the American crews absorbed all they could from the experience of their British cousins, then they worked up their boats under Hart’s stern eye, and finally they went out on their own. The first patrol was dispatched on 6 March, eleven months to the day after America entered the war. Much effort had gone into whipping the green crews with their cranky submarines into shape, so hopes were understandably high. Yet, time after time, opportunity passed just beyond their grasp. Sometimes they would not see the U-boat until she was already diving; sometimes they fired and missed; sometimes the boat commander forgot to fire a full spread of torpedoes. Despite the frustration of not chalking up any kills, they were gaining valuable experience.
Antisubmarine patrols were an exhausting, often unpleasant, way to learn a trade. They usually lasted eight days, long hours of which were spent submerged so as to avoid detection. “Arduous” was the term Admiral Sims later applied to his particular form of hazardous duty:
Even on the coldest winter days there could be no artificial heat, for the precious electricity could not be spared for that purpose, and the temperature inside the submarine was the temperature of the water in which it sailed. The close atmosphere, heavily laden also with the smell of oil from the engines and the odors of cooking, and the necessity of going for days at a time without a bath or even a wash added to the discomfort. The stability of a submerged submarine is by no means perfect; the vessel is constantly rolling, and a certain number of the crew, even the experienced men, are frequently seasick. This movement sometimes made it almost impossible to stay in a bunk and sleep for any reasonable period; the poor seaman would perhaps doze off, but a lurch of the vessel would send him sprawling on the deck. One could hardly write, for it was too cold, or read, for there was little light; and because of the motion of the vessel, it was difficult to focus one’s eyes on the page. A limited amount of smoking was permitted, but the air was sometimes so vitiated that only the most vigorous and incessant puffing could keep a cigarette alight. One of the most annoying things about the submarine existence is the fact that the air condenses on the sides as the coldness increases, so that practically everything becomes wet; as the sailor lies in his bunk this moisture is precipitated upon him like rain drops. This combination of discomforts usually produced, after spending a few hours under the surface, that mental state commonly known as “dopey.”32
Hart considered the experience his commanders were getting and the work he was doing with the British were well worth the effort and sooner or later, he knew, would pay off. After two months of patrolling without success came a telegram from Admiral William S. Benson, the chief of naval operations, via Admiral Sims, giving Hart the additional duty of surveying British methods of conducting submarine warfare, including upkeep and administration. Previously, what detailed observation there was had concentrated on material features such as batteries, power plants, and so on. Hart was to look into the practical matter of how the British actually fought their submarines.
He turned over the operation of his flotilla to his executive officer so that he could spend the next six weeks touring the British submarine command. What he found was instructive and much to his liking. It appealed to his innate conservatism to find that the British were frugal, wasting little space or time on comforts for their crews. The command organizations also fitted his tastes, being so run that individual commanders had considerable latitude. In his view the bureaucracy seemed streamlined in comparison with the American system. By and large, the British submarine command appeared to Hart an efficient, tight, businesslike outfit, filled with hard-working sailors willing to put up with a minimum of creature comforts. And whereas the officers and men of the Royal Navy might have lacked the broad experience that characterized the U.S. Navy, because they changed assignments less regularly, they knew their specialties thoroughly and performed efficiently. By the time he was back on board the Bushnell to celebrate his twenty-five years of naval service on 19 May, he felt he had a thorough understanding of how the British fought their submarine war as well as some examples of how the U.S. service could become more efficient.
In June he had an opportunity to pass on some of what he had learned to Captain Robison, now an acting rear admiral, who, with his new chief of staff, Lieutenant Commander Chester W. Nimitz, was visiting American forces in England.33 Robison and Nimitz were also trying to learn what they could of British fighting methods and operating procedures, so their talks were beneficial. Unfortunately, Hart could not yet tell them that his submarines had sunk a U-boat. “I’d pretty nearly give up my hope of future salvation if one of them would get (Fritz) before I have to leave here,” he wrote in frustration on 19 June. The next day word came that he was not likely to be around if and when that happened. The Navy Department was rotating officers out of the war zone, bringing them home for debriefing, and then sending them back with newer ships. When Sims asked Hart to nominate an officer to go home and report on his observations of British methods, Tommy nominated himself, assuming that he would then get one of the new O-class submarines in the process. Sims and the navy accepted his nomination and, after a little less than five months in British waters, he was on his way home. On the evening of 20 June he set down his reflections in his diary:
I was not proud of them [his men] for quite a while. They had long been spoiled, the Bushnell was nothing but a yacht and the submarine people were just tinkers who knew little about the sea and gave it scarcely a thought. For months I was clubbing them all about trying to make officers and seamen of them and to get into them some proper conception of what the job means. At times I nearly gave up hope. But the stuff was there and it has come out. They are now a good lot who may be depended upon to deliver the goods—and they are quiet and modest about it too.
While on his way to Liverpool to catch a ship home he visited several manufacturing plants, including Vickers Ltd. and Cammell Laird & Co., where British submarines were built. Although it was his general impression that they were turning out a product superior to ours, his conclusion was that the most helpful thing would be to capture a couple of the efficient German submarines and copy their designs.34 Once on board the liner Baltic, his primary concern became avoiding those German submarines. There were plenty of them about, but the Baltic, at 23,000 tons and with lots of speed, was not assigned any escort. The voyage, however, passed uneventfully, 6 July marking his return to American soil after eight months out of the country. He went immediately with his family to Little Moose Lake, in the Adirondacks, since those plans had already been made by Caroline before she knew he was coming home. Although offered more leave, he felt he was needed in Washington, so after two days in the woods he reported to the Navy Department. There he received two shocks: he was not to get command of the O-boats and return to England, but was to stay in Washington in some yet-to-be-determined role: and, no one seemed vitally interested in picking his brain for information on the British submarine service. Washington was still in its wartime flurry, no one seemingly knowing who was doing what or why. There were rumors about the particularly bad state of the U.S. submarine forces. On 3 August 1918 Hart set up his desk in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations and was advised by Admiral Benson that he, Hart, had full authority to make decisions on submarine matters in the name of the chief of naval operations. In short, Tommy was given carte blanche to run the submarine service as he saw fit. But the command relationship between his office, Admiral Robison, and the commanding officers of submarines in the field had yet to be resolved.
At this point Admiral Robison was running all U.S. submarine operations out of his office on board the cruiser Chicago at anchor off New London. As Hart would have been the first to admit, Robison had a tremendous load of work thrust on him by the war.35 There were boats to be worked up, crews to be trained, maintenance to be done, and a constant flow of paper work. It did not make matters any simpler that Robison was also trying to run antisubmarine operations. Indeed, one of the first impressions Hart formed was that antisubmarine warfare could be handled more efficiently out of Washington and he could think of no one more qualified for the job than himself. He realized that this suggestion might well ruffle Robison’s feathers, something that he was extremely loath to do, both because of his regard for Robison and because actuarial statistics showed that it was unhealthy for temporary captains to run counter to the wishes of admirals. However, in this case, Robison proved amenable, telling Hart that he
