Smoke and Mirrors

by Deborah Lake

  After Farnborough’s encounter with U 67, more decoys entered service. Most people in the know believed that they were the only possible countermeasure to the U-boat. Evidence that clearly armed merchant ships inhibited U-boat attack was ignored.

  Q-ships enjoyed success only if a U-boat operated the ‘surface, stop and search’ policy. Once the secret was out, once every target was regarded with suspicion, the decoy’s effectiveness fell away.

  In April 1916, Rear Admiral Henry Oliver noted that fourteen regular decoys and two decoy transports were in use. Six decoys worked the Mediterranean. The others served in home waters.

  Efforts were made to make the decoys almost unsinkable. Although wood was in short supply, timber replaced cargoes of coal. That had the unenviable habit of spontaneously combusting if undisturbed in airtight holds for weeks on end. Buoyant cargoes would, it was hoped, allow the Q-ship to stay afloat long enough, if hit, to destroy her attacker.

  In the days after Jutland, one of the more elaborate, ingenious and, to some, half-witted ideas in the decoy ship and U-boat war came from the fertile imagination of Commander Reginald Henderson, serving with the Grand Fleet’s 2nd Battle Squadron. His ship, the 22,000-ton dreadnought HMS Erin, was originally built for the Turkish navy as the Reshadieh. Requisitioned on the personal instructions of Winston Churchill when war began in 1914, her seizure pushed Turkey closer to life as a German ally.

  Henderson’s idea, sublime in its simplicity, was to disguise an armed trawler as a downed airship, complete with crew dressed in German uniforms. The trawler would sail immediately after a Zeppelin raid. No U-boat captain would ignore fellow countrymen in need of rescue. A British submarine would accompany the trawler. When the U-boat surfaced, the British vessel would despatch her with a well-aimed torpedo if the trawler failed to sink the enemy.

  The outlandish scheme received the wholehearted support of Sir John Jellicoe himself. Scapa Air Defences constructed the fake, using kite balloon envelopes and fabric. Henderson would command the trawler, the Oyama, on the venture.

  The scheme ignored some pertinent questions. Not least was the legality of British sailors, masquerading as German aviators on board an airship with German markings, opening fire on a German vessel engaged on a rescue attempt. Even if that were discounted, the distinct possibility remained that the U-boat might win. The trawler crew would be fortunate not to be shot out of hand.

  The bizarre contraption began its patrol on 27 August 1916. The next morning, Oyama turned and made for home. In anything other than a flat calm, she was almost impossible to manage. Henderson reported to Jellicoe, who noted that the experiment would not be repeated.

  Among the new decoy vessels were a number of sailing ships, equipped with an auxiliary engine to help if they met a U-boat. Their proponents believed that their innocent appearance would lull suspicion. More practical were specially adapted Flower Class convoy sloops and the P Class patrol boats. One of the early Flower vessels, the Begonia, survived a torpedo attack from Kapitänleutnant Paul Wagenführ and U 44 in the Atlantic on 29 March 1916. She stayed afloat and was towed to Queenstown, where the dockyard rebuilt her to resemble a cargo vessel. She duly reappeared in August as Q10 with all her weapons hidden from view.

  Subsequent convoy sloops under construction took on the look of small merchant steamers, a reasonable disguise for the 1,250-ton ships. All had guns hidden behind false plating, a major disadvantage. It prevented training the guns on the target before they revealed themselves. Convoy sloop commanders demanded rangefinders to compensate, a military item that would immediately alert a U-boat commander. Even so, several of the class served as Q-ships or Special Service vessels.

  The first forty-four, 660-ton P Class patrol boats were precisely that. Twenty others received modifications to resemble coastal steamers during building. Unofficially, they became known as ‘PQ boats’. Their official designation was PC Class patrol boats.

  For the German staffs, both Army and Navy, unrestricted U-boat warfare remained a vital issue. Scheer was firmly in favour. So, too, was von Holtzendorff, the Chief of the Naval Staff. The politicians and some of the Naval Staff itself were firmly opposed. They doubted the sweeping claims made for unfettered use of the U-boat arm. More importantly, they had the ear of the Kaiser.

