Smoke and Mirrors

by Deborah Lake

  Another message came from Queenstown, direct from Sir Lewis. ‘Very good piece of work. Well done.’

  Campbell and his twelve loyal disciples worked on for seven days. They salvaged the guns, for Farnborough was mostly clear of the sea at low water. When the tide came in, they retreated to the foredeck, played records on a wind-up gramophone, fed the cat, and waited for the sea to retreat.

  Finally, with as much salvaged as possible, Campbell and the remaining crew returned to Devonport. In accordance with the custom of the Service, the ship’s company were paid off at their vessel’s home port.

  The Admiralty rewarded the destruction of U 83 in the normal way, with a bounty of £1,000 for the crew. Their Lordships also sent a telegram to express their ‘keen appreciation of the skill nerve and gallantry they recently displayed’. Then came the decorations.

  A few days later, Campbell reported to Buckingham Palace. The sovereign, himself a naval man, informed the commander that he was to receive the Victoria Cross. Lieutenants Ronald Stuart and Leonard Loveless were awarded the Distinguished Service Order. More decorations went to other officers and ratings. Indeed, it was the King’s personal wish that every man who remained on board after U 83’s torpedo struck should receive recognition.

  They did. The Distinguished Service Cross went to three more officers. Nine men received the Distinguished Service Medal; a tenth received a bar to the medal he already held. The list of awards ended with twenty-four Mentions in Despatches.

  On 19 February 1917, Oberleutnant zur See Wilhelm Kiel and the crew of UC 18 of the Flanders Flotilla paid the price for a moment of carelessness. In six patrols, Kiel and his men despatched thirty-four merchant ships, albeit with a total tonnage of a mere 33,616 tons. Steam coasters were UC 18’s speciality. The 702-ton Lady Olive that he met 8 miles to the west of Jersey neatly fitted his requirements. One torpedo found the mark.

  The crew, showing the final stages of panic, left. Kiel surfaced. UC 18 motored serenely closer to read the name of her victim for the war diary. The diminutive Lady Olive carried, by coincidence, another identity with the number 18. Q18. Four 12-pounder guns and one 4in gun exploded into action. Flottille Flandern lost one more boat and a further twenty-eight men.

  The decoy’s triumph was not entirely a success. A Q-ship for a mere two months, Lady Olive sank soon afterwards as a result of her own damage. The two Numbers 18 had fought a tie, although the Admiralty felt that the Royal Navy had the better of the exchange.

  Five days after Campbell’s epic fight, on 22 February 1917, Commander Grenfell and Penshurst struck once more. He was attacked at 1250hr by U 84, a sister boat of Campbell’s victim. Having missed with a torpedo, the U-boat surfaced to open fire with her deck gun. The panic party took to the boats. Kapitänleutnant Walter Roehr took no chances. He dived to spend some twenty minutes in a close assessment of his quarry. Penshurst lay still, silent. Finally, one hour after the attack was launched, Roehr nodded, satisfied. His boat was in no danger.

  ‘Auftauchen! Ausblasen!’

  The Kriegstagebuch of U 84 tells the story. The diary times are one hour ahead of British time:

  2.49 PM Steamer opens fire from four guns. Crash dive. Conning tower hit five times: one shot through the bridge, one above the aerials, the third goes through the conning tower, explodes inside, nearly all equipment destroyed. Second Watch Officer slightly wounded. Fourth shot smashed circulating water tubes. Fifth shot hit a mine deflector. Evacuated conning tower. Central hatch and speaking tube closed. As the conning tower abandoned, had to work the boat from the central area below the tower.

  Grenfell, a remarkable officer who had left the Navy to market a physical training regime, had trained his gunners well. Once again, they found the target fast with a fusillade of shells. Under water, Roehr struggled to control the boat. Depth charges exploded close by. A shiver ran through the hull.

  Switch and main switchboard held in place by hand. Electric lamp over magnetic compass goes out. Boat is top-heavy. Swings crossways. Several connections between the tower and the hull no longer watertight. Because of short circuits, lose in quick succession gyro-compass, lighting circuit, main rudder, voice links forward and aft. Forward horizontal rudder jams.

