Allusion has already been made to the use of aeroplanes—flying not more than a few hundred feet above the water—for locating submarines; and it is not difficult to understand how effective a waterplane would be for destroying a periscope, or even a submarine itself—this last, perhaps, by dropping a bomb.
The lesson of the torpedo is connected with that of the submarine, but has many features which are individual to itself. It is known that within a very few years past the range and accuracy of the torpedo have greatly increased, but there is little evidence connecting these features with the performance of torpedoes in the present war. So far as known, the submarines have done most of their effective work at short ranges where hits were to be expected. And no one will ever know how many shots have missed. The great outstanding lesson thus far is the extraordinary destructiveness of the torpedoes that have found their mark. It would never have been believed two years ago that ships like the Cressy, Aboukir, and Hogue would turn turtle a few minutes after a single blow from a torpedo. Still less would it have seemed possible to sink a Lusitania in fifteen minutes. A torpedo might, of course, produce an extraordinary effect if it chanced to strike a boiler compartment or a magazine. But it does not appear that this happened in any one of the many disasters in question. It has been said that the German torpedoes carry an exceptionally heavy explosive charge, the extra weight having been gained by a sacrifice in speed and range. This may in part explain their effectiveness, but when all allowance is made for what we know or guess along this and similar lines, the fact remains that the torpedo has shown itself a weapon of vastly greater destructive power than the world has heretofore attributed to it.
The story of the Dardanelles campaign has illustrated again the futility of attacking land fortifications by battleships. Attacks of this kind have never succeeded, and the temptation is strong to accept the theory that in planning these operations the British anticipated little or no resistance from those in command of the forts. It was conceivable that the forts could be passed—as were those at New Orleans and Mobile Bay by Farragut—but not that they could be reduced by the gun fire of ships. Information is lacking as to the damage actually done. It was probably greater than the defenders have admitted; but it evidently fell far short of silencing the forts. If the world needed a new demonstration of the power of forts to stand out against ships, we may put this down as one more lesson of the war.
An important revelation of the war is the smoothness and rapidity with which large bodies of troops, with all their impedimenta—horses, artillery, etc.—have been transported by water. This has, of course, been possible only for Great Britain and her allies, and for them only because they have held unchallenged the command of the sea. It is thus, first of all, a confirmation of the lesson with which this paper opened—the lesson that command of the sea is a factor of the very first importance in any war in which it is a factor at all. It is secondarily a lesson in the ease with which a nation which has command of the sea can, in these days of large fast steamers, transport its military forces in practically unlimited numbers to any distance that may be desired. It is thus an answer to the protestations of those who insist that the United States is secured against the danger of invasion by the thousands of miles of water which separate its coasts from those of possible enemies; for it demonstrates what has, from the day of the first Atlantic crossing by a steamship, become more and more notably a fact—that the oceans which separate frontiers for certain purposes, connect them for other purposes and especially for purposes of transit and transportation. The term "Ocean Highway" is no mere figure of speech. The millions of troops that have passed by water from England into France have made the passage with infinitely less difficulty than has been connected with the further passage by land to the fighting lines; and the hundreds of thousands from England, France, India, and Australia, which have assembled in the Near East could not have covered the distances that they have covered, if they had moved by land, in ten times the number of days they have occupied in moving by sea. The sea being clear of enemy ships, the route from Liverpool to the Dardanelles has been a lane for an easy and pleasant promenade. With the Atlantic and Pacific controlled by the fleets of nations at war with us, their waters would invite, rather than impede, the movement of an army to our shores. It would be difficult to exaggerate the significance of this lesson for the United States.
A rather grewsome lesson, but one which cannot be ignored, is that in a naval battle, there are, at the end, neither "wounded", "missing", nor "prisoners" to be reported. A ship defeated is, and will be, in a great majority of cases, a ship sunk; and sinking, she will sink with all on board. Some few exceptions there may be, but the rule can hardly fail to be as thus stated. One of the first things that a ship does in preparing for battle is to get rid of her boats; and, as both her companions and her opponents are sure to do the same, her crew can neither help themselves nor look for help from friends or enemies. The Good Hope and the Monmouth went down in the battle off Coronel leaving not a single survivor to tell the story of their destruction. Following the battle off the Falkland Islands, the British picked up a few survivors from the German ships, but not enough to contradict the rule. In the running engagement in the North Sea on January 25, 1915, the Blücher went down with 650 out of 900 of her crew. Scarcely a man was saved from the Cressy, the Aboukir, or the Hogue. And so the story runs, and so it must always run when modern ships fight in earnest.
One of the most striking features of the engagements up to the present time is the range at which they have been fought. A few years ago 10,000 yards was considered the extreme range at which ships would open fire. The ranges used in the Russo-Japanese War varied from 3,000 to 8,000 yards, and the battle off Tsushima was decided at less than 6,000 yards. In the present war the ranges have been nearly three times as great as these. In the battle off Coronel, the Good Hope was sunk at 12,000 yards, the Monmouth at a little less. In the battle off the Falkland Islands, both sides opened fire at 17,000 yards, and the German ships were sunk at approximately 16,000 yards. The running fight in the North Sea opened at 18,000 yards, and the Blücher was sunk at 15,000 yards. This extraordinary increase in the fighting range corresponds in a measure to an increase in accuracy of fire, but it corresponds also to a new recognition of the enormous advantage which may result from a fortunate hit early in the action. The theoretical advantage which should result from this has been confirmed by practical experience, and it may be regarded as certain that battle ranges hereafter will conform more nearly to those off Coronel than to those of Tsushima.
To summarize: The great outstanding naval lesson of the war is this: That a nation whose navy commands the sea can rest secure, so far as its sea frontier is concerned, from the fear of invasion or of serious attack; that, further, its command of the sea insures to its commerce the freedom of the sea; and that, finally, this freedom extends equally to its armed forces, to which the highways of the sea are opened wide, affording a possibility of offense at distant points which is denied to the forces of the enemy.
Perhaps the lesson second in importance is that, owing to the rapid march of invention in these days of progress, it is to be expected that every war which comes suddenly upon the world will come with certain elements of surprise, some of them startling in their power and effectiveness, some of them giving promise of much and accomplishing comparatively little. However surprising and however effective the best of these may be, they will fall short of revolutionizing warfare, but they may profoundly modify it; and the nation which has them ready for use in the beginning will gain an initial advantage which may go far toward determining the issue of the war.
Lessons