Up Periscope!

By David Masters

Up Periscope!, first published in 1943, is a fast-paced account of submarines of the British Royal Navy during World War II. Each of the book's 21 chapters presents an action or adventure of military significance or representative of those experienced by the submarine fleet during the war as seen by the captain and his crew. Included too are depictions of life aboard the submarines, fighting and hunting methods, rescuing survivors of sunken ships, and stories of chase and escape. Featured submarines include the Spearfish, Triumph, Tigris, Sealion, Tuna, Utmost, and Cachalot.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eumenes Publishing
• Release date: Dec 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9781839741463

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© EUMENES Publishing 2019, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

UP PERISCOPE!

By

DAVID MASTERS

Up Periscope! was originally published in 1943 by Dial Press, New York.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

DEDICATED TO HIS MAJESTY’S SUBMARINES 5

PREFACE 6

AUTHOR’S NOTE 12

1. RETURN OF THE SPEARFISH 13

2. AN EPIC PATROL 23

3. THE QUALITY OF MERCY 28

4. A LUCKY LOOPHOLE 32

5. TORPEDOING THE KARLSRUHE 38

6. ESCAPE OF THE TRIUMPH 42

7. A CHANCE IN A MILLION 48

8. URSULA 51

9. TRIUMPHS OF THE CACHALOT 57

10. THE EXPLOITS OF THE TIGRIS 63

11. FOUR RESCUES 73

12. A MESSAGE IN CODE 78

13. DISABLED 82

14. BEGINNER’S LUCK 89

15. THE SEALION’S ADVENTURES 93

16. TRAPPED IN A MINEFIELD 103

17. CRUSHED BY THE SEA 107

18. ATTACKS AND ESCAPES 112

19. PATROLS OF THE UTMOST 117

20. MEDITERRANEAN ADVENTURES 123

21. GENERAL CLARK’S 131

SUBMARINE ADVENTURE 131

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 137

DEDICATED TO HIS MAJESTY’S SUBMARINES

Yonder bright star, which glorifies the night,

Revealed to Drake the way of destiny,

And Nelson, aided by its steadfast light,

Made his immortal plans for victory.

England awakes again. Her seamen flout

The foe. Eternal beams blaze up on high.

Though tyrants put the lights of Europe out,

One star still lights a beacon in the sky.

Lurking like Fate, the British submarines

Rend the dark silence with their sullen roar,

Attacking the foeman’s ships, piercing their screens,

Hurling the wreckage to the ocean floor.

Calmly the sea-breed put once more to sea

To cleanse the world and keep the seaways free.

D.M.

PREFACE

Only when Germany is vanquished and all the documents are available for the study of the historian will it be possible to give a full account of the activities of the British submarine flotillas in this war. That they have struck hard blows at the navies of Germany and Italy and Japan is well known; their blows at the merchant fleets of the enemy have been equally damaging. British submarines have in fact destroyed so many Axis ships that the shipping problem can be no less acute to the enemy than to the Allies, but whereas the Allies can look forward to vast fleets of new merchant ships from the shipways of the United States, the Axis powers have no such source of supply to save them.

Not without reason have the British flotillas which operate so brilliantly in the Mediterranean come to be feared, for their torpedoes and shells have wiped out whole convoys—big and small tankers, fine liners converted into troopships, merchant steamers and sailing ships with escort vessels of various kinds make up the fleets which have set out from enemy ports never to return. In European waters the British flotillas have sunk large numbers of enemy ships of all types, and the following pages describe some of the outstanding actions and experiences of British submarines since the war began.

The Royal Navy has won a reputation as the silent service, and this silence is probably even more marked in the submarine service than in other branches. The fog of secrecy which envelops the operations of surface ships is intensified when the submarines operate. The British submarine service is in truth the secret service of the sea.

