A new phase of scientific warfare by sea is opened up by the method of attack which lost us the Formidable. This battleship, as Lord Crewe announced on Thursday, sunk by torpedo or torpedoes fired from a German submarine and manifestly by a submarine acting on and not below the surface.
The time and the circumstances generally make it impossible that the boat should have been submerged, and taking aim only thorough the periscope.
The expected has happened (the naval correspondent, of “The Times” writes), and the submarine has taken the place of the destroyer as a torpedo-user; to its submerged activities in daylight it has now added those of the surface boat by night. By day it must still continue to work by stealth, awaiting its prey, but at night it can boldly sally forth, and, protected by its comparative invisibility, can search for a target to attack. At present it appears to work singly, but later on it may do its hunting in packs.
It has been said that this development of submarine warfare was expected, because in the early part of 1904 some experiments were carried out to test this method of attack. It was then reported in the Press that as a result several battleships were torpedoed.
More recently still, in a speech on March 26 th , 1913. Mr. Churchill, when defending a reduction in the number of destroyers in the shipbuilding programme, pointed out that the functions of this class were being intruded upon by other types, especially the light cruiser and larger submarine.
It was perhaps inevitable that his should happen, because the primary advantage possessed by the original torpedo-boat in night attack, its comparative invisibility, was materially reduced when in order to give it greater speed and sea-keeping capability, its size was increased.
Presently the function of this type of vessel to attack the great ships of the enemy by the torpedo was usurped by the destroyer, but even with its high speed the destroyer has much difficulty in pressing home an attack at night without being observed.
The submarine, however, is independent of the waywardness of the weather, and can keep the sea as long as its supplies of food, fuel and ammunition last, while it can, under cover of the darkness and with only its conning tower above water, approach quite near to its quarry without being seen.
It is likely, indeed, that the submarine when she discharged her torpedoes at the Formidable was only a very short distance away, the conditions of the sea and her comparative invisibility enabling her to approach unobserved.
Had, for example, the Japanese been able to use submarines instead of destroyers at the attack upon the Russian fleet in Port Arthur Roads on February 8 th , 1904, it seems probable that every ship might have been sunk, instead of the relatively small amount of damage that was accomplished owing to the destroyers being discovered before they got close enough in to act with full effect.
In the notification by the Chief of the German Admiralty Staff that one of their submarines had sunk the Formidable it was stated that the fact was reported by wireless