  By the end of July 1916, astute observers concluded that the German army, that fearsome fighting machine, needed some help. Falkenhayn’s great scheme at Verdun had failed. No breakthrough happened. The German army had suffered enormous casualties. It had indeed drawn the British into battle – not at Verdun but on the Somme, further north. The fighting there dragged Germany into a battle it did not want. German reserves dwindled.

  On 30 August 1916, a conference at Schloss Pless emphasised the divide between the two points of view. Falkenhayn was not present. He lost his job as overall commander in the west as a consequence of Verdun and the Somme. In his place, in the very act of picking up the reins, were the awesome pair Feldmarschall Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff. They had conquered on the Eastern Front. Now they had come to work their genius in the west. They joined Admiral Eduard von Capelle, Admiral von Holtzendorff, the Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, the Minister for War, Adolf Wild von Hohenborn, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Gottlieb von Jagow and the Minister of the Interior, Karl Helfferich.

  The familiar arguments trotted out. To remove England from the war was essential. The way to achieve this was to cut her lifelines. Without supplies, England would wither.

  Holtzendorff dismissed the threat of the United States entering the war. If she did, it made little short-term difference. The Americans would take a long time to influence the fighting on the Western Front. In any event, America did not supply Germany because of the British blockade. Germany had to cripple English trade. The U-boat was Germany’s ace card.

  The politicians did not agree. If the United States entered the conflict, the inevitable result was eventual catastrophe for Germany and her supporters. Unrestricted U-boat warfare made that a real possibility. Further, to give the U-boats free rein might lead to other neutrals joining the Allied cause. The Netherlands and Denmark might intervene.

  Holtzendorff scoffed. Two weeks of torpedoes would keep them in line. With some scorn, Holtzendorff enquired icily of the Chancellor if he had any alternative to an unrestricted U-boat onslaught. Bethmann-Hollweg had: a negotiated peace. And the best man to approach was Woodrow Wilson, the twenty-eighth President of the United States. Britain was not popular with many nations. In America, many businessmen believed that her blockade was designed to cripple American business, to grab the customers for American exports for herself. Diplomacy, Bethmann-Hollweg argued, was a better weapon than the 21cm torpedo or the 10.5cm deck gun.

  Caution came from the Army. Hindenburg, never one to reach a hasty decision, believed that too many uncertainties existed. No firm decision could be taken until the situation was clearer. Neither the field marshal nor the general had even seen the Western Front. Neither had any moral scruples about the conduct of the war. American intervention, if it came, could be dealt with. But Romania was a problem. It was another burden on the Army. If Dutch and Danish troops also took the field, it might be the final burden that broke the German army.

  Bizarre as this thought seems, nine decades later, the two men had a valid point. Indeed, within days, at a conference at Cambrai on 7 September, they learned the frightening truth. The western armies must go on the defensive. Morale had fallen. The slaughter at Verdun, the pressure of Haig’s armies on the Somme, suggested to the German soldier that the war could not be won.

  Bethmann-Hollweg quickly proposed a compromise. The decision would be postponed until the Romanian campaign was settled. In the interim, the U-boats would follow the Prize Regulations.

  Everyone agreed. Meanwhile, preparations for a more ruthless approach, including the building of more U-boats, could go ahead.

  Only days elapsed before Army minds changed. Ludendorff kne
w that victory did not come from crouching behind defences. But the land war needed help. As he later recalled, ‘the enemy’s great superiority in men and matériel would be even more painfully felt in 1917 than in 1916. They had to face the danger that “Somme fighting” would soon break out at various points on our fronts, and that even our troops would not be able to withstand such attacks indefinitely, especially if the enemy gave us no time to rest and for the accumulation of matériel.’

  With the Army on board, the unrestricted warfare wagon gained speed. Bethmann-Hollweg faced increasing pressure as months passed. Fears about Romania swiftly vanished. The German offensive flattened her. By December, the streets of Bucharest were under German martial law.

  Public opinion in Germany fully supported unleashing the U-boats against the hated English. The blockade hurt badly.