The eyes of the Admiralty are reconnaissance aircraft of the Royal Air Force which fly high overhead peering down on the waters and harbors of the enemy coasts. But the submarines are more than this—they are the eyes and ears. They see and hear everything that is going on within range. Where the pilots of the Royal Air Force fly over the coasts and harbors to take their photographs and depart, the submarines lurk patiently for days, watching when conditions are right and visibility is good, and listening all the time, night and day, whether visibility is good or bad, hearing ships in many cases long before they can see them.

Ordinary mortals sometimes marvel at the acute sense of hearing developed by the blind, yet the blindman’s ears are deaf when compared with the hydrophone. Since the London-born scientist David E. Hughes invented the microphone which magnified sounds to an enormous degree and was scoffed at by other British scientists when he clearly demonstrated the first wireless waves before Marconi began to work on the subject at all—the United States was less skeptical about the genius of Hughes and rewarded his talents with a huge fortune—the microphone has been developed into the hydrophone which can pick up sounds under water.

The hull of a submerged submarine actually catches the sound waves and acts like a giant hydrophone. One of the first men to discover this was Simon Lake, the American inventor who did so much to develop the inefficient and dangerous early submarine into the modern deadly weapon of war. Long ago he wrote in the Century Magazine: It is surprising how accurately the human ear can detect sound under water. I first discovered in my experiments in Hampton Roads, in 1897, that when the machinery was shut down in the submarine, I could distinguish the approach of surface vessels from considerable distances by simply resting a stick against the plating of a submarine and putting the other end to my ear.

Quite unknowingly, Simon Lake varied the experiment of the famous French physician Laennac who invented the stethoscope that has proved invaluable in diagnosing tuberculosis by the sounds of the lungs. Laennac, who remembered a boyish game in which the scratch of a pin at one end of a beam was heard clearly if the ear were placed at the other end of a beam, eventually invented a small wooden trumpet or tube which was the original stethoscope. The long tube used by inspectors to trace leaks in a water pipe is a giant form of the invention.

The steel hull of the vessel became a great sound-receiver, and the stick carried the sound waves to the ear, continued Simon Lake. This did not give a sense of direction, so I devised a rotary receiver which could be rotated on top of the hull to pick up the direction of the sound. Shortly afterward Mr. Munday of Boston introduced his submarine signal and receiving apparatus, which gives a very correct indication of the direction of the sound. Now the Fessenden oscillator improves on that to the extent that conversations may be carried on under water for a considerable distance. Not only can you detect the direction of the sound, but a little experience with the receiver gives a good idea as to distance. Every ship has sounds peculiar to itself, the smash of the paddle-wheels, the slow, but deep pound of the bearings in large, powerfully engined ships, and the high-speed machinery of the destroyer can all be distinguished by the operator at the receiver. Without any sound-receiving device, while in a submarine resting on the bottom with all machinery stopped, I have heard even the whirr of the machinery in a Whitehead torpedo nearly a mile away.

This is no less true today than when the American inventor wrote it. But now the human ears have been touched with a new wonder that has enormously increased their range. Upon the hydrophone operator, listening intently to the sounds which flow to his ears from the sea around him, may depend the success of an attack on a ship or the escape of the submarine from the surface hunters. The lives of the crew may depend upon how he interprets the sounds he hears, and his interpretation must rest on his technical training and experience. He must be able to detect the differences in the sounds of motors and engines. He must note all their variations to tell whether they are speeding up or slowing down. The remarkable powers of the hydrophone have so impressed submarine crews that on occasions when British submarines have been sorely hunted the men have taken off their boots so that they could move about without making the slightest noise. At such times their lives depended on their silence. They knew that the least sound might bring about their destruction.

As may be expected, the submarine crews are the pick of the Navy, for this highly-specialized service offers fine opportunities to the old dauntless spirit which animated Drake and Grenville and which still survives in our finest young men of today. To be a member of a submarine crew is a mark of distinction: it connotes intelligence, keenness and physical fitness above the average. The men are trained to become specialists, and their rates of pay are higher than those ruling in surface ships. Every man on board knows his work and does it instantly. They practice together until they become welded into a crew with perfect confidence in each other and in their captain. When on duty each performs his part in the series of mechanical operations which take a submarine safely below the surface and bring her up again. There must be no mistakes. An oversight by one may lead to the death of all. To eliminate errors there is an elaborate system of visual signals for controlling the operation of the boat, while all verbal orders are automatically repeated back to ensure accuracy.

