Evening Star Newspaper, December 8, 1929, Page 100

TIIE _SUNDAY STAR. WASHINGTON, D. C, DECEMBER 8, 1929, - — - Submarine Warfare in German Waters In This Remarkable Article, Prince Henry of Prussia, Who IV as in Supreme Command of Germany’s Naval Forces in the Baltic, Tells of Underscas Battles—The Incident of the Torpedo Which Jumped Into the Air. ‘Admiral Scheer, Germany’s apostle of ruthless submarine warfare. LTHOUGH I am to write something on the subject of the submarine campaign in the World War, I much prefer not to enter into . purely theoretical considerations. Neither do I care to speak of things that have become well known since the war, and which might easily come to be regarded as part of the wisdom that is displayed after the event. I would rather dwell briefly upon positive facts .only, things which I myself in the war lived, felt and experienced, if I may put it so, with my own body. I had already, some years before the out- break of the struggle, given up the command of the German high seas fleet. This post was, therefore, otherwise occupied. Thus it hap- pened that at the outbreak of the war I re- ceived from the Emperor the supreme command of Germany's naval forces in the Baltic. It is true that the theater of operations in the North Sea, because the chief enemy was Great Britain, comprised beyond all doubt the most important. At the same time the Baltic Sea did play a very important part, and that for more than one reason. In the first place, the Baltic had to remain absolutely in German hands. Only thus could our communications with Sweden, from which came our ore for the manufacture of munitions, be maintained un- hampered. In the next place, all unity of ac- tion between Britain and Russia through the medium of the Baltic must be prevented. Finally, Russia, whose fleet was far more pow- erful than the few ships, all told, that could be allotted to me, had to be held in check @bsolutely. From these motives, immediately after the war became an accomplished fact, I had mines laid for quite a distance right into the interior of the Russian waters. I caused mines to be strewn thickly in the Russian war port of Libau, as well as before the entrance to the Pinnish Gulf. WHILE'this task proceeded, German cruis- ¢ ers maintained their watch unbroken upon the most advanced posts. They continued in closest possible touch with the movements of the Russians. As early as August of 1914 three dashes into the Finnish Gulf were under- taken. In the course of these adventures, to- ward the end of August, during a thick fog, and, during the night, my swiftest and newest small cruiser, H. M. S. Mageburg, ran aground. The crew was rescued by a German torpedo . boat and the ship itself was blown up. Still, there was serious danger that the Russians might now pluck up courage, make a dash on their own account and even assume the offen- sive. I, accordingly, requested that some ships be dispatched to the Baltic from the North Sea. I transferred my own flag to the Blucher and myself led a raid to the Pinnish Gulf. My purpose was to lure the Russians out, to cut them off from their base and then destroy them. But the Russians proved unfortunately too far-sighted and they fled home at the top of their speed. Our naval base in the year 1914 was Kiel and Swinemunde still, even for this Baltic cam- paign. In the year 1915 I was able to transfer the base of my operations to Danzig first and later to Libau. This Russian war port of Libau was, on May 7, 1915, captured by the united action of our navy and our land forces. After that victory Libau remained our chief base of operations in the Baltic. From this stepping stone we set out against Riga, and in the year 1917 we took the isles of Oesel and Dago from the Russians. In the end, therefore, we had the Russians, where the Baltic was concerned, ‘pent up within the Finnisk Gulf. There they By Prince Henry of Prussia.. German submarine towing lifeboats from a ship which was sent to the bottom a few minutes before. were well sealed up and rendered harmless to ourselves, I would like to note also that in the year 1918 a great German effort freed Finland from the Russian yoke. The Baltic now became and remained German. . Such is a rough outline of the werk of our navy in the Baltic. It is little known, as is usual in the case of a theater of operations lying outside the principal war zone. Neve - theless, in the struggle with an enemy grimly bent upon laying his mines and extraordinarily well supplied with facilities for the purpose, besides being supported by the British subma- rines, the Baltic cost us much in the way of bloodshed and serious losses in ships. The British fiéet dared no dash into the Baltic, although Lord Fisher, their admiralty head, had urged one. Hence the Russian ally was left in the lurch. We would, none the less, have rejoiced had the British actually put in an appearance. As it was, the British subma- rines proved a sufficient inconvenience. This brings me to what I have to tell re- garding the activity of submarines in the Baltic. IN Germany nobody dreamed of waging a war against martime commerce through the agency of submarines. The war must rather, according to the German conception of it, be waged only by means of armed forces. The submarines were to attack warships. Germany thus kept well and strictly within the limits of international law. Quite opposed to this idea was the British conception of the war. In open defiance of the law of nations, the English began with a deliberately planned system of starving out the German government and the entire civil popu- lation subject to its sway. This fact, let us hope, is universally understood today. My own first employment of the few subma- rines at my disposal was for fighting purposes in the line of strictly military duty. In fact, when it came to watching the waterways into the Baltic two old submarines were made use of. The three new submarines under my com- mand—U-23, U-25 and