adopted was based on the idea of using decoys. As applied by Hart, a U.S. submarine would be mothered by a schooner or other such vessel, which would tow the silent submarine behind her. Should a U-boat spot the lone schooner and approach on the surface, the U.S. boat, lurking in wait, would be provided an attractive target.36 It was a good idea and, given more time, it very likely would have borne fruit.
The submarines’ friend at court had other ideas and they caused some disruption in the U.S. Navy. One day in a conference he mentioned that the commander of the British submarine service had found by experience that he could better control his command from London than from an outlying base. That idea was enthusiastically taken up by Captain William V. Pratt, the assistant chief of naval operations, in part because the Navy Department was eager to free Robison’s flagship, the Chicago, for escort duty. Hart was asked to draft a memorandum on the British command establishment. He did so, and on the basis of that memorandum Robison was told to haul down his flag and move to Washington. According to Hart, the admiral arrived “as full of ire as a man of his temperament could be” and doubtless blamed Hart for his unhappy state. His most immediate counter was to suggest that, since his office was to be in Washington, Hart should go to New London. Tommy, with the powerful assistance of Admiral Benson, resisted this ploy. The chief of naval operations was apparently very pleased with the work Hart was doing and wanted him in Washington. Tommy could see that terrible strains would be created by having overlapping submarine commands, but believed that he could most effectively apply what he had learned by operating out of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. The result was that Tommy stayed and, for several very awkward weeks, existed in a kind of no-man’s-land, trapped between Benson and Robison. “It was a very disagreeable time for me,” he recalled. In late October, tensions boiled over; there was some kind of a blowup involving Robison and Benson, the upshot of which was that Robison found himself out of the submarine service and on his way to France to take up a coastal command.
On 22 October Tommy moved formally into the billet that later became known as the director of submarines with considerable authority in determining policy and operations. For the next several weeks things worked smoothly; he had only one assistant but most of the bureaus of the Navy Department seemed willing to accept directions from the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, so there was little bureaucratic obstruction. It was the calm before the chaos into which the Navy Department’s internal structure was thrown when peace came. It was a short honeymoon; on 11 November 1918 the armistice was announced. Tommy Hart’s second war was over.
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