  Bethmann-Hollweg’s idea had one major drawback. Any peace settlement must reward Germany for its enormous sacrifice of both blood and money. No treaty that failed to give the Kaiser’s Reich control of Belgium and other conquered territory would be acceptable. It took no great effort to realise that Britain and France would find those proposals outrageous. Moreover, as it was, Woodrow Wilson was too concerned with fighting the coming November election to consider European matters.

  Germany’s only hope was victory, even if it were not outright. Her lifeblood was soaking into the mud of Flanders and of France. At home, the Allied blockade created continual problems in munitions production as well as forcing rationing on a country unused to shortages.

  Scheer agreed to let the High Seas boats practise restricted warfare. Sent out on patrols to find warships, they received permission to attack merchant ships in the North Sea. The Flanders boats both sowed mines and attacked ships. A steady stream of Allied merchantmen went to the bottom.

  The Naval Staff, basking in the approval of the Kaiser, ordered Scheer to unleash all of his boats, except for a few to defend the Heligoland Bight. Even though they were to observe the ‘stop and search’ rules, every effort was to be made to destroy England’s trade.

  The U-boats were to act against merchant ships, even if these were armed, in accordance with the Prize Regulations. ‘Incidents’, the Naval Staff emphasised, ‘that may lead to well-founded claims by neutrals are to be avoided at all costs. Commanding officers are thus to act with the utmost caution and exactness. In cases of doubt, the ship is to be allowed to pass.’

  Even with restrictions on U-boat attacks, British and neutral losses in October 1916 reached 353,600 tons.

  The Germans would have been immensely heartened if they had been privy to Jellicoe’s concerns. Writing from Scapa to the Admiralty on 26 October 1916, he stated that the ‘very serious and ever-increasing menace of the enemy’s submarine attack on trade is by far the most pressing question of the present time.’ He went on with the gloomy prophecy that the losses could eventually force Britain to accept peace terms ‘which the military position on the Continent would not justify and which would fall far short of our desires’.

  Jellicoe continued to pile on the gloom. Current methods of combating U-boats no longer met with success. New weapons and new methods ‘must be provided with great rapidity’. He wanted to form a committee of younger officers who had shown inventiveness and originality to work under an energetic senior to explore every possible means of beating the looming menace of the U-boat. There should also be a reorganised system of shipping routes, a diversion of labour to the shipyards and the possible use of the Grand Fleet’s own destroyers to patrol the seaways. This would mean dismantling one battle squadron but it was a price that must be paid. Four days later Jellicoe was in London, summoned to a meeting of the War Committee of the Cabinet.

  Arthur Balfour, First Lord of the Admiralty, summed up the naval position: ‘Of all the problems which the Admiralty have to consider, no doubt the most formidable and most embarrassing is that raised by submarine attack on merchant vessels. No conclusive answer has yet been discovered to this mode of warfare; perhaps no conclusive answer will ever be found. For the present we must be content with palliation.’ This cheerful assessment was made while forty-seven decoy ships that ranged in size from drifters and trawlers to medium-sized steamships roamed the seas in search of any one of the 119 U-boats in the service of the Imperial German Navy.

  The First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Henry Jackson, and the choleric Admiral Sir Henry Oliver, Chief of the War Staff, curtly dismissed the suggestion from David Lloyd George and Andrew Bonar Law that the Royal Navy introduce a convoy system. With the not too gentle implication that politicians did not understand the practical complexities of warfare, the admirals explained that merchant ships could not keep together; that a convoy presented one extremely large target instead of a myriad of small ones; not enough fighting ships existed to serve as convoy escorts, for each merchantman would need its own. The best solution, they added, was to arm each merchantman and let them fend for themselves.

  The Royal Navy had successfully convoyed ships in time of war since the time of Napoleon and before. The principle was already proven. The battle fleet itself, troopships and transports and other vessels of high importance, went in convoy. One escort per ship was plainly ludicrous but neither Lloyd George nor Bonar Law felt able to argue the point.

