iiiiiii WILLIS J. ABB ■: . ' . .:'.';. .. :!; -vpW/f Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924012011999 Cornell University Library D 589.U6A13 Blue Jackets of 191 8. Being the story of 3 1924 012 011 999 L-_ . --- " -„ r- . * >'••_, •»* r» A Submarine Chaser in the Adriatic BLUE JACKETS OF 1918 BEING THE STORY OF THE WORK OF THE AMERICAN NAVY IN THE WORLD WAR BY WILLIS J. ABBOT AUTHOR OF "BLUE JACKETS OF '61," "THE STORY OF OUR NAVY," " THE STORY OF OUR ARMY," "SOLDIERS OF THE SEA," ETC. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1921 COPYRIGHT, 1931 By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANT, Inc. JCfct fiuinn & Soben Company BOOK MANUFACTURERS RAHWAV NEW JERSEY CONTENTS CHAPTER I Outbreak of the world war. — Naval unpreparedness of the United States. — Outclassed by Germany. — Popular agita- tion for a mighty navy. — The German submarine cam- paign. — Attacks on United States ships. — Contrast be- tween German and British aggressions. — Defense of the ' ""*» violated promises. — A dmed. — The German am- . — The President's appeal erchant ships. — Culminat- nited States declares war PAGE CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GIFT OF William Davis 3R II ifronting the nation. — Our e Mexican episode. — The Ready now, Sir! " — Man- raining camps. — The mos- 5R III ivy. — Building a merchant ships. — Vandalism quickly -Strength of German naval at. — The destroyers. — First lgth and weakness of the eeping tab on submarines. ■Our naval base at Queens- 36 61 vi CONTENTS CHAPTER IV PAGE Protecting merchant ships. — Camouflage. — Aiming a tor- pedo. — The depth bomb. — The listening device or hydro- plane. — Submarine chasers and college crews. — The con- voy system. — Hostility of merchant captains. — Method of the convoy. — Capture of U-58. — Attack on the Cassim. — Loss of the Jacob Jones and the 8am Diego . . 97 CHAPTER V The ferry to France. — Germany amazed. — The first trans- port fleet. — The base at St. Nazaire. — Loss of the An- tilles. — The converted yacht Alcedo. — The Tuscania and the President Lincoln. — The Covington and Mt. Vernon. — Disappearance of the Cyclops . . . . 145 CHAPTER VI Our battle fleet. — EffortB to keep it at home. — Admiral Rodman's command. — Watching for the enemy. — The battleships at sea. — Destroyers in a storm. — The North Sea mine barrage. — Sweeping up the mines. — Naval guns ashore. — Our far-flung squadrons . . . 182 CHAPTER VII The mystery ships. — Shrewdness of the Huns. — The " panic squad." — Exploits of Captain Gordon Campbell. — The "Dunraven Affair." — The one United States Mystery ship. — Submarine vs. submarine. — Advantage of under- water boats. — The navy that flies. — Poor record of air- plane construction. — Training aviators. — Potter's battle with seven planes. — Adrift in the Channel. — Hunting subs with planes. — Demobilizing the aerial navy. — The transatlantic flight 204 CONTENTS vii CHAPTER VIII PAGE Fear of German submarine raids. — Chance for enemy enter- prise. — Raids on American shipping. — Sinking of the Edward 8. Cole and the Battie Dunn. — Prisoner on a submarine. — Extent of ravages along our coast. — The gallant fight of the Luckenback . . . 240 CHAPTER IX The men of the Marine Corps. — " Devil Dogs " or " Leather- Necks." — An historic record of daring. — Character of the men. — Nature of their training. — Their heavy losses. — The great German drive. — Marines at Chateau- Thierry. — The battle of Belleau Wood. — A personal nar- rative. — Nature of the terrain. — Fighting tactics of the Marines. — Report of Secretary Daniels. — Sergeants John Quick and Dan Daly 254 CHAPTER X The end of the war. — Naval conditions of the armistice. — The surrender at Scapa Flow. — Surrender of the Ger- man destroyers. — Diary of a defeated German. — Scut- tling the German fleet. — Our naval losses in the war. — Lessons of the conflict . 292 ILLUSTRATIONS A submarine chaser in the Adriatic . . . Frontispiece FACING PAGE A modern type of American destroyer, ready for business 16 The Oklahoma with style of camouflage to make range find- ing difficult .... .58 U.S-S. Caldwell, American destroyer in Queenstown harbor 80 A flotilla of destroyers steaming into harbor . . 94 One of the destroyers that kept the " sea lanes " open 94 A camouflaged cargo ship 122 The U.S.S. Pennsylvania . . .... 146 Two famous ships: The President Lincoln, and President Wilson's ship, the George Washington, from an airplane 168 Admiral Rodman's flagship, the New York, with the English fleet. This ship was present at the surrender of the German fleet . . . .... 184 The Nevada, one of Admiral Eodgers' squadron . . . 190 U . S. submarines alongside their " mother ship " at Bere- haven, Ireland .... ... 220 A seaplane ambulance . . . 226 Showing the size of a naval airplane of the N.C.-4 type . 