Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 129, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 June 1918 — SUBMARINE MENACE IS DWINDLING FAST [ARTICLE]

SUBMARINE MENACE IS DWINDLING FAST

Listening Devices, Depth Bombs and Destroyer Fleet Beating Submarines. CONVOY SYSTEM EFFICIENT Wreck* of Tlrpitz’ Terrors Strew Bottom of English Channel and North Sea Mine Sweepers do Good Work. London. —The menace of the Geriinan submarines and mines to the maritime commerce of the allies Is becoming less week by week. The improvement is due chiefly to the development of the listening devices and the depth bombs carried on the swift-mov-ing destroyers. The hydrophone Is the most useful Invention that has been ■discovered by the navy In Its antisubmarine crusade, and it is being Improved upon all the time. When a U-boat is spotted from aloft 'by one of the alert observers In the seaplanes which wing their flight over the North sea and the waters around the British Isles, he signals the position to the nearest destroyer. Dlrectjly he gets this information her commander steams at full speed in the diirection indicated until he can hear the submarine plugging along under water. The destroyer follows .the U-boat for hours, if necessary, until the commander thinks he has got the enemy in ‘the right position for a hit, and then Hets go the bomb/-,- - ,v«* [ While the ntffnber of enemy undersea craft that are sunk or captured each month Is not given out for publication it is known that it equals the construction of submarines in Germany. The greatest blow to German hopes of destroying the commerce of the allies on the ocean lies in the *envoy system, which is rapidly approaching perfection. When the plan of escorting transports and supply ships right across the Atlantic in large fleets was first tried out there was considerable delay on account of difference in speed of the various ships of which it was composed. At the present time convoys are all classified according to speed, and a fast transport can make a round trip in 30 days, while the slower class of supply ships drift across the ocean at a steady six or seven-knot gait. The number of British and American destroyers has increased rapidly and is still growing so that there are plenty of these essential watchdogs of the sea

to make the passage of convoys across the Atlantic and North sea secure. The greatest percentage of losses by submarines since January 1 has been in the Mediterranean, and this is now being reduced by Increasing the number of destroyers in those waters. No submarine commander will risk attack on a convoy which is protected on all four sides by destroyers and frequently accompanied by seaplanes. Naval experts are confident that when there are sufficient destroyers to escort all convoys required to transport troops and munitions from America to England and France the submarine peril will be practically at an end.. This stage should be reached by August. At the present time the U-boats watch and wait for vessels which are alone. * The sinking of vessels in the Irish sea has been due to the fact that the water there is muddy and not too deep, and a submarine can lie on the bottom and come up at night. Quite recently, In two instances, when steamships were torpedoed in the Irish sea, destroyers blew one U-boat to pieces with a depth charge and damaged the other one so seriously before she could submerge that the commander surrendered with his crew. Pilots of seaplane and airplanes who fly over the waters around the British Isles have reported numbers of submarines which were sunk months ago and are lying on the bottom of the channel and North sea. In addition to destroyers and patrol boats which scour the surface in every direction, there are all kinds of traps and obstacles placed under water which make the passage of Dover

straits and exit from Heligoland .bight 5 very complicated profelem for a U-boat commander to solve. Hundreds of mine sweepers, manned by fishermen and sailors from the merchant service, are at work day and night making the ocean lanes safe for steamships belonging to the allies and neutral natlops. Their crews have become adepts in' the art of finding and exploding German mines hidden below the surface. During the year ending in April more than 1,000 mines, which cost SI,OOO each to construct, were exploded or captured by the British mine sweepers. The loss of mine sweepers tfas very small in comparison. In one instance a mine sweeper found a German mine drifting in the North sea, and towed it over well In toward the mouth of Elbe under cover of fog. After pumping it up the crew set the mine 20 feet below the surface, and 12 hours later it was struck by a German steamship bound for Gothenberg from Bremen, and the vessel and her cargo of iron ore went to the bottom. The increasing hazard against submarines ever returning to port is making it difficult for the German admiralty to get crews to man them.