  Interestingly, Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff would have supported the Admiralty’s policy. The English, he declared, would not adopt convoys. Heavy weather, inexperienced merchant captains, the need to travel at the speed of the slowest vessel, allied with congestion in ports, would prevent its adoption. More than anything, convoys ‘would be a most welcome sight’ for U-boat commanders. Plentiful targets for the plucking.

  At Queenstown, Sir Lewis Bayly fiercely supported his Q-ships. He wanted the best for them. He had already successfully campaigned for extra pay for men on Special Service. Now, certain that the secret of decoys was well known to the Germans, he suggested to the Admiralty that the crews should be volunteers. He had already crossed swords with Whitehall about officers and men chosen for Q-ship work. ‘At present,’ he had written, ‘officers and men appear to be drafted without any selection for the special duty.’ A further grumble about the appearance of officers who reported for decoy service drew the smart retort from Whitehall that they always sent the best officers available, adding that ‘officers appearing in a cheap ready-made suit may not always give an impression of smartness. RNR officers do not carry plain clothes with them, and when detailed for Q-ships, have very often to get a suit at a moment’s notice.’

  Cheap suits notwithstanding, Bayly had a point. The Admiralty would never send the best officers to grubby steamers in the hope that they might find a U-boat. The cream of the crop went to the Grand Fleet. Special Service work came well down the list of desirable and career-enhancing postings.

  The Admiralty agreed to call for volunteers. On 26 December 1916, the call went out. To discourage first lieutenants from emptying their ships of troublemakers, commanders-in-chief were requested to select suitable men and ask them to volunteer. Vacancies existed for 320 seamen, 350 stokers, 40 engine-room artificers and numerous 2nd and 3rd class gunlayers. The candidates learned that the proposed duty was ‘special service against enemy submarines; that it is dangerous, at periods monotonous, and not free from discomfort’.

  First lieutenants, delegated the task by harassed seniors, duly responded. Calls for applicants for a mysterious ‘special service’ gave them a heaven-sent opportunity. Ridding a ship of a few King’s hard bargains was sensible and practical. Ratings with less than perfect records were encouraged to step forward. To offset them, applications came from many excellent men who were bored with watching clouds and seagulls in the Orkneys.

  One brief success for decoy operations lit up the darkness. On 30 November 1916, the Q-ship Penshurst, commanded, remarkably, by a retired officer, Commander Francis Grenfell, sank the Zeebrugge-based UB 19.

  Her captain, Oberleutnant zur See Erich Noodt, seemingly made a b
asic error on his first patrol as a U-boat commander. Penshurst’s panic party left the ship in the approved manner. Noodt closed on the boats to seize his quarry’s papers from her master. The Marineamt wanted proof of sinkings rather than the claims of U-boat crews. Noodt strayed too close to Penshurst. He apparently intended first to read her name. It was a fatal mistake for eight of his crew. The Q-ship opened fire from a range of just 250yd. Noodt’s cry to crash-dive came too late. Penshurst’s second round hit the engine room and crippled the U-boat. No fewer than eighty-three rounds smashed into the 40m length of UB 19.

  Just two U-boats had succumbed to Q-ships during the whole of 1916. The paucity of results was disguised by the number of actions decoys had fought. Nearly every one resulted in a claim for a boat sunk or badly damaged. Both medals and rewards accompanied actions when higher authority decided a U-boat had been destroyed or badly damaged. Wishful thinking, the excitement of combat, led to an often unconscious embellishment of combat reports. Shells splashing short of a U-boat hull could easily be mistaken for direct hits. Men in a conning tower who had vanished when the spray cleared must have been killed.

  The four winter months from October 1916, riddled with bad weather, saw the loss of nearly 1¼ million tons of British and Allied shipping.

  The holiday had ended. The Unterseeboote had opened shop once more. And, soon, they would have unrepeatable offers.

  TEN

  VERY GOOD PIECE OF WORK. WELL DONE

  As midnight approached on 31 December 1916, a single British artillery piece near Ypres fired a single round into enemy lines. A pause. Nine more erratically timed shells. Another silence, followed by seven more. A welcome to the New Year from the Royal Artillery. The German guns did not reply. The war went on. On land. In the air. At sea.