During World War I and the ten years that followed, naval staffs of the major powers were prone to devote enormous efforts toward exploring every possible use for a vessel that was proving to be extraordinarily versatile—the submarine. These efforts were commendable, but some of the proposed uses—in the light of our present knowledge and experience—seem curious, to say the least. Many so-called futuristic submarines and their crews died, none more so than in the Royal Navy. In the process useful, albeit expensive, lessons were duly learned.
Admiral Jackie Fisher, who became First Sea Lord of the massive British Admiralty shortly after the outbreak of World War I, supported submarines from their first appearance on the British slipways in 1901. Later Fisher pioneered the development of the all-big-gun dreadnought battleships that made every other battleship afloat a museum piece. He also had done his utmost for the mine and torpedo specialists. Then he turned his attention to the newborn submarine service.
Unfortunately, his other enthusiasms did not diminish. It was therefore not surprising that Fisher was firmly involved with the design and employment of submarines that could keep up with and support the surface fleet. The earlier J-class diesel submarines proved poor at this, and soon after the war were fobbed off on the young and gullible Australian Navy. Fisher reluctantly concluded that steam propulsion was the only way to produce 24 knots on the surface, although he added a stand-by diesel engine for luck and quick starting.
A highly successful admiral who designs very successful warships far ahead of their time cannot be blamed if he tries to combine all his dreams into one vehicle. The K-class had guns as well as torpedoes, and (submariners may well shudder) some even had depth charge throwers on the stern. One of the class made 26'/2 knots on the surface, well above the performance demanded by the “Committee for Submarine Development,” so, in theory at least, the bombastic Fisher’s demands were more than Furthermore he was a firm believer in “the bigger the better;” K-boats certainly satisfied him in that respect. They did not satisfy submariners, however. K-boats enjoyed welcome creature comforts by of their size but took five to dive on a good day or 15 minutes if the engineer officer had been careless about his feed water.
Incidentally the memory of sailors carrying bags of coal down to K-boats lying alongside still gives rise to violent arguments ashore about whether the boilers were fed by coal or oil. They were, of course, oil-fired; the coal was for use in the main galley outside the pressure hull and situated under the after end of the bridge upperworks abaft the two funnels. The duty cook (the quartermaster or trot sentry of the morning watch) was not visible from the bridge with its brass-lined protective windows. One morning a captain entirely forgot, on putting to sea, about the hidden chef, fully occupied with a 1920s girlie magazine and a frying pan of sausages. The chef also forgot about the captain who chose, unexpectedly, to exercise a dive. Slowly the cook felt his feet getting colder; but it was not until water filled his sea boots that he allowed himself to be distracted from the bathing beauties and sizzling bangers. He had to swim for it, but was picked up later. The tragedy was that the rare magazine was lost.
Despite some grim hilarity, K-boats were ghastly, expensive failures. Six out of 18 sank by accident, and only one saw action in the war; its torpedoes missed. They were calamities of vast proportions for those days; 339 feet long and displacing 2,566 tons submerged. Many saw them as ogres and avoided appointment to them like the plague. The British steam prototype, HMS Swordfish, suffered the final ignominy of being turned into a surface patrol vessel, unable to dive at all, two years after her introduction to the fleet in 1915 as a submersible. Even then she was useless and, with the biggest battery cells ever made, she suffered a fatal hydrogen explosion soon afterwards.
But worse was to come. Undaunted by the poor showing of K-boats and other fast submarine disasters, the British Naval Staff, backed, of course, by the irrepressible Fisher, now 74 years old, turned three unfinished K-boat hulls into something very different; they became submersible monitors, the M-class. “The term ‘monitor’ is used,” announced Commodore S.S. Hall, head of the submarine service, “for want of a better one.” It was the sort of expression that came to be associated with the class.
The M-class were, naturally, the same size as the K's, but common sense prevailed and diesel engines replaced the turbines and steam boilers with their hazardous funnels. Surely, though proof is lacking, it was none other than Admiral Fisher who first thought of mounting single, sawed-off 12-inch guns, taken from 19th century Majestic-class battleships, on the M-class submersibles.
Nearly everything that could go wrong, duly went wrong with this project. The boats were limited in speed by moderate diesels, and diving depth was reduced because of the need to lessen weight and make way for the 60-ton gun. On the plus side, they were more stable submerged than the K-boats, and less apt to dive with their screws whizzing well above the water. The gun itself provided some protection for bridge personnel on the surface.
Three M-boats were built (four had been ordered), but none had active service during the war, although the M-1, completed in 1918, reached the Mediterranean in the same year to play an unfulfilled part in the troubled waters of the Dardanelles and Gallipoli.