236 Germany's most useful present to Uncle Sam, the huge Leviathan, greatest of all the ferryboats to France 244 Yankee boys of the Marines and Poilus take a lesson in sig- nalling .... 258 As they looked on their way to Chateau-Thierry, where they stopped the German rush on Paris 268 BLUE JACKETS OF 1918 CHAPTER I Outhreak of the world war. — Naval unpreparedness of the United States. — Outclassed by Germany. — Popular agitation for a mighty navy. — The German submarine campaign. — Attacks on United States ships. — Contrast between German and British aggressions. — Defense of the British blockade. — Germany's violated promises. — A policy of ruthlessness pro- claimed. — The German ambassador given his passports.— The President's appeal to Congress. — Arming the merchant ships. — Culminating German outrages. — The United States declares The outbreak of war in Europe in 1914 found the United States with a creditable, but not, as later events proved, an adequate navy. As a nation we have never been notable for either military or naval preparedness. With calm self-sufficiency we insist that we are a peaceable people, not given to wars like our fellows beyond seas. This delusion we hug despite the fact that since the adoption of our con- stitution in 1791 we have fought three wars with considerable foreign powers, and one civil war of unparalleled determination. A war every twenty- five years is about equal to the record of the most militaristic of nations. Between these wars we had our maritime tussle with France, our vigorous naval war with the Barbary powers, our long l 2 BLUE JACKETS OF 1918 drawn-out series of Indian wars, our participation in the expedition against the " Boxers " in China, and our suppression of the Philippine rebellion. Germany which brandished the mailed fist for nearly half a century had no such record of fighting. But the idea that we are essentially a peaceful nation has always so ruled the minds of our people that we have never in time of peace prepared for war. After every war we have hurriedly cast off all the trappings and paraphernalia of battle as though eager to be rid of all memorials of an un- pleasant job — as a man strips off his working clothes, bathes and puts his tasks out of mind when the day's work is over. It has not seemed a wise policy, but it has brought surprisingly little harm to the nation. When we have been forced unwill- ingly and unprepared into war our enemy has usually been as unprepared as we, or diplomatic conditions have operated for our protection. We had virtually no navy in 1861 but neither had the Southern Confederacy. We had a weak navy in 1898, but Spain had a weaker. In 1914, when war blazed forth in Europe, our navy was ranked by experts as either second or third. Great Britain, whose naval policy had for years been the maintenance of a fleet equal to those of any two continental powers combined, was incomparably first. Whether the United States or Germany came second was at that period a point BLUE JACKETS OF 1918 3 of sharp discussion among navy experts. Later developments made it appear that Germany did in fact outclass us in 1914, as her showing in the one serious naval battle of the war — Jutland, May 31, 1916 — astonished British naval authorities with the strength of her ships. But the comparative strength of the navies of Germany and the United States was, after all, a matter of merely academic interest. During the early months of the war it seemed to most of our people that there was little likelihood of the United States being embroiled. And when after the crime of the Lusitania, the neutrality of the United States became more and more difficult to maintain, it was evident that the British fleet was quite ade- quate to hold Germany in check on the sea. Again we owed our safety to some degree to the friend- ship of a stronger naval power, as we had when Admiral Diederich sought to force conclusions with Admiral Dewey at Manila. But there was too much talk at the moment of the extent of our obligation to Great Britain as a rampart against Germany. It was unpatriotic talk and without sufficient reason. For the American navy of that day, counted ship for ship, and gun for gun, ranked so nearly equal to that of Germany that it was difficult for experts to determine which stood first on paper, while our flag on the ocean stood for an unmarred record of victory which the Germans then could not equal and now may never hope to attain. 