World War: Black Moons

The November moon—moon of the ancient Saxon “Blood Month”—swelled to full last week,* and with it grew the grimness of World War II at sea. Evidently Germany’s submarine campaign had failed. She now resorted to a brand-new form of sea warfare, and a desperate gamble that it would pay off in tonnage what it was bound to lose her in neutrals’ sympathy.

After a week of intensive damage to British and neutral shipping by submarine-laid mines along England’s east coast, night witnesses on the forelands beheld sights never before seen outside of futuristic war novels. A resident of Essex described one such sight:

“First, two German planes appeared overhead. They were engaged by our guns and disappeared inland. I was watching to see what happened when I heard the noise of another machine.

“I looked around and was amazed to see a triple-engined flying boat less than 100 feet above the water and not a quarter of a mile from shore. The machine passed in front of me and by the dim light in her cabin I could see the figures of men moving about. I held my breath at the daring of the pilot. He was within a few yards of one of the most strongly fortified areas in the country.

“Then, in the moonlight. I saw something drop from the machine and splash into the water. The seaplane shot away when a machine gunner appeared to open fire on her.”

Other witnesses told similar stories and presently it was officially acknowledged: Germany was laying mines from the air in British harbors, channels and estuaries too narrow or shallow for submarines to navigate. Some of the mines were dropped by parachute, some just plunked down, some placed by Nazi seaplanes which actually alighted in the dusk or moonlit darkness. To the peril of offshore mines, anchored or floating, now was added the peril of mines laid right on shoal bottoms (therefore almost impossible to sweep), equipped with magnetic triggers which a steel hull passing over would sway to make electrical contact*.

Technicians of the British Admiralty furiously set about diagnosing the precise nature of the new threat. Only evidence they had to go on was the new mines’ effect on their victims, but of this they had plenty. One after another, by the half-dozen or more every day, ships of all sizes blew up in waters close to shore. Most were hit on or near their keels, blowing cargo, machinery and men straight aloft through the superstructure, often breaking the ships clean in two. Efforts to sweep the new bottom charges were fruitless. Engineers talked about floating huge steel rafts through the channels to detonate the spiked black moons harmlessly. For several hours one day the swarming Port of London on the Thames estuary, through which normally passes one-third of Britain’s overseas trade and one-half her food supply, was closed to traffic while an anti-mine flotilla took measures of a nature not disclosed. Some experts said a “splinter fleet” of wooden-hulled fishing smacks would be the solution. Others said a magnetic field could be thrown several hundred feet ahead of a sweeper to do the work.

The advent of “moon mining” by no means signaled the end of submarine mining, and Nazi death-layers above and below the surface were believed to be collaborating, laying mines of several types, from little (200-lb.) but potent “footballs,” of which a big seaplane might be able to carry 40 or 50, up to one-ton monsters. As Britain mobilized an even greater trawler fleet and called for hundreds of volunteers from North Sea fishing ports, down went one ship after another, great and small, trawler and liner, nationality regardless. The 11,930-ton Japanese luxury steamer Terukuni Maru went down in 45 minutes off Harwich, near the grave of the Dutch Simon Bolivar, last fortnight’s most tragic victim (85 dead). No lives were lost on Terukuni Maru nor on the Italian Fianona of 6,660 tons, which was blown open under the chalk cliffs of Dover but, with tugs, made the beach. The modern British destroyer Gipsy, after rescuing and landing three Nazi airmen who had flown over London’s outskirts and abandoned their shot-up plane at sea in a rubber boat, was returning to her patrol off Harwich when an explosion that felt on shore like an earthquake blasted her apart, killed 29 men. Another victim was the 11,063-ton refrigerator ship Sussex, damaged in the English Channel. Off one east-coast port, the British 8,886-ton freighter Mangalore was lying at anchor when a mine sank her—added evidence that at least part of Germany’s attack was with illegal floaters. Further evidence in this direction was furnished when two mines bumped together and went off thunderously near Zeebrugge. Victim of a floating mine was a 54-ft. whale, found on the Belgian coast with a huge hole in his belly. Near by lay four German mines.

From denying their strategy, the Nazis turned to boasting about it, justifying it, instead of pretending the mines were British. They said their “objectives were being achieved.” They said they were proving they could give ten shots for one. Some of their mines bore inscriptions, such as: WHEN THIS GOES UP, UP GOES CHURCHILL. They advised neutrals to shun British waters, trade with Germany instead. British waters, they said, were not mercantile fairways, subject to The Hague Convention of 1907 regulating sea warfare,* but military areas where enemy ships of war abound and must be attacked. They had been made military areas by the British themselves with their defense mine fields and blockade regulations for neutral shipping.

Between the Nazi’s mine warfare and Britain’s reprisal blockade on German exports, effective this week, neutral shipping slowed to a standstill. Dutch ships stayed in port, Belgian too. Cross-Channel mail boats missed their runs or were rerouted below the British mine barrage at the Strait of Dover. True it was that this barrage, and a mine field guarding the Thames estuary, and the British blockade patrol, were what originally forced neutrals to enter British waters for guidance and inspection. But now neutrals had even smaller chance of getting through until British sweepers cleared the German mines and British pilots showed neutrals where the swept channels were.

In his week-end war speech to the Empire, Prime Minister Chamberlain declared: “Already we know the secret of the magnetic mine and we shall soon master it as we have already mastered the U-boat.” But these words went out to the tune of more titanic explosions, under the hulls of Pilsudski, the 14,294-ton flagship of the Polish merchant marine, chartered by the British Government when Poland disappeared, and of Spaarndam, 8,857-ton Holland-America freighter in the Thames estuary. Aboard Pilsudski, torpedoed northwest of Britain, were only her Polish crew and some British cooks, of whom seven perished. Captain Mamert Stankiewicz, injured by the explosion, waited until the last instant before diving from his bridge into the icy sea. He died on a rescue ship. Killed on Spaarndam were four sailors and an aged U. S. woman passenger.

Just to show it was not “mastered,” one U-boat added to Germany’s sea score last week by nailing the new British cruiser Belfast at the mouth of the Firth of Forth, sending her back crippled to Rosyth naval base. Another U-boat sank a small ship which Berlin claimed was a Q-boat—an armed Britisher disguised as a Dutchman to lure submarines. The British identified this ship as the innocent 5,133-ton Dutch freighter Sliedrecht, whose crew was turned loose to drift in a lifeboat for seven and a half days.

Beside all these casualties—bringing the week’s total to 24 ships of 92,400 total tons sunk by Germany—Allied exploits sounded skimpy. The British Navy sank or captured four small German freighters, one off Ireland. The French Navy claimed to have sunk three U-boats, two by the old destroyer Siroco, one by the little (719-ton) survey ship Amiral Mouchez.

*In astrological parlance, last week’s full moon was squared by Mars (for war) at 10 p. m. Greenwich time, Nov. 26, from the watery sign Pisces (fish) governed by Neptune.

*Quickly dispelled by experts was the popular fable that magnetic mines can be drawn bodily to the victim’s steel hull, by their own magnetism.

*The Convention prohibits mining coasts or ports “with the sole object of intercepting commercial shipping.” It also requires that warnings be issued about mine fields dangerous to neutrals, and that floating mines or mines breaking their moorings shall become harmless within one hour.