Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 267, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 November 1917 — PATROL WORK IS FULL OF THRILLS FOR MEN OF NAVY [ARTICLE]

PATROL WORK IS FULL OF THRILLS FOR MEN OF NAVY

Blindfold Campaign of Submarine Chasing Is Replete With Surprises. s “TORPEDO FISH” IS FOOLER —3 ' .. Interesting Sidelight on Work of Navy In Fighting U-Boat Peril—Many an Encounter With a Table Leg or a Swab Handle. New York, —Leaves from the diary of the commander of a destroyer and sidelights on the thrills that come to the men aboard the vessels of the United States navy in the war zone were made public in a statement Issued by the navy publicity bureau of 318 West Thirty-ninth street. “It is stimulating from the maze of convoy and submarine search work to untangle vivid threads of adventure,” the statement said. “For the first half of a certain month a few points stand out for emphasis or visualization.” They are theses “Enemy operations have been largely in the southern part of tour area. Calm weather and the moon have favored them. Merchant ships have assembled thickly at the rendezvous, and the sight has been frequent of one destroyer—often of the older type — with four or five great vessels on her hands before others assigned have joined the escort. “Many rescues of crews have been successfully made. “In ‘behind the net,’ however, it is less easy to borrow the lookout’s eyes, set for the pin thrust of the distant periscope through the blue frets *of the quiet, treacherous ocean. Or to hear in the dark small hours the throbbing general quarters alarm, the blowers hum in a racing crescendo, and the gun crews—like Tweedledums and Tweedledees in their slate-hued life preservers—tear the covers from the ammunition boxes.*’’ It is a tension to bear down at 25 knots upon the lean tramp that makes no response to the flap-flap of your -searchlight blinker, spelling out the challenge; to distinguish whether the phosphorescent streak that at night flashes across your bow is made by a Hun torpedo or the animal skippers have named the ‘torpedo fish’ a blackfish or porpoise. Survivors come mutely up the side, often Lascars and Cingalese, muttering of Allah and America indistingulshably. Given cigarette ‘makes,’ they ‘roll a pill,’ calmly stick it behind the ear, and as the - surgeon uncorks his iodoform in the washroom for gashes made by wreckage, some old gunner of the, reserve takes pneumonia from his hours of exposure, and is , put ashore at X say, on a stretcher, and with his hours of life numbered.

Two Ships In the Thick of It. The Y and the Z have been in the thick —of —such Incidents. At 78" minutes past 1 o’c'ock on the morning of the 11th, the X was steaming singly at 15 knots, with a quiet sea and good visibility for that hour. ' The captain was smoking a cigar on the bridge, wondering, he told me, whether Mrs. G. would ever have the pleasure of putting roses on her old man’s tomb up the Hudson. A heavy explosion, without flash, shook the darkness about three miles over the port bow. A whistle bleated three times, and the radio shack called up the tube that the steamer Kioto was torpedoed 20 miles southwest by west of Fastnet Light “The X switched on her general alarm for battle, changed her course to 228 degrees true and plunged thither at full speed. In two minutes she made out the staccato sparks of a blinker, repeating over and over. ‘Torpedoes !—Torpedoes!’ In five, she changed her course 19 degrees faster east, and at half-past one the flush decks of a single stacker of about 4,000 tons loomed over the cocoa matting and thrust men about a gun. “She was now nearing the freighter, bow on, a bit to port. Suddenly out of the darkness to the right a livid beam rushed, straight and shimmering at her under the sea. We put over full right rudder. The torpedo passed close aboard across his bows, to the left, Just ahead of the Kioto, and as the luminous wake receded like a muffled searchlight it seemed to break spent upon the near horizon. ‘Anyhow,’ said the captain afterward, *lt was worth crossing the ocean to see and feel that instant. It made those roses seem a lot nearer. “The destroyer began to circle the Kioto at high speeds, with alternate right and left rudder. Her blinker stammered on, that she had been hit tn the port quarter abaft the engine tjoom. Then the lights ceased. Ten minutes after two loaded lifeboats emerged out of the starboard darkness. They/, held 59 men, including the second officer and a tall engineer, wounded in the leg. Soon after two .o’clock all were safe aboard the X. She continued to circle the steamer, which was slowly sinking by.the stern. Alarm of the disaster hnd been' flashed to adjacent patrols. The Y nosed "into ■ sight and stood by, likewise H. M. 8. , who signaled’that she had taken aboard 16 more survivors and the Kioto’s impetuous captain—he that returned to the’ wreck. At 20 minutes past 8 the. freighter sank, leaving only floating wreckage and a Coston .light, which flickered up from time tp time until daybreak like a lantern in A lifeboat