If the crews run any additional risk, they show no indication of it in their bearing. Just before Christmas, 1941, two mothers with their sons in naval uniform were shown in to see a medical friend of mine. He had brought both sailors into the world and their mothers wanted him to see them before they went back from leave.

What are you doing? the doctor inquired.

We’re in submarines, was the response.

A bit dangerous, isn’t it? inquired the doctor in his gentle way.

The young men laughed. The safest job in the Navy, they asserted and meant it.

Most submarine men will probably agree. They are enthusiasts for their particular branch of the Navy and in their eyes nothing can compare with it.

Submarine crews lead a topsy-turvy life. They turn night into day. This is easy to understand. Their boat relies upon the power from electric batteries to propel it beneath the surface because electric motors do not consume the life-giving air. A submarine must strike without being seen, so during the day it patrols beneath the surface at periscope depth to keep a watch for enemy ships. By the end of the day a good deal of the current has been consumed and it becomes necessary to recharge batteries. This can be done only while the submarine is on the surface and it entails the use of the main engines which are run on oil fuel. Clutches enable the propeller shafts to be disconnected from the main engines which can then be connected up with the motors that serve as dynamos to recharge the batteries. Normally the boat charges on one engine while it travels along on the other, and only when a submarine captain is pressed very hard will he stop his boat to recharge on both engines, because if the enemy comes upon him when stopped, he is caught at a disadvantage.

As the important work of the boat must be done at night, the crew take their main meal between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. while the submarine is on the surface and they have supper just before they dive for the day patrol. They adapt themselves to these conditions without much trouble, and they are able to revert to normal conditions during their spell ashore with comparative ease.

Their food is of the best, mostly canned. The day to day diet is arranged before the submarine leaves base, and by keeping to the daily menus, which are scientifically drawn up, the crews escape the monotony of the meals of olden days and maintain their fitness despite lack of exercise. At the beginning of the war experiments were made to provide the crews with bread which remained eatable and appetizing from the beginning to the end of patrols lasting several weeks. This was accomplished by sealing the loaves in a special waxed wrapping paper which kept the bread fresh so long as the wrapping was unbroken. In some of the big submarines the cook bakes bread every day, but on the smaller boats this is not possible, but whether the bread be wrapped or freshly baked, the usual biscuits always find their place in the stores and some submariners still prefer them to bread.

The men are unable to smoke when submerged, so it is the custom to take sweets with them on patrol and they may be seen going about their jobs sucking sweets like so many boys. In more than one desperate hunt, these sweets have proved a great solace to the men.

Contrary to popular opinion, a submarine moves at no great speed under water. On the surface she runs on her main Diesel engines which may propel her sufficiently fast to overtake the average merchant ship. When she dives she changes over to her electric motors which propel her normally at an easy walking pace. She can be speeded-up if necessary, but a running man could still outpace her when she is going at full speed under water. Her batteries are quickly exhausted at high speed and exhausted batteries make her helpless under attack, unable to move below the surface at all; consequently the skillful captain always uses the power in his batteries in the most miserly manner. He aims always to have sufficient power in hand to allow him to steal away if attacked — which is the reason why he is so desperately keen to recharge his batteries every night. A full charge in the batteries may save the ship and crew, so the experienced captain seldom goes at full speed under the sea for more than a few minutes when it is essential to work into position to make an attack or to avoid the counterattack from surface craft, after which he usually crawls away at one or two knots.

