Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 268, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1915 — IS TIRELESS GAME [ARTICLE]

IS TIRELESS GAME

Hunting of Submarines Like Playing Hide-and-Seek. Most of the Romance and Action of Sea Warfare Is Now With the Seaplanes and the Destroyers.

By FREDERICK PALMER.

(International News Service) _ London. —Strangest looking of all the ships with the grand fleet is the Atlantic liner which has been transformed into a mother-ship for the seaplanes. There are platforms in place of the promenades where passengers used to lounge, bombs in place of deck quoits, and the dining salons have been fitted up as workshops. Everything that a seaplane needs in the way of repairs can be supplied. A crane that once had taken passengers’ trunks out of the hold lifted a seaplane off a platform and deposited it on the water, where it bounced on the waves before the motor was started and it skimmed across the surface for a hundred yards or more, rose, circled around the fleet two or three times and then disappeared out at sea. Most of the romance and the action of sea warfare while the British grand fleet waits for the German fleet to come out are with the seaplanes and the destroyers. The dreadnaughts remain in harbor, except for occasional cruises into the North sea; but the planes and the destroyers are always on the move. They work together in hunting "Fritz,” as British officers and men universally refer to submarines. A submarine is visible to an aviator when it is cruising below the surface. It never travels deeper than thirty or forty feet and leaves a characteristic ripple and air bubbles and streaks of oil. When a plane has located a submarine it signals the hunters where to go. But before they arrive a squall may have hidden the track. A submarine may be known to be in a certain region and be lost and seen and then lost and seen again. Submarine hunting is a tireless game of hide-and seek. Naval ingenuity has invented no end of methods of location and of destruction. Experiment has proved some to be effectual, and some useless. Strictest kept of naval secrets these. Very thin is the skin of a submarine and very fragile and complicated its machinery. It does not take much of a shock to put it out of order or a large cargo of explosives to dent that skin beyond repair. “The difficulty is to know when you get them,” an officer explained; "for it is in the nature of the submarine to sink, whether vitally injured or not. It may have gone to the bottom to stay in fifty fathoms of water, or it may have submerged under a choppy sea and made safe its escape. We have been hunting them for a year now, and no doubt we are getting the better of them. We have not only learned how to keep them off from our great ships, but how to destroy them.” If oil and bubbles come up for a long time in one place or if they come up with a rush, that is considered fairly good evidence of success. There is no escape for the crew. They cannot make the submarine rise or get out of it. It becomes a steel casket, in a watery grave. No nautical mind is required to realize that by casting about on thq bottom with a grapnel you will learn if an object with the bulk and size of a submarine is there; and the "death” of submarines is established in this way. "The admiralty will not accept any

guesswork about it,” said an officer. "We may have put an explosive right into one or rammed it in a way that must have broken its back; but that is not proof enough. The record goes down on the chart as ‘supposed destroyed.’ ” With Admiral Crawford, the correspondent went to see the subraarine defenses of a harbor. Cruisers and destroyers and auxiliaries are going and coming, but the narrow openings through which they passed were closed instantly they were by. At one naval base the correspondent saw a number of destroyers lying moored to a quay as close together as fish in a basket. They had just come in from a tour at sea. “Here today and gone tomorrow,” said an officer. r “What a time they had last winter! And they are in for another winter of it. You know how cold the North sea is—no, you cannot unless you have been out in a torpedo boat dancing the tango in the teeth of that bitter wind, with the spray whipping up to the top of the smokestacks. In the dead of night they would come into this pitch-dark harbor. How they found their way is past me. It’s a trick of those young fellows who command.” If a destroyer gets on the track of a submarine it has thirty knots against the submarine’s six or eigjit. There is no difficulty in keeping up; her wireless brings swarms of assistance. Every ship on the blockade from Iceland to the British channel is also a part of the system of submarine hunting. They show no lights. "It gives one an idea of England’s maritime resources,” said an officer, “when you consider that we have 2,300 trawlers and other auxiliary ships on service.” The trawlers plod over plotted sea squares with the regularity of mowing machines cutting a harvest, on their way back and forth sweeping up mines. They were fishermen before the war, and are fishermen still. "

Separated Years. Toledo, O. —After a separation of 56 years, Mrs. Helen McCullough, a widow of this city, has located her brother, J. D. Bingham, at Kalamazoo, Mich., and has gone there to see him.