4 BLUE JACKETS OP 1918 Judged by peace standards the navy was effective and creditable. Submitted to war's tests it was at once shown to be lacking in many respects. Indeed that supreme test can seldom be sustained un- shaken by any organization. Great Britain's superb fighting force afloat met all the conditions imposed upon it by the war, but from the very first there was constant addition to, patching up and supplementing of the fighting fleet. Our own navy, though it numbered many powerful ships of the first rank, was not what is called by professional critics a " balanced navy." That is to say, while it was strong on the battle line it lacked swift scouts, battle cruisers and auxiliary ships of every kind. Of submarines we had so few, and those of such limited cruising radius, as hardly to entitle us to rank with the great naval powers. In naval aviation we had made hardly a beginning. The personnel of the navy, though of the very high- est in respect to professional attainments, was ridiculously inadequate in numbers. Enlistments progressed but slowly despite the endeavors of the Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, to make service attractive and profitable even to men deter- mined upon ultimate return to civil life. The Secretary indeed, during the early years of his administration, was accused of being more con- cerned with making the service useful as a sort of floating college of trades and handicrafts than with making it an effective fighting navy. His influence in Congress was steadily against larger appropria- BLUE JACKETS OF 1918 5 tions and advanced methods which would enhance naval efficiency. Our greatest weakness at the out- set of the war was declared by naval experts to proceed from the lack of a general staff, and from the inexperience of fleet commanders in maneu- vering large fleets. Against both of these features of naval reorganization Secretary Daniels set his face. It is proper to say that while public con- demnation of his position was general in the early days of the war, the record of efficiency made by the navy as the conflict progressed quieted criti- cism to a great extent. The earlier situation did not continue without earnest protest from a large and influential section of our citizens. There has always been a strong feeling in support of the navy in the United States, and although it has never been fully reflected in the attitude of the government it has done much to keep our service afloat from actual starvation. The period of our neutrality in the early days of the world war was a time of intense popular agitation for naval expansion. The government at Washing- ton was anything but responsive. It is not unfair to say of President Wilson and Secretary Daniels that they lagged far behind public sentiment in recognition of the need for a mighty navy. The Secretary, in particular, seemed to resent any ques- tion of the adequacy of his force as a criticism of himself, and devoted more energy to denunciation and defiance of his critics than to efforts to correct the evils of which they complained, and for which 6 BLUE JACKETS OP 1918 it is just to say he was not originally responsible. A glaring illustration of this tendency was his at- tack upon the Navy League which showed only too convincingly that he was willing to destroy one of the greatest influences for the upbuilding of the navy simply because certain of its officials refused to slavishly support his personal policies. Public men can be judged fairly only by their public utterances. Nothing in the attitude or ex- pressions of responsible members of the Wilson administration indicates that they felt at the begin- ning of the war the slightest apprehension that we might be dragged into the conflict, or that such apprehension was felt by them up to November, 1916, when they successfully sought the re-election of the President on the slogan, " He kept us out of war." Clinging to this belief it was natural that they should long oppose the agitation of those who worked for a bigger navy in the conviction that it would be needed. There was in the United States from the first a small body of citizens who thought our entrance upon the war was necessary and just. They be- lieved that the cynical repudiation of the " scrap of paper," and the invasion of Belgium constituted a menace to orderly and peace-loving communities the world over. Their numbers were increased when the Germans, after arrogantly publishing in New York newspapers an advertisement of their purpose to commit wholesale murder, did in fact torpedo the British liner, Lusitania, May 7, 1915, BLUE JACKETS OF 1918 7 drowning 1,198 passengers, of whom 114 were American citizens. Three hundred and eighty women and children were drowned, of whom 94 were babes in arms. Although those who thus early advocated the participation of the United States in the great struggle were comparatively few in numbers their influence was far-reaching. They made up the greater part of what in Europe would be called " the intellectuals " of the nation, and their facili- ties for expressing their convictions were of the first order. Along with their insistence that na- tional honor and national safety alike demanded our resistance to German militarism and aggres- sion, went