence laying the first fields in the western section (Area B) until 3 March 1918.
There were three areas. The largest, Area A, was approximately 130 miles long and would be laid by the U.S. Navy. The western sector, the approximately 50-mile-long Area B, and the eastern sector, the approximately 70-mile-long Area C, would be laid by the British. In practice the Americans joined the British in laying Areas B and C, partially to take advantage of the greater minelaying capacity of the American minelayers. The minefields in the three sectors differed. Area B had deep minefields and strong patrols to force submarines to dive into those fields. The large Area A had only a shallow field laid in successive lines and, presumably, did not require strong patrols. Area C was considered too far away for patrols and therefore had both deep and shallow mines.
The American force, commanded by Rear Admiral Joseph Strauss, commander of the Mine Force, required an immense logistical effort. The Americans developed a new type of “antenna” mine as opposed to the “contact” mines in service. The antenna mine exploded when a ship brushed a long copper antenna rising to the surface from whatever depth the mine was laid. This eliminated the need for a ship to contact the mine itself and, in theory, reduced the number of mines necessary to make an effective field. The mines were brought from factories to a loading depot at St. Julien’s Creek, Virginia, near the Norfolk Navy Yard where a fleet of 21—some accounts say 24—Lake-class cargo ships brought them to ports on the west coast of Scotland. The Lakes were another wartime development. The Naval Overseas Transportation Service operated about 67 of the class. They were standardized small—approximately 2,300 tons—ships built by yards on the Great Lakes, their size limited by the necessity of passing through the Welland Canal at Niagara Falls.107 The mines they carried were hauled from the west coast of Scotland by rail and canal to special assembly plants established at Invergordon and Inverness. The actual minelaying force, Mine Squadron One of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet under the command of Captain Reginald R. Belknap, consisted of the old cruisers San Francisco (flag) and Baltimore, converted to minelayers before the U.S. entry into the war, and eight other converted merchant vessels, generally coastwise steamers. The large ships were capable of laying 5,500 mines in a four-hour operation. The Americans began minelaying in the central Area A simultaneously with British activity in Area C on 8 June.108
The British had grave doubts about the reliability of the American mines. British patrols consistently reported hearing what they considered to be premature explosions in the American minefields and doubted that American mines laid as deep as 85 feet would seriously harm a submarine passing on the surface. The Americans, in turn, did not believe the British gave their wholehearted support to the barrage or really fulfilled their promises regarding their contribution. Beatty was, indeed, dubious and believed the Admiralty had committed themselves to doing too much. He would have pref
erred much smaller minefields laid in the Kattegat, Fair Island Channel, and northern and southern entrances to the Irish Sea. The reported premature explosions of the American mines led Beatty to charge in August that the Admiralty had foolishly accepted the American claims the mines would do what they were claimed to do, with the result that they had wasted valuable vessels, time, and material “in planting the North Sea with stuff which debars us from using it and can do no harm to the enemy.” Wemyss sought to mollify him, but hardly displayed great enthusiasm when he explained that the decision about the American mines had been reached when the submarine campaign overshadowed everything and that “drastic measures necessitating the whole-hearted operations of the Americans were required, and this, I believe, it was only possible to obtain by agreeing to the use of their mines.”109 Wemyss was also anxious to avoid giving offence to Sims, although in fact Sims was never an enthusiastic supporter of the barrage. The commander of American naval forces in European waters remained a staunch supporter of the convoy system as the most effective means of fighting the U-boats.110
Given Beatty’s state of mind, it is not surprising there was a major difference of opinion between the allies in August when the Americans proposed to supplement the deep mines in the western Area B with shallow mines. The proposal was based on intelligence that German submarines had been avoiding the central and eastern areas and passing through either Area B or Norwegian territorial waters. Beatty insisted that a 10-mile gap should be left east of the Orkneys to permit the Grand Fleet to cut off any German raiders that might force the barrage in an attempt to attack the Scandinavian convoys. Beatty also opposed the Admiralty’s desire to mine the 3 miles of Norwegian territorial waters at the eastern edge of the barrage, with or without the consent of the Norwegians, should the latter decline to mine it themselves with British-supplied mines. The leads between the islands and the Norwegian coast would still be open, and a British violation of Norwegian neutrality would certainly cause the Germans to do the same. This would mean an interruption of traffic bound for Britain, which proceeded through coastal waters around the south of Norway before being formed into convoy at Bergen. Beatty found the whole idea of coercion of a small friendly neutral repugnant. In the end Beatty and the Americans compromised: a 3-mile gap in the minefields was maintained. As for the Norwegians, diplomacy eventually prevailed, and in late September the Norwegian government declared that as of 7 October the Northern barrage would be extended through their territorial waters in the vicinity of Utsire. The war ended before any of the mines were actually laid.111
While the British and Americans were laying the barrage in July, the British continued to waste considerable time and effort “hunting” submarines with hydrophones in the western sector north of the barrage. Following intelligence that a large U-cruiser would be homeward bound, there was a major sweep in the area between the Shetland and Faeroe Islands 12–14 July. The hunting force consisted of a destroyer leader, two destroyers, three sloops, and five divisions of trawlers. They were in contact with a submarine, but after a sixteen-hour chase had nothing to show for their efforts.112 British hydrophone hunting was no more successful than the efforts of the American submarine chasers.
