our yardarm, signaling chasers A and C that we have sighted a submarine. Then the Stand By signal bangs out its warning on the alarm gong. Dorgan is getting set for a depth-bomb attack.
The engine-room deck plates bounce under our feet, and old 1X4 shudders in every frame. Dorgan has just kicked over his first depth bomb. Three more follow in rapid succession. Then comes the signal to stop all engines for a listening period.
Early in 1918, the first subchasers designed and equipped specifically for hunting Germany’s relentless underwater predators left New London, Connecticut, heading for the war zone. Over the next nine months, over one hundred of these fast, maneuverable 110-foot-long wooden-hulled vessels hunted day and night in the waters around Britain, France, and throughout the Mediterranean. The subchasers carried a new technology on board, which, when lowered beneath the surface, enabled well-trained sailors to hear the distinct sounds of a U-boat.
During the “listening period” Millholland referred to, an inverted T-shaped device known as an “SC-tube” was lowered from a housing near the keel. A sound sensor was mounted at each end of the horizontal section of pipe forming the “T,” with the vertical portion of the “T” passing through a watertight seal in the hull. Within the pipe, copper tubes connected each sound sensor to one of the listener’s ears through a stethoscope. As he rotated the “T,” the sound in each ear would be of the same intensity when the source of the sound—a U-boat—was perpendicular to the “T,” a process referred to as “binaural listening.” The same effect occurs when a person rotates his head to determine the direction of a sound in air. The SC-tube, however, could not be used when the vessel was underway; hence the vessel had to stop during the listening period.
Three subchasers, operating a distance apart but abreast, comprised a hunting group, where the central, or flagship, subchaser directed the pursuit: SC-124, in this case. All three had to stop for each listening period to obtain a bearing to the target. The flagship, which was in contact with the port and starboard wing chasers, plotted the three bearings; where they crossed was the approximate location of the sub at that time. Then from the captain of SC-124:
“Up tubes and away!” roars Dorgan on deck. Full speed ahead! … Port and starboard engines roar wide open.
Once the location of the U-boat was determined, the listeners raised their SC-tube up and into its protective housing. The hunting group tactic to pursue, stop, listen, and pursue was a process often repeated several times—an operation for which SC-124 had received ample training while at New London. U-boat captains, also well trained, had many options when attempting to escape the hunters, and the ears of the listeners. Millholland:
Dorgan had stopped and listened for the fleet mine-laying submarine, sufficiently to plot its general course and lay plans for a quick dash ahead for a final bombing attack. But the rain also cut down visibility to a point where a low object in the water, like a submarine, could not be seen at more than a half-mile away. We had stopped to get one last “fix” on the sub when the listener suddenly reported “Sub has broached to the surface. She’s running away on her Diesels, sir!”
Once again, it was “Up tubes and away!” and “Full speed ahead!” The other subchasers, which had been listening to the U-boat on their SC-tubes to provide that “fix” on its position, followed SC-124 through the rain. As the trio passed out of the squall, the crow’s nest lookout shouted, “Sub-marreen! Dead ahead on the surface!” The subchaser gun crews had prepared to engage the U-boat, but the pursuit ended suddenly. The U-boat had escaped to its base along the Albanian coast and to the protection of Austrian destroyers.
Not all U-boats were as fortunate as the one SC-124 chased into the Adriatic. As the months of 1918 went by, however, morale deteriorated among many of the crews of U-boats which did survive. American subchasers maintained their relentless pursuit, with their listeners constantly on duty. As Admiral William S. Sims recalled, “Who would ever have thought that a little wooden vessel, displacing only sixty tons, measuring 110 feet from bow to stern … proved one of the formidable enemies of the submarine?”10
The technologies used by the listeners during the Great War had their origins in the minds of dedicated civilians on both sides of the Atlantic. Motivated by a sense of urgency, everyone worked in a successful collaboration with men like Ray Millholland and the crew of SC-124 to create effective deterrents to the notorious U-boat. By the end of the war, the staff of the Naval Experimental Station at Fort Trumbull in New London, Connecticut, consisted of thirty-two scientists and engineers from several universities supported by nearly 700 naval officers and enlisted men.11
The Great War had been referred to as “The War to End All Wars,” an unrealized hope when only two decades later, the Second World War saw submarines return to the waters of the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the distant Pacific. Once again, a new generation of civilian scientists and engineers assembled at Fort Trumbull to resume the development of what became known as SONAR, an acronym for SOund Navigation And Ranging. Their work continued after the surrender of Germany and Japan when the Soviet Union rose from the ashes to become the next adversary to democracy. Submarine and antisubmarine warfare soon became a major component of Cold War strategy; once again, the “listeners” played a major role.
PART I
1914-1916
CHAPTER 1 PREDATOR AND PREY
At 7:47 P.M. on August 4 we received the message, “Prepare for war with England.”
—Admiral Reinhard Scheer, Germany’s High Sea Fleet, 19201
After massing her troops along the Belgian border on the 3rd of August, 1914, Germany declared war on France. An ultimatum that Germany respect Belgian neutrality and withdraw was immediately sent by Britain, and summarily rejected. The British ambassador to Berlin, Sir Edward Goschen, was recalled and at 11:00 p.m. on the 4th, Britain declared war. With an efficiency brought by a newly-mechanized twentieth century, German invasion forces rapidly crossed into Belgium and soon established a front along the northern border of France. When Admiral Reinhard Scheer received the message to prepare for war with England, the Imperial German Navy, the Kaiserliche Marine, was ready.
Earlier that day on the 4th, the auxiliary minelayer Königin Luise, already at sea, received the wireless message: “Make for sea in Thames direction at top speed. Lay mines near as possible the English coasts …”2 It was on August 5, the day after Britain declared war, that the minelayer completed her mission, but had been discovered by British destroyers; after a brief chase Königin Luise was sent to the bottom. In less than twenty-four hours, however, the mines had done their work when one of them was struck by HMS Amphion, which soon shared the minelayer’s fate. War had arrived off the British Isles.
Throughout Europe, Germany had been perceived as a military powerhouse after her swift victory during the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. For three decades, Germany’s High Seas Fleet had been gathering strength and was anxious to prove itself against what the British unabashedly referred to as The Grand Fleet. Unprepared for the scale of aggression brought by their belligerent neighbor on the continent, the British Admiralty scrambled to meet what was obvious to everyone—that this war would quickly expand beyond the battlefields of Europe and onto the surrounding seas. What was less obvious was that the war would also slip beneath the surface of the ocean.
Admiral Reinhard Scheer, who became Commander in Chief of the High Seas Fleet in January, 1916, and later Chief of the Admiralty Staff, noted in his memoir: “[A] decision was taken which was extremely important for the further course of the war … for the U-boats received orders to proceed on August 6 [1914] against English battleships,