constant propaganda for the increase of the navy. And as the ranks of the war party were increased by every new German submarine outrage involving American lives or interests, it grew fast and the demand for a mighty navy grew with it. By a strange paradox the submarine, which was Germany's only effective naval weapon, proved her final undoing. It alone, after the British navy had swept the seas clear of German surface ships made the name of the Hun feared along the ocean pas- sages and traffic lanes. But it was the ruthless and unlawful use of the submarine that finally brought the United States into the war, and set the final stamp of defeat upon Germany in the bloody battles of the Argonne and the Meuse. A brief account of the German submarine cam- 8 BLUE JACKETS OF 1918 paign, in so far as it affected American rights, will explain why this nation, devoted as it was to peace, was finally forced into the war. February 1, 1917, the German government for- mally declared that it would henceforward aban- don all restraint due to international law and wage submarine war ruthlessly, and without regard for what had been regarded as the accepted law of nations. Prior to that time, while profess- ing to be deferring to international law and the principles of humanity, the Germans had sunk no fewer than eleven American ships and caused the death of more than two hundred citizens of the United States who were exercising their undoubted right to travel on the high seas. The neutrality of the ship attacked was a matter of the least concern to the Huns. The Nebraskan had her name painted in on her sides in letters six feet high when the German torpedo found her. The Leelanaw was boarded by a crew which was satisfied of her na- tionality before sinking her. Most of the American lives lost, however, were those of passengers or seamen on foreign ships, usually of belligerent reg- istry. In such cases the protest of the United States government was based not upon the sinking of the ship, for that was within Germany's right as a belligerent, but upon sinking without warning and without opportunity being given to non-com- batants to make their escape. Such notice and such warnings are provided for in the codes of international law to which, prior to Germany's BLUE JACKETS OF 1918 9 assault upon civilization, all nations had given their respect. The Germans defended their acts upon the plea that they were restricted by the overpowering might of the British navy to the use of the sub- marine in maintaining any power whatsoever on the seas. Underwater vessels while terrible in stealthy offense are weak and fragile in defense. If one paused to board a suspected vessel, fix her nationality and give her crew time to take to the boats, there was always the possibility that a wire- less call might bring up a destroyer which would put an end to the submarine in the midst of its work. To this plea the response of the United States was that the rules of international law were fixed and known to all nations. They could not be amended to suit the convenience of Germany as naval conditions forced upon her the use of new engines of war. Month after month the record of sinkings with- out warning was strung out, and each time Ameri- can lives were lost a new note from the State Department called attention to the lengthening list of Americans sacrificed to the war lust of a nation with which we were nominally at peace. The strategy of German diplomacy was evasive and dilatory — plentiful of promises but disappoint- ing in performance. The soft words of Ambassador von Bernstorff and the German chancellery were more than offset by the brutality of the U-boats on the ocean. 10 BLUE JACKETS OP 1918 The first American ship to feel the shock of a German torpedo was the tanker Gulflight, which though badly injured by the explosion was towed crippled into port. The captain of a British trawler who witnessed the attack wrote this ac- count of it: " We had shot our nets, and about noon we saw a large tank steamer coming up channel at a good pace. She was coming in our direction, and I soon saw her colors, the Stars and Stripes, at the stern — a fine big ensign it was and spread out like a board. When she was about two miles off, to my horror, I saw a submarine emerge from the depths and come right to the surface. There was no sign of life on the submarine, but she lay stationary, rising and falling in the trough, and I knew instinctively that she was watching the steamer. She had undoubtedly come in the same direction as that in which the steamer was going, and it did not take me long to realize what had actually happened. I took in the situation at a glance. The submarine had passed the Gulflight (for that proved to be her name). She had deliberately increased her speed to lay in wait for her prey and get a sure target, rather than attempt