The strong force of the northern patrol, which had participated in these fruitless hunts, was suddenly shifted to Buncrana by the Admiralty in August. The move was caused by an apparent increase in German submarine attacks on convoys in the northwestern approaches to the northern entrance to the Irish Sea. The northern patrols were now in a position to assist the convoys, but the move had, in effect, nullified a certain portion of the plan for the Northern barrage. The submarines were supposed to be driven into the deep minefields by the strong patrols on the surface, similar to the operations in the Straits of Dover. The Northern barrage became, in the words of the official British historian, “more a dangerous obstacle than a death-trap into which our surface forces were to drive the German submarines.”113
There is something typically American about the Northern barrage that foreshadowed American performance in the Second World War. There was tremendous effort, great enthusiasm, much money, and considerable ingenuity directed toward implementing a bold project, huge in scale. By the time of the armistice there had been thirteen American and twelve British minelaying excursions on the barrage, the last on 24 October. The barrage had been thickened in places to a depth of 35 miles. A grand total of 70,263 mines had been laid, of which 56,611 were American. The cost had been approximately $40 million—and these were 1918 dollars.114 There is, however, the nagging question of whether it was worth it. This immense effort and expense had been undertaken in the last six months of the war when the convoy system had proved itself. Furthermore, the barrage actually accounted for very few submarines. American writers believed eight submarines were destroyed, and possibly as many more damaged and a great strain imposed on the submarine crews in the short life of the barrage. The number must be revised downward. There were probably six submarines claimed by the barrage and possibly a seventh. Two or three may have been damaged. Had the war lasted longer—and those backing the barrage seemed to think it would—more mines would have been laid, and, undoubtedly, more submarines would have been destroyed. But would the results ever have been in proportion to the effort?115
NAVAL AVIATION IN THE FINAL MONTHS
In the last few months of the war, aviation had become a weapon to be taken seriously, rather than the annoyance it had been at the beginning. We have already seen how both land planes and flying boats were extensively used in the antisubmarine campaign. The British had also steadily increased the number of aircraft with the Grand Fleet by fitting platforms to turrets from which aircraft could be flown off, but not recovered. By the close of the war, the Grand Fleet when it put to sea could actually put up an air umbrella—on a one time basis—of approximately 110 aircraft.116 These were used for scouting and defensive missions. But what of actually carrying war to the enemy? Beatty, influenced by air-minded officers in the Grand Fleet such as Captain Richmond, had this in mind in August 1917 when he proposed at a conference with the First Sea Lord in the Queen Elizabeth that a dawn attack by Sopwith T.1 Cuckoo torpedo planes be used to strike the High Sea Fleet in its German bases. There would be 121 torpedo planes, flown in flights of forty, which would be transported to within range by carriers. The torpedo planes might be accompanied by long-range H.12 (“Large America”) flying boats, operating independently from the carriers from their bases in England.117 In the absence of suitable carriers, Beatty suggested using eight merchant vessels fitted with flying-off platforms. Unfortunately the material to execute a plan like this was not available in 1917. The Admiralty also claimed the torpedo-carrying aircraft, the Sopwith Cuckoo, would not be available in quantity until the following summer—in fact only a little more than ninety had been delivered by the time of the armistice—the torpedo it could carry too small, and the tactics for torpedo attacks on warships still unpracticed to justify diverting badly needed merchant ships and dockyard facilities for conversion work. The dawn attack by torpedo aircraft would have to wait until the technical means were available.118
There had been air raids with seaplanes launched by seaplane carriers earlier in the war in both the North Sea and the Black Sea. The results had been meager; the weight and drag of floats imposed performance penalties on seaplanes and the process of launching and recovering them in the open sea was difficult, particularly in North Sea conditions. The British worked doggedly at launching land aircraft from ships and the much more difficult task of recovering them. There is no space to describe this fascinating story here, but by the summer of 1918 they were close to introducing true aircraft carriers. The battle cruiser Furious had originally been designed as one of Fisher’s light battle cruisers for the Baltic project. She had been something of a freak with a primary armament of only two 18-inch guns. The design was altered and Furious joined the fleet as a fast seaplane carrier in the summer of 1917 with the forward 18-inch t
urret replaced by a flight platform. She originally embarked five Sopwith Pups and three Short 184 seaplanes. On 2 August 1917 a Sopwith Pup flown by Squadron Commander E. H. Dunning landed on board, the first time an aircraft had landed onto a moving ship. Dunning succeeded with a second attempt, but on the third trial on 7 August, his engine stalled, the aircraft was blown over the side, and he was killed. Between November and March, the Furious went through another conversion, and the after turret was also replaced by a flight deck and hangar with fore and aft elevators for aircraft. Unfortunately, the experiments at landing aircraft proved to be a failure because of eddies and air currents caused by the midships superstructure and funnels. After the war the Furious was reconstructed as a true aircraft carrier with a long flight deck, but in the summer of 1918 she could launch her complement of approximately sixteen aircraft but not recover them. Land aircraft still had to ditch when they rejoined the carrier after an operation.
The Vindictive was another carrier under construction. She was actually a converted light cruiser, originally named the Cavendish but renamed in honor of the cruiser expended in the Zeebrugge-Ostend raids. The Vindictive was fitted with a hangar, flying-off deck forward, and flying-on deck aft. She was designed to carry six reconnaissance aircraft and has been described as a miniature Furious, but did not join the fleet until the closing days of the war.