U-26—together with the cruisers were all sent to the Finnish Gulf. Our first submarine success was gained on October 11, 1914, by the U-26, under First Lieut. Baron von Berckheim. In an energetic attack upon the Russian armored cruiser Pal- lada, she was torpedoed and destroyéd with all her crew. The Russian cruisers that happened to be in the vicinity steamed away as fast as they could. At almost that very hour news arrived from the vessels on guard in the sound. British submarines had contrived to penetrate into the Baltic unobserved. Such a development could have been forestalled by ourselves only with the utmost difficulty. The sound between Denmark and Sweden was a neutral water, and yet more closely embraced within the Swedish coast, even farther inside the neutral zone, was a waterway, the so-called Kogrund Chan- nel, forming an entrance to the Baltic. Now these British submarines must be ren- dered harmless. All the devices which a few years later were exploited by the British against our own submarines had not then come into existence, or they had not been tested. Some were then not even thought of. As for big nets, there was in place at that moment not 80 much as a single wire thread of one, but merely herring nets. Of craft for guard duty, we possessed not a solitary boat built for speed, but simply little fishing motor boats. Mines we had only in the most limited quantities. We had no water bombs. Everything had to be improvised. The British submarines E-1 and E-9 chose as their first base of operations Libau. We had not yet captured that port. Hence our own submarines were forced to undertake a blockade of Libau. There was thus no war on commerce, this being nothing but submarine against submarine. At the same time, it was determined to close the entrances into the harbor with sunken ships. During the night between the 16th and 17th of November this blocking of the Harbor was carried out, in accordance with our plans, In the process we lost the armored cruiser Friedrich Karl when she hit a mine. Her whole crew was saved, despite the obscurity of the Winter night, through the prompt action of the cruiser Augsburg. BY this time the British submarines had dis- appeared from our ken. Their presence elsewhere was, however, duly reported to us and we followed them. They had been letting off various torpedoes, but as yet they had not succeeded in hitting anything. To be sure, " was not carried on in the Baltic. Prince Henry of Pruss.a. their commanders sent word back to London that they had wiped out a German destroyer. The fact was that the British torpedo had gone to the bottom and there exploded. The British commander inferred from the -circumstance that he heard the explosion that he had hit the ‘mark. The German torpedo boat S-120 made a sufficiently -accurate report of this affair. The British, with their pair of submarines in the Baltic, cruised around and about quite ruthe lessly. Their successes were nevertheless slight, for they hit very little and aboard our own boats the watch was most keen. No British subma- rine so much as gave a thought to warning a merchantman or any other commercial vessel of its intention to fire a shot or to launch a torpedo. Nobody on our side got at all excited over that, Not a single German trading vessel in the Baltic was armed. A German steamship engaged in commercial voyages only was sunk near Rugen by artillery fire from a British submarine. On the German side a submarine campaign against trading ships In our ca- pacity as masters of the Baltic, it was easy for us with our fighting forces afloat to control the whole traffic. Only in the neutral sound in the southern part of Sweden did we encounter diplo= matic difficulties. Our own armored cruiser Prinz Adalbert was _torpedoed by a British submarine on the 2d day of July in this same year, 1915. Into this episode I would like to enter a little because iz brought out so clearly the fitness of our Ger- . Inan crews. There was a light sncw. This cleared away somewhat. At that very moment the subma- rine, then plunged below the surface, found ite self in a good position to shoot. Suddenly, aboard the armored cruiser, it became obvious that a torpedo was coming. Maneuvers for the purpose of evading it began at once, but in spite of these the projectile must evidently reach its mark in 15 seconds. At the same moment the enemy—now invisible—discharged a second and a third torpedo. “My whole thought,” to quote the wocrds of the commander of the German ship, “was di- rected to one thing. Out of the three torpedoes, would I be able to get off with only one hit? The torpedo nearest to us seemed bent upon passing us completely by, far forward. The fire thest torpedo could at most strike us far behind, if that. I paid little attention to it because it went along lamely. But there was the second torpedo of the enemy. This sped straight toe ward our broadside and must inevitably hit. There was nothing more that we could do. .I stared, fascingted, as the projectile dashed to- ward our freeboard and on right in front of the bridge. The pair of torpedoboats that acted as my convoy had by this time forced the enemy to dive beneath the surface. No fur- ther measures could be taken just then and water bombs had yet to be invented. It was stil! the golden age of the submarine.” WITH reference to this last observation I would like to say that we Germans most unfortunately let this golden age slip by with- out making any proper use of it. We conducted against the enemy no submarine campaign of the ruthless and unrestricted kind. Yet we had things much easier for us at that time than they were later on when formidable defense weapons were invented and available. The torpedo that struck the old German armored cruiser went well home, yet the ship kept afloat. The forward torpedo broadside room, a munitions chamber, the forward galley and the commander’s signal rocm were at once flooded. The signal apparatus for both gun=®