to fire a torpedo when overhauling her with the possible chance of missing and wasting one of those ex- pensive weapons even on an American. " The submarine was painted light gray and had two guns; but I could not see any number. For five minutes she lay motionless — and then having fixed the position of her prey, and taken her speed into consideration, she slowly submerged in its direction. I knew what was com- ing, and it came, — a dull heavy explosion and a silence. And then as if to see the result of her handiwork the subma- BLUE JACKETS OF 1918 11 rine again appeared. She did not stay up long, as smoke was seen on the horizon, and I knew the patrols had been looking for her. She knew it too, and submerged. I hauled in my nets and proceeded at full speed to the sinking ship to try and save the lives of the crew. Our boat was launched and we went aboard. By this time the Gulflight's bows were down and she looked as if she would sink at any minute. She was badly holed in the front part. The Huns I thought had done their work well. " Ten minutes later I saw the patrol vessels coming up for all they were worth, and one of these vessels took off the crew, two of whom were drowned. The Captain of the Ghilflight died of shock." It was the contention of the Germans that if time were given to the passengers and crew to take to their small boats all the provisions of international law had been complied with. But the precise measure of safety enjoyed by people crowded into open boats four hundred miles from shore, as often happened, tossed on a wintry sea, perhaps with in- sufficient provision of food and water is not easy to estimate. And as the war went on the Germans added to these perils by using the helpless boats as targets for shell-fire and even ran them down for mere lust of murder. An illustration of the German method of dealing with the helpless survivors of a torpedoed ship was furnished by the case of the Ticonderoga which was left behind by her convoy in September of 1918 and fell a speedy prey to a U-boat. She was armed but 12 BLUE JACKETS OF 1918 was able to make but slight resistance. A survivor told the story thus : " Our guns did not fire more than five or six shots, so quickly did the shells from the submarine strike down both guns and their crews. The forward gun was shot away nearly at once, as the submarine was not more than a mile away and kept coming nearer, and the after gun and its crew were as quickly done for. The men went to the boats but it was no use, as the flying shrapnel was spraying the decks, and men fell by scores either dead or badly wounded. "All of the eight boats were riddled with the flying fragments of shell with the exception of one, and this, the only one fit to put over was filled with men. One raft also was got away and all the time the Hun commander did- not slacken his shell-fire. " Finally in desperation one man overboard swam to the side of the submarine, which was less than a quarter of a mile away, firing almost point blank at us, and hailed an officer, asking him in God's name to stop. The Lieu- tenant who answered pointed a revolver at him saying that if he did not swim back he would shoot him. " When our boat had only seventeen in it we were ordered along side and made to tie up while the shelling of the dead and dying on the sinking ship kept up. Ques- tions were put' to the leader of our boat which he refused to answer and suddenly the submarine submerged, and only the parting of the rope by which we were tied fast to the U-boat prevented our going down with it." In October, 1916, an event occurred in the waters off Nantucket that tested sorely the discipline and patience of our blue jackets, and that fairly en- BLUE JACKETS OF 1918 13 raged the rapidly increasing war party in the United States. We had already had one visit to our ports of a German submarine, the Deutschland. This vessel was unarmed and while she brought over and carried back valuable cargoes and impor- tant dispatches on each of her voyages it seems probable that the chief purpose of her visits was to hint to the United States that, in the event of war, our coasts were not wholly beyond the effective range of the Kaiser's undersea boats. This fact was the more vigorously impressed upon us when one bright October morning the sailors on the light-ship at Brenton's Beef, at the entrance to Newport harbor, picked up a submarine steaming toward them from open sea. The spectacle for the moment aroused no especial interest, for Newport was then a station for United States submarines, and although we had not enough of these stingarees to count much in a real war they did occasionally show themselves off the harbor's mouth. But when on closer approach this craft broke out the red, black and white flag of Germany the light-ship men signaled excitedly to shore. The visitor was the