‘‘Neither submarine nor destroyer had used gunfire. The German was not even sighted. Only two torpedoes were known to havfi been fired —the one which crossed the X’s bow, and the one which settled the Kioto. “Only two days before the X had had a better brush with a ‘sub,’ and may have~ got her 7 skippers put--tn-the claim on evidence as good. She was steaming in the same area, under like conditions, when at ten minutes past eight In the evening she sighted a pronounced wake. One could even estimate the speed at which the submarine had been submerged—about, eight knots. “The X worked up to full speed, turned with left rudder, and ran down on the right hand side of the slick. In six minutes she had reached its ‘head,’ ready to drop a depth charge; four minutes to run to the end of the wake, two more to allow for the ‘sub’s’ run beyond—and she tripped the pump. With the charge, which was set for 80 feet, was dropped a calcium torch pot. to mark the place. The explosion audibly jarred the blowers, and within three minutes bubbles swirled to the surface. But In the 20 minutes that the X circled the vicinity, hoping the injured enemy would rise to the surface, no further sign of damage was revealed.

Four days later the turned her convoy over to the at two hours before daylight, and returned to her regular patrol.. About five o’clock in the morning she took under her wing the steamer Pentwy, bound for Manchester. At. a quarter to eight Cap" tain Lyons sent a quartermaster aloft to the main track to clear a fouled commission pennant. Scarcely had the quartermaster reached it when he called down to the watch on the after deckhouse, ‘Periscop# two points abaft the port beam !’, The thing was 1,500 to 3,000 yards from the , who was 400 yards ahead of the ——, one point on her port bow. The whole body of the submarine was distinct to the quartermaster though, oddly, invisible both to the bridge and the fore top lookout. The periscope seemed headed westward, and she —at once started to submerge. Within 20 seconds, as the destroyer came to general quarters, first one torpedo, instantly followed by a second, radiated from the point where she had vanished. Both were making surface runs, for the sub’s conning tower hatch still must have been near the surface. They threw spray up fully 20 feet, clearly visible against the choppy sea. All hands on the bridge and decks saw them —as did the . astern; for she swung sharply to starboard, present-

ing her tail to them. At the same moment the sounded six blasts on her whistle, followed by two, to mean that the attack was being made to port. Miss by Small Margin. “Both torpedoes missed, the but by the smallest margin. The , making high speed, swung with full left rudder toward the submarine. At five minutes past nine o’clock a third torpedo was/fired at the convoy, apparently from another submarine, about 200 yards ahead of the first It approached from the broad on the —’s beam, also making a surface run at about the same range as the first two. and missed. “But now the was in sight, some four miles distant, ready to relieve the of her convoy. She. too, made full headway on signal, ‘Make all speed to us; submarine in sightand searched in the vicinity of the , while the followed the ‘sub’s’ slicks. The first wake tended east, but in ten minutes lost itself among the whitecaps. The .second and plainer one led westward, irregularly, as if the ‘sub’ had been zigzagging. A depth charge was dropped at its end, but a half hour’s search found proof of nothing. The really had saved herself by quick and efficient handling. “The ’s adventure with the steamship Tarquah cannot be told until that flivver comes Into port. The ——, and had a hand in it; and the first’s account of the sinking of the Obuasi —where she arrived long after the deed—shows the defective functioning and poor marksmanship of German torpedoes. The reports to the same effect. At halfpast ten o’clock on the morning of the 13th she picked up in her sea area two boats and 23 survivors of the steamship Charilaos Trlcoupis. Two hours before, two/torpedoes had been fired at her, at an interval of 25 minutes. The first struck the starboard quarter, between rudder and propeller, and, falling to detonate, did little damage; but the crew abandoned ship. The second hit the starboard side amidship, blowing up the Greek so that she sank in five minutes. Between the two shots the submarine came to the surface, but instantly submerged. Not a man appeared on deck. This submarine, like all others reported for the fortnight, are declared to have been of the U-50 to 60 types. “So, as yet, no blood has been spilled on any of our gun mattings. The mean, blindfold campaign continues with small apparent losses either in ‘subs’ or shipping. We follow oil slicks with the thrill of a woodsman striking a strange cross-trail in the forest; w’e mass guns over a ‘periscope’ that turns into a swabhandle or table leg; vide the ’s and ’s famous battle with a ventilator off the French coast. And the and , I hear, have celebrated the chagrin and thrills of it all in ballads which I shall try to send you.”