AT SEA: How Did It Happen?

Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, U. S. N., probably the world’s greatest naval theorist and historian, maintained that all great conflicts could be analyzed as struggles between land powers and sea powers. By their fluidity, sea powers always won.

One of his demonstrations was the Napoleonic Wars, in which Britain’s peerless fleet was matched against Napoleon’s peerless Grand Army. Napoleon conquered a continent and kept British commerce away from it for six terrible years. But in the end, strangled economically herself by the British sea blockade and finally knocked in the head by Wellington and the Allies, France went broke and got beaten.

Once more in 1914-18 British sea power choked and starved a combination of great continental empires, and Britain was at it again last week. But sea power may suffer many a set-back before the final conclusion.

Sept. 22, 1914 was a dark day for the British Navy. Three cruisers, Hogue, Aboukir and Cressy, were patrolling off the Dogger Bank, near Ymuiden. High seas raged in the wake of a storm, forcing the cruisers’ protecting screen of destroyers to scuttle for home. The Admiralty figured that if the sea was too rough for destroyers it was too rough for U-boats too, that the cruisers were therefore safe. That was a mistake. All three of the cruisers were torpedoed and sunk, with a loss of 60 officers and 1,400 men. Long afterward it was learned that a single submarine, the U-9, had done the job alone, launching six torpedoes, and had escaped without a scratch though fired on by both Hogue and Cressy.

Sept 17, 1939, was another dark day for British sea power. Surprisingly lost that day was the aircraft carrier Courageous. Last week an even more astonishing disaster occurred. The Admiralty sent an electric thrill of horror through the nation by tersely announcing, with regrets, that “His Majesty’s Ship Royal Oak has been sunk, it is believed by U-boat action.” Royal Oak* was a battleship of 29,150 tons, built in 1914, and her loss reduced from 15 to 14 the number of Britain’s capital ships. The time and place of the sinking were not officially divulged, but it appeared to have happened between midnight and dawn.

Of about 1,200 men aboard Royal Oak, only 414 had been saved at latest reports, indicating that she had, when struck, gone down like a dumped ballast of pig iron. Question: How did it happen? Although one old battleship, the Britannia, was downed by submarines two days before the Armistice in 1918, not a single capital ship of the Grand Fleet was torpedoed by a submarine during the whole of the War, and anti-submarine tactics and technology are supposed to have vastly improved since then. In the absence of concrete information neutral naval experts were free to speculate. Best reconstruction:

Assuming that Royal Oak was patrolling the North Sea (where some critics said a ship of its type had no business to be), its course was made known to the Germans either by espionage or by radio communication between reconnaissance airplanes or submarines. The German submarine then stationed itself along Royal Oak’s path, turned off its engines to avoid detection, rested on the bottom, waited till the battleship came by, discharged a shoal of torpedoes. One could not have sunk Royal Oak, protected by “blisters” and by a compartmentized hull. Big German U-boats carry twelve to 18 torpedoes.

A submarine resting on the bottom can fire a torpedo in any direction it likes, and the course of torpedoes can be further directed by means of gyroscopes in their tails. The target’s course and position can be calculated from, hydrophones. But warships have hydrophones too, and the British claim they can detect a submarine’s position even when her motors are not running. Why Royal Oak or her escort failed to do so was another question. Evidently somebody blundered.

Whatever happened, the British authorities not only confessed the loss to their own people but broadcast the news in German to Germany. There it was confirmed by the German radio and jubilation reigned in the streets. Believing that Britain’s blockade of Germany had been seriously weakened, Nazis trotted out a triumphant slogan: “England, Bend Or Break!”

Britain’s sea power was far from broken by the loss of Royal Oak. Together the Allies have 22 capital ships; Britain has nine more abuilding, and France has four. Germany has two, as well as three pocket battleships. But when British movie-goers last spring watched a Herbert Wilcox (Nurse Edith Cavell) film called Torpedoed—in which by models and studio shots Royal Oak is sunk by a U-boat (see cuts)—they little realized the melodrama’s terrible impending reality.

Other events at sea last week:

> The Admiralty announced that three U-boats had been sunk in a single day, two of them of large ocean-going type. This news preceded by only a few hours and helped to soften—perhaps designedly —the disclosure of the loss of Royal Oak. Paris announced that allied attacks so far had sunk at least 17 submarines, perhaps several more.

> U-boats sank the 14,115-ton French oil tanker Emile Miguet, their biggest merchant victim to date, and the 5,202-ton British freighter Heronspool. Few days later U-boats destroyed by raking, ruthless shellfire two more French and one British merchantman totaling 26,216 tons. Eight were killed and among the survivors brought ashore by rescue ships 30 wounded victims were on stretchers.

> British warships captured the 13,615-ton German liner Cap Norte, which used to ply the South Atlantic. When caught, said her captors, the Cap Norte, loaded with oil and foodstuffs, was disguised as a Swedish ship and flying the Swedish flag.

Week’s score for the Allies: three submarines, 13,615 tons of German shipping. Week’s score for Germany: one 29,150-ton battleship, 45,533 tons of Allied shipping. Germany’s round.

* Not to be confused with the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, which the Germans claim to have “destroyed” (TIME, Oct. 9) and which the British say is safe.