  Roehr managed to get the boat under some control. He blew the tanks. The boat rose, still at an angle. Flooding the forward tanks failed to cure the slant completely. At an angle of 8 degrees, with water spurting in through the damaged conning tower, with no steering under water, the starboard electric motor ceased to work. Roehr decided to fight it out on the surface.

  3.10 PM The steamer is 3,500 metres distant and immediately opens fire. Shots all round the boat. One 7,5 cm and one 4,7 cm shell hit the deck forward of the boat’s 8.8 cm gun. Second officer receives other slight wounds. Replied to fire, unfortunately without telescopic sight as conning tower is still full of water. Distance rapidly increases to 5,000 metres. Then the steamer follows slowly. To starboard, a destroyer opens fire at us at 8,000 metres. Shots fall short. Life jackets on! Intend to continue firing until the boat can be scuttled close to a sailing ship 8 nautical miles distant, to save the crew from a Baralong fate.

  3.17 PM The destroyer is a Foxglove, [Flower Class sloop Alyssum] . . . cannot steam faster than the boat. At about 7,500 metres returned fire. The Foxglove quickly starts to try and avoid our shots. She is hit twice and increases the range. Her guns only carry about 7,500 metres.

  3.20 PM Conning-tower can be made watertight. Boat cleared, ammunition for gun cleared. Except for conning tower all damage can be repaired gradually.

  Course 165 degrees. The Foxglove follows in our wake. Have lost sight of steamer. If essential, the boat can dive but leaves a heavy oil track. If no destroyer appears before nightfall, boat can be saved.

  6.50 PM The Foxglove has approached to 7,000 metres. Again opens fire. Return fire. A hit! Enemy sheers off and falls back to over 10,000 metres.

  8.00 PM Twilight. Pursuer out of sight. Because of oil track, set zigzag course. Reach another oil track, turn to port and ease on to course of 240 degrees.

  Roehr and his men made their home port. The Germania dockyard at Kiel built well. U 84 was only one of many boats to return to Germany after receiving fearsome damage. Von Scheer inspected her when she reached safety.

  It was little short of a miracle that, in spite of such heavy damage, she reached home. It was chiefly due to the assurance with which the commander handled his boat, the perfect co-operation of the whole crew in these trying circumstances, and the excellent practice made by the gunners, in connection with which it must be remembered that the height of the platform of a U-boat on which the gun is mounted, is only 2 metres above the water-level and that aiming is thereby rendered far more difficult.

  Roehr subsequently evened his account with the trapships. On 13 August 1917, he swiftly despatched the decoy sloop Bergamot.

  The U-boat’s ability to absorb damage regularly fooled opponents into false claims. The Royal Navy, in the latter part of the war, emphasised the ease of jumping to conclusions.

  These vessels are all built with two hulls – a partial outer hull, which is given a ship form, and an inner cylindrical pressure hull. Damage to the outer hull alone will not appreciably impair the diving qualities of the submarine, and certainly will not disable her. Should the fuel tanks, which are situated between the inner and outer hull, be penetrated, oil will, of course, appear on the surface. In addition, an arrangement is fitted for ejecting oil in case of accident, to mark the position of the submarine. German submarines are instructed to use this arrangement if it appears advisable, in order to mislead and delay the enemy. Oil seen on the surface must, therefore, never be accepted as proof of a submarine having been sunk, or even damaged.

  Further, commanders such as Kapitänleutnant Kurt Tebbenjohanns developed the trick of releasing carefully selected waste to the surface when under attack. Worn pieces of uniform, old cabbage stalks and other clutter sent more than one hunter away, rejo
icing but unsuccessful.

  Sinkings in January were worrying. February threatened to be far worse. Even night-time did not deter the more thrusting commanders. The aristocratic commander of UC 26, Oberleutnant zur See Matthias, Graf von Schmetow, used bright moonlight to attack Mona’s Queen, a well-used paddle steamer impressed into service from the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company. On the approach to Le Havre, with 925 soldiers on board, Captain William Cain of Mona’s Queen saw a torpedo wake cross his bow. Already travelling at 15 knots, Cain called for even more speed.