armed submarine TJ-58, Cap- tain Hans Bose. We were still at peace with Ger- many — though in all our navy there were not a handful of officers who did not expect, and hope, soon to be at war with her — and accordingly the usual courtesies were exchanged between the visi- tors and the officers of our naval station. Captain Bose was most courteous and debonair. As the 14 BLUE JACKETS OF 1918 phrase has it, "butter would not melt in his mouth." Afterwards he said that the American officers seemed embarrassed. Had he said they seemed suspicious he would have come nearer to describing their emotions. After spending the daylight hours in port, the V-53 put out to sea. Early the next morning the wireless began bringing messages that explained her errand and that, perhaps, made the Newport naval men who had extended grudging courtesy to her commander regret that they had been forced to be courteous at all. First, the captain of an American steamship com- plained that he had been compelled to heave-to and show his papers to the German commander. Then came the news that the British steamship, West Point, had been sunk off Nantucket. Thereafter news of like character kept coming in throughout the day. The Strathdean, flying the British flag, had been sunk and twenty of her crew had been taken on the Nantucket light-ship. The Stephano, a liner bound from New York to Halifax with Americans aboard, had met a like fate. Her pas- sengers and crew, 144 people in all, were set adrift in small boats, forty-two miles from land. A Dutch and a Norwegian freighter were dealt with in the same fashion. In all 216 human beings were set adrift in open boats by the raider without com- punction. That no lives were sacrificed was due to the swift dispatch by Admiral Knight of the New- port destroyer flotilla to the scene immediately BLUE JACKETS OF 1918 15 upon learning what was going on in Nantucket Sound. Fourteen of the long, low, lean racers sped out to sea while the crowds that lined the shore cheered their departure — and would have cheered even more lustily had the errand been one of vengeance. It was no pleasant task which the Yankee officers and men had to discharge on that October day. The scene of the German's activity was far out at sea, beyond the three-mile limit, within which the sovereignty of the United States was confined by international law. The victims flew foreign flags — British, Dutch and Norwegian. It is true that two of these were flags of nations which, like the United States, were at the moment neutral. But our navy had no authority to defend other neutrals. We were at peace with Germany. To have inter- fered with the vandal occupation of U-53 would have been an act of war. There was nothing for our men to do but to watch with ill-concealed wrath while one after the other the unarmed ships went down before the missiles of the Hun. The destroyer Balch was first on the scene, and to her commander fell the most trying lot of all. His appeals to Washington by wireless went unan- swered, and his only opportunity to get even with the Hun was when he curtly, and profanely, re- fused to shift the position of his ship in order that the work of destruction might be prosecuted more conveniently. It cannot be said that our government showed 16 BLUE JACKETS OF 1918 any undue haste in resenting either the outrages upon its citizens, or the affronts to its dignity upon the high seas. Note followed note in dignified but too deliberate fashion from our State Department. The Germans in response promised amendment of their ways, but continually demanded that, as the price of their obedience to international law, the United States should force Great Britain to miti- gate the severity of the blockade which was bring- ing heavy privations upon the German people. In this policy they were aided by the German propa- gandists in the United States, and by politicians who thought they saw profit to themselves in " twisting the British lion's tail." Unquestionably there was some ground on which to complain of the British blockade. It caused some natural irri- tation in the United States, which the friends of Germany did their best to fan into actual hostility between the two Anglo-Saxon nations. Our per- fectly legitimate commerce with Germany was vir- tually destroyed. Our mails were delayed and made uncertain. Certain of our ships, or neutral ships carrying cargoes owned by Americans, were seized and held for months subject to the action of British prize courts. That some of these ships were actually owned by Germans, or by German sympa- thizers, and were sent out to provoke the British into some indefensible violation of the principles of neutrality was undeniably true. But even with these cases ignored there was enough of the heavy hand in the British enforcement of rule upon the MRffi < pq sg?l £ffi- i r • ,J- J rs