However incongruous it may seem, there are similarities between a submarine and an airship. One floats in air and the other floats in water. The navigation of both depends upon proper balance, and both possess ballast tanks by which the trim, or balance, of the ship is adjusted. To rise quickly, an airship will jettison ballast in its forward tanks to lighten the nose and enable the engines to drive her up at a steeper angle. To achieve a similar result the submarine will use compressed air to blow some of the water from its forward ballast tanks in order to lighten the bow and at the same time alter the angle of the forward hydroplanes so that the pressure of the water on their undersides will push up the bow as the propellers drive her forward.

Without going too deeply into technicalities, it may be said that a submarine is composed of a giant steel cylinder known as the pressure hull, which is divided into water-tight compartments and built strong enough to withstand the pressure of the sea at the limit to which she is designed to dive. This explains why submariners call a submarine a tube. On the outside of the pressure hull, in addition to the decks and superstructure, are built the ballast and fuel tanks, with further trimming tanks, known as auxiliaries, and freshwater tanks inside the ship. The ballast tanks are filled by opening the Kingston valves which allow the sea to rush in at an enormous rate, thus decreasing the buoyancy and carrying her under the surface, while compressed air is used to blow the water out of the tanks to bring her up again. The hydroplanes at the bow and stern of the boat help in these diving operations and when a submarine is properly trimmed she rises and dives solely by altering the angles of her hydroplanes.

It is all a question of buoyancy. Taking in too much ballast will drive her too deep, expelling too much will send her to the surface. To keep the submarine balanced between these extremes—maintaining trim, as it is called—demands all the skill of the submarine officer. To maintain the exquisite balance which enables a submarine to proceed steadily along at periscope depth throughout the day is something of a conjuring trick, a technical accomplishment that is not learned in a day. A few gallons too much in the tanks may make the periscope dip below the surface, and a few gallons too little may drive the submarine to the top. If the submarine is too near the surface, the captain may have to lie down flat in the control room to use the periscope just as the eyepiece emerges from the periscope well, at other times he may have to crouch or kneel and only when the boat is maintaining a perfect periscope depth may he stand up to look through the periscope in comfort.

It is far simpler to maintain trim in some areas than in others. It depends upon the density of the seawater, which in turn may vary with the seasons. For instance when the snows melt on the Norwegian mountains, large volumes of fresh water rush down the fiords into the sea. This forms a layer of fresh water flowing like a river in the sea and as it is fed copiously by the melting snows it does not mix readily with the sea-water. Beneath this layer of fresh water will come a layer of sea-water and somewhere below this may be found yet another layer of fresh water.

A submarine needs less ballast to dive in the fresh water than in the denser sea-water, because the fresh water is not so buoyant, as every swimmer knows. A dense layer below the fresh water may make depth-keeping simple, because the submarine will actually float along on the surface of this secondary layer as easily as it floats on the surface of the sea: although the boat is submerged, it is really floating between two layers of different density, with the lower layer of sea-water supporting the submarine like a giant’s hand.

Naturally these layers of different densities complicate diving problems for the captain. Some days in certain areas he may find the water so dense that it is difficult to dive at all, and not until he has taken in tons of ballast in excess of normal can he get down. At other times the density may decrease and he finds he can reach the required depth with less than the usual amount of ballast. These variations and layers while they add to his difficulties may sometimes simplify his navigation and there is at least one authentic case of a clever captain who used a layer to save his ship from destruction.

British submarines vary in size from 600 tons up to the big ocean-going boats of roughly 1,700 tons and their crews likewise vary from about thirty to over fifty. The largest submarines can remain at sea for many weeks, during which they can steam thousands of miles without refueling—although a submarine travels upon the surface on Diesel oil engines, to the submariner she still steams.

During the patrols the crew never take off their clothes, and the majority do not shave from the time they leave their depot ship until they return. For weeks these keen young seamen live in the closest possible contact in a submarine so crammed with torpedoes and shells and machinery and scientific miracles that even an aircraft cannot compare with it for complexity. The control room is so packed with pipes and dials and wheels and valves that the sight of them sets the mind in a whirl.

One man who entered a control room for the first time just looked round