  Von Schmetow surfaced. UC 26 emerged, water cascading down her sides, so close to her target that the Queen’s port wheel smashed into her. Steel paddle blades chewed their way through the U-boat’s outer hull as 1,559 tons of Victorian craftsmanship from Barrow-in-Furness crunched along the casing of 500-odd tons of Hamburg-constructed U-boat. Thirty tons of paddle wheel buried itself forward of UC 26’s conning tower.

  The submarine promptly went back under the surface. Water gushed into her even as hatches slammed shut. UC 26 limped back to Zeebrugge and the repair pens of the Flanders Flotilla. Cain and his crew claimed a victory. One U-boat destroyed. Six months later, the captain and crew received a £300 reward from the Isle of Man government.

  In Downing Street, Lloyd George decided to involve himself more closely with the battle against the U-boats. Ultimately, responsibility for winning the war remained with the politicians collectively, and with the Prime Minister personally.

  He had cause for concern. On 9 February 1917, Lloyd George lunched in the House of Commons with Colonel Charles Repington, the Military Correspondent of The Times. The Prime Minister knew that, on the streets of London, Edinburgh, Exeter and the smallest village, anxiety bubbled about escalating food shortages. Repington recorded that Lloyd George believed the Admiralty to be apathetic and incompetent, with no idea of how to protect merchant shipping.

  He was not alone. Lord Derby, Secretary of State for War, noted in a letter to Sir Douglas Haig that the Navy ‘are really at their wit’s end as how to deal with these submarines’.

  The Admiralty had tried. The Navy laid more mines and steel nets. Air and sea patrols increased. Deck guns appeared on merchant steamers. Patrol craft guarded the approach routes to British ports – a two-edged system, for the canny U-boat commander discovered route changes simply by watching. Safely submerged until the guardians passed by, they patiently waited for the merchantman.

  Lloyd George rarely spared the men in uniform. In his War Memoirs, serial selective parading of facts that supported his views, allied with a serious disregard of contrary ones, gave him a reputation as the most mendacious Prime Minister in British history. Only recently have some questioned that ranking.

  Lloyd George particularly detested Haig – and Jellicoe. He excused his approach by stating firmly that it was the duty of politicians to take advice from wherever they found it. If that conflicted with the considered opinions of generals and admirals, the politicians finally took the decisions, not the military.

  On 17 February 1917, Lloyd George called a breakfast meeting at Downing Street. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir Edward Carson, the First Sea Lord, Sir John Jellicoe and Rear Admiral Alexander Duff, director of the recently formed Anti-Submarine Division, joined him. It was no social occasion. Presented to them was a document prepared by Sir Maurice Hankey, the Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence.

  Hankey’s paper was calm in approach, moderate in tone and devastating in its conclusions. The Admiralty needed to reorganise its approach to anti-submarine warfare completely. In particular, the convoy system should become an integral part of Admiralty policy. Hankey pointed out that

  The enemy can never know the day nor the hour when the convoy will come, nor the route it will take. The most dangerous and contracted passages can be passed at night. The most valuable vessels can be placed in the safest part of the convoy. . . . The enemy submarines, instead of attacking a defenceless prey, will know that a fight is inevitable in which he may be worsted. All hope of a successful surface attack would have to be dismissed at once.

  In a few short sentences, Hankey had rejected the role of the decoy. Their whole technique was based on the U-boat coming to the surface. And, in case the Admiralty did not realise that the answer to the U-boat stared them in the face, Hankey’s memorandum concluded, ‘Perhaps the best commentary on the convoy system is that it is invariably adopted for our main fleet, and for our transports.’

  Sir Maurice was right. He need only point to the constant cross-Channel traffic to the Western Front. The ships of the Dover Patrol, under Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon, protected the transports back and forth without loss.

  Jellicoe did not agree. Even after the war, he continued to emphasise the difficulty of the U-boat problem.