The fact that the monitor submersibles were never used was partly the result of their late arrival, but there was also much muttering about the terrifying nature of this new weapon and the grave danger of giving away the idea to the Germans. In Admiral Fisher’s view, if the gun failed, there still remained a good submarine with four 18-inch bow torpedo tubes and a speed of 15-1/2 knots surfaced or 9 knots submerged. A 3-inch gun was fitted, as well. Each submarine had a crew of approximately 65 men, not a vast number when considering the offensive capabilities of this system. Fifty 12-inch shells could be carried, far more than torpedoes which had a short range and were unreliable. At 1,000-2,000 yards range, a surprise shell would probably sink a merchant ship, and seven out of ten hits were promised. Shore bombardment out to 5 miles or more was a distinct possibility.
The snag was that, following the ubiquitous Zeppelins, special antisubmarine (ASW) aircraft were coming into their own and, because the 12-inch gun housing was not watertight, M-boats had to reload on the surface. The process of “dip-chicking” took at least 55 seconds from periscope depth to firing, reloading, and regaining safety underwater. In practice it must often have taken longer.
Ironically, it was during a submerged torpedo approach and not a more risky gun action that the M-1 met her death. She was exercising against the fleet when she was rammed and sunk by the Swedish collier Vidar. It is possible that she was hanging, with insufficient hydraulic pressure to operate the planes and periscopes just below periscope depth; it is known that the trolleys which were used to carry ammunition along the passageway had partially flattened the hydraulic piping, which was barely adequate anyway.
Before her tragic demise, she had more than a few alarms which the crew, apparently, treated with good humor. For example, the massive gun barrel was supposed to be watertight and had a hydraulically operated tampion to seal the muzzle. Regrettably, the designers, accustomed to the dry battleships from which the guns were taken, took less trouble to seal the breech end, so water slowly leaked through the firing mechanism. On two of its initial trials, the gun was full of water on firing and burst asunder like the apocryphal dragon. Nobody was hurt, and there were plenty of guns where those two came from. A little later, when that problem had been solved, another burst occurred. The sight-setter, who had his own stubby periscope just forward of the main periscope, forgot to open the tampion. Off went the tampion, closely followed by the 863-pound shell, both dispatched by two bags of cordite. Unfortunately, these 12-inchers were wire bound— that is, very strong wire was wound around the inner rifle- barrel and the visible outer barrel was sweated over all. In some way the wire was attached to the tampion and sailed happily out after it, coil upon coil, until it came to its end which was finally secured at the base of the gun. At that point the tampion could not easily be cut, let alone slipped. So the M-1 was firmly anchored within sight of the bright lights of Weymouth, where a dance was to be held that night for the ship’s company. Many years later, the sight-setter was still unrepentant towards authority- who frowned heavily. His only concern was at making his mess-mates miss the party ashore.
By 1927, the idea of really big guns in submarines had died. The M-2, the second in the series, had been converted to a seaplane carrier, and paved the way for Japanese submarine-borne aircraft with her tiny Parnall-Peto seaplane. It was complemented, in the usual, unfathomable way, with the largest pilot on the British Admiralty’s list and a hefty observer. Rumor was that when the observer wanted to take something along to assist in his work (a telescope, for instance), the pilot had to leave behind his expensive sheepskin boots if the puny craft was to get airborne off the extremely short launching pad. Even when finally in the air, the Pamall was apt to dip and swoop like a pot-bellied swallow.
It was laughs all the way until, off Portland Bill with a relatively new crew not fully trained for operations, the efficient but over-eager captain was determined to surface and launch the aircraft in record time. No one will ever be able to reconstruct, with certainty, those final moments on 26 January 1932, but it seems likely that the huge boat surfaced with a fairly steep bow-up angle, with the hangar access hatch open for the crew to man and prepare the plane. Then, too soon, the hangar door was opened, allowing the sea to rush back into the submarine, which sank quickly, stem first. None of the crew were saved.
The Navy shrugged sadly when the M-1 and M-2 were lost. They had started life as K-boats, floating catastrophes. What more was there to say? The underlying problem in naval staffs throughout the world in the period from 1914 to 1939 seems to have been this difficulty in deciding whether they wanted warships that could submerge or submarines that could surface.
Of the three monitors, only the M-3 survived, converted to a minelayer capable of laying, while submerged, over 100 standard homed mines. She was sent to the scrap heap in 1939, just months before she would have been an invaluable asset to the British Fleet in World War II.