Solving the submarine problem

Some technologies had a significant impact on the course of World War I: among these we find the submarine. The Germans were the first to understand the potential of these weapons, using them since 1915 to attack not only enemy warships, but also merchant vessels which transported supplies to the Allies. Submarine warfare also allowed the Central Powers to remedy, for a time, the naval blockade imposed on them by the British Navy [Halpern, 1994].

The new German submarine U-36

However, during the conflict there were not decisive naval battles and the main theater of war remained always the mainland. Naval warfare succeded nonetheless to inspire the technological imagination of that time. This interest was intensely felt in the United States also for the facts related to the Lusitania, a British ocean liner sunk by a German submarine in 1915 while carrying more than a thousand passengers, many of whom were American citizens.

If we leaf through some American scientific magazines published in the years of the conflict, we will therefore notice that many articles deal with technologies related to naval warfare and submarines. We may furthermore find not only the description of equipment and weapons really used in European seas, but also imagined devices, many of whom were conceived by readers. We will now focus on the latter, considering some examples selected from the issues of "Popular Mechanics" and "The Electrical Experimenter", which can also be useful to understand how the Great War was described to the public of these magazines.

Boat legs

Anti-submarine imagined technologies in World War I scientific magazines

Let's begin by pointing out that early 20th century submarines usually navigated on the surface, diving only when they saw an enemy to attack. They were in fact propelled underwater by batteries charged by diesel engines, when they were on the surface. The motors were not designed to operate in the sea depths and this forced submarines to remain basically still when they were submerged [Friedman, 2014]. These means were therefore supposed to act stealthily and silently if they wanted to take the opportunities that occurred to sink enemy ships.

However, there were two elements which risked compromising the submarines by revealing their position. They had hydrophones, but they were unable to attack using only acoustic detection: for this reason the periscope was essential. The other issue was with torpedoes. Those employed during World War I were driven forward by air, which always left a visible wake [Friedman, 2014]. If a liner realized in time to be in a submarine’s sights, it could therefore get away…

Perhaps after having avoided a torpedo fired by the enemy by jumping it with a leap, thanks to mechanical legs mounted on its hull. It was hoped that this device, described by an image published on "Popular Mechanics" in 1918, would have thus allowed to solve the submarine problem.

Disk stopper

If the ship had not managed to move promptly and had been hit by a missile, it could have instead resorted to another imagined invention: a metal disc with a rubber seal able to block the leak in the hull. According to the project, explained in another issue of the same magazine, the internal part of the disc was supposed to be connected to a series of cone-shaped rubber buckets, which, once placed in the sea near the opening, would have been filled and pushed by the flow of water towards the hole, carrying the metal plate with them. The disc would have been held in place by the pressure of water against the hull, hermetically closing the leak and allowing the ship to stay afloat and return to shore safely.

Magnetic "Sub" Destroyer

What if a ship, spotting an enemy submarine, wanted to attack and destroy it? A possible answer was presented on “The Electrical Experimenter”. The plan involved the use of an electromagnet pulled by the ship with a cable and powered by a generator. Once in the immediate proximity of a metal object, such as a submarine or a depth mine, it would have been attracted to it, allowing thus the ship's crew to locate it. At that point there would have been nothing left to do but drop a bomb to permanently eliminate the threat.

During the war the British actually did some experiments on magnetic detection, which proved to be potentially useful in the form of wire loops lying on the seabed: they could reveal the presence of mines and submarines, even though only at short range. The first sonars were also tested, but they did not become really operational before the end of hostilities [Friedman, 2014]. The main ways to identify submarines remained hydrophones and reconnaissance, thanks to airplanes and observation balloons.

Basing on the examples we have just considered, we may notice that submarines were mainly associated to Central Powers in World War I technological imagination. In the allied countries they were mainly perceived as a threat against which countermeasures had to be found: so the inventive effort was not aimed at their improvement, but rather at the research for better defense and detecting systems [Mazzini, 2017].

We can also try to grasp how the war was described to the readers of popular scientific magazines. Let's start first of all from the images: they played a significant role in the narration, thanks to their ability to communicate messages directly and immediately, and accompanied articles whose lenght exceeded rarely a page.

These magazines also represented the conflict especially through inventions and new technologies, real or just imagined: the result was the downplaying of military aspects and the portrayal of battles primarily fought by machines rather than soldiers. In this way the public was led by the magazine through a series of exciting and spectacular clashes, whose outcome did not depend on the courage and sacrifice of men, but on their ingenuity and creativeness. In such a trivialization the hardest and most problematic elements of war, like violence and suffering, were removed from the narration, in order to make it familiar and entertaining to readers and to stimulate at the same time their imagination [Mazzini, 2018].

Bibliographic notes

• Friedman, Norman, Fighting the Great war at sea. Strategy, tactics and technology. Barnsley, Pen and Sword Book Ltd, 2014.
• Halpern, Paul G., A naval history of World War I, Annapolis, United States Naval Institute Press, 1994.
• Mazzini Federico, “Mechanical Vaudeville”. Divulgazione della scienza e trivializzazione della guerra in Popular Science Monthly, in Scienza, tecnica e Grande Guerra. Realtà ed immaginari, ed. by Federico Mazzini, Pisa, Pacini Editore, 2018, pp. 123-151.
• Mazzini, Federico, Una guerra di meraviglie? Realtà ed immaginario tecnologico nelle riviste illustrate della Prima guerra mondiale, Salerno, Orthotes, 2017.