  The desire of the Anti-Submarine Division to obtain destroyers for offensive use in hunting flotillas in the North Sea and English Channel led to continual requests being made to me to provide vessels for the purpose. I was, of course, anxious to institute offensive operations, but in the early days of 1917 we could not rely much on depth-charge attack, owing to our small stock of these charges, and my experience in the Grand Fleet had convinced me that for success in the alternative of hunting submarines for a period which would exhaust their batteries and so force them to come to the surface, a large number of destroyers was required, unless the destroyers were provided with some apparatus which would, by sound or otherwise, locate the submarine. This will be realized when the fact is recalled that a German submarine could remain submerged at slow speed for a period which would enable her to travel a distance of some 80 miles. As this distance could be covered in any direction in open waters such as the North Sea, it is obvious that only a very numerous force of destroyers steaming at high speed could cover the great area in which the submarine might come to the surface. She would, naturally, select the dark hours for emergence, as being the period of very limited range of vision for those searching for her. In confined waters such as those in the eastern portion of the English Channel the problem became simpler. Requests for destroyers constantly came from every quarter, such as the Commanders-in-Chief at Portsmouth and Devonport, the Senior Naval Officer at Gibraltar, the Vice-Admiral, Dover, the Rear-Admiral Commanding East Coast, and the Admiral at Queenstown. The vessels they wanted did not, however, exist.

  In simple language, neither ships nor equipment existed in sufficient numbers to provide hunting packs. Diversion of the available destroyers to convoy duties simply reduced numbers elsewhere.

  At the end of February 1917, the U-boats put down a monthly haul of 464,599 tons of Allied shipping. Add in some 50,000 tons damaged, and simple arithmetic ruled. The total tonnage that Britain could use was about 11 million tons, 3 million of it neutral hulls. If U-boats sank 600,000 tons per month, and frightened off neutral shipping into the bargain, they would drive Britain out of the war before the Americans joined the conflict.

  By 23 February, forty-four Scandinavian ships in British harbours refused to leave. Outside Britain, 250 neutral vessels stayed in port, refusing to leave for England.

  Nearly half a million tons destroyed. And this was just the start.

  The U-boats had the upper hand.

  ELEVEN

  LIKE RATS IN A TRAP

  If February was bad, March underlined the grim truth of the unrestricted U-boat campaign. Sinkings increased. In the Admiralty, the doctrine reigned that only if large numbers of escorts sailed with the merchantmen were convoys effective. A rule of thumb suggested they should outnumber the merchantmen by two to one. Optimists suggested that one escort per steamer would suffice. Only the madly hopeful reckoned that 8 destroyers could shepherd 26 ships, that 7 escorts could cope with between 16 and 22 vessels, and that gaggles of less than 16 were well protected with 6 escorts. While arguments raged in Whitehall, the slaughter continued. And the Q-ships sailed in hope.

  The call for volunteers brought forward many men. With littl
e else to combat the U-boats, more and more decoys came into use. Although shreds of secrecy still clung to the decoys, it seemed easily penetrated, as the preparations for the Result, officially Q23, indicate. Lieutenant G.H.P. Muhlhauser, RNVR recalled: ‘Fitting out, which by the way was done alongside an open quay so that everyone in Lowestoft knew about us, was a long affair, and it was not before the 3rd February, ’17 that we were ready for some of the trials.’

  Some U-boat captains, still clinging to Prize Regulations, occasionally lacked caution. Even so, Privet’s encounter with a U-boat clearly showed that Q-ships now had to run incredible risks to destroy an opponent.

  On 12 March, on a chilly afternoon, the 800-ton coastal steamer Privet meandered warily from Land’s End to Alderney. At about 1500hr, a torpedo tracked across her course, zipping under the engine room, to disappear in the distance. The panic party duly milled around on deck. Ten minutes ticked by. The U-boat surfaced. From around 2,000m range, she shelled Privet. One shot burst among the panic party; it destroyed both boats and caused severe casualties. After ten minutes, Privet had lost her engines. Her port battery was hit. She was in a bad way.

  Her captain, Lieutenant Commander Charles George Matheson, RNR, went for broke, despite the range. An SOS buzzed across the ether. Privet’s remaining gun opened at the U-boat, 2,000yd distant. Four hits. The U-boat managed only a single round in reply before she appeared to dive. Witnesses on the decoy thought she tried to surface before sinking once more, stern first.

  Privet had suffered. The shell that took out the engines had left a nasty hole in the hull that busily admitted water. Slowly, remorselessly, the sea crept higher and higher in the engine room. The first lieutenant tried to plug the hole with the time-tested remedy of bundled-up hammocks and timber. To no avail.