Our Navy in the War Part 11

_Frieda Lenhardt_.........._Astoria_.

_Friedrich der Grosse_....._Huron_.

_Geier_...................._Schurz_.

_George Was.h.i.+ngton_........name retained.

_Grosser Kurfurst_........._Aeolus_.

_Grunewald_................_Gen. G. W. Goethals_.

_Hamburg_.................._Powhattan_.

_Hermes_...................name retained.

_Hohenfelde_..............._Long Beach_.

_Kiel_....................._Camden_.

_Kaiser Wilhelm I_........._Agamemnon_.

_Koenig Wilhelm II_........_Madawaska_.

_Kronprinz Wilhelm_........_Von Steuben_.

_Kronprezessin Cecelie_...._Mount Vernon_.

_Liebenfels_..............._Houston_.

_Locksun_.................._Gulfport_.

_Neckar_..................._Antigone_.

_Nicaria_.................._Pensacola_.

_Odenwald_................._Newport News_.

_President_................_Kuttery_.

_President Grant_..........name retained.

_President Lincoln_........name retained (sunk).

_Prinzess Irene_..........._Pocahontas_.

_Prinz Eitel Friedrich_...._DeKalb_.

_Rhein_...................._Susquehanna_.

_Rudolph Blumberg_........._Beaufort_ _Saxonia_.................._Savannah_.

_Staatsskretar_............_Samoa_.

_Vaterland_................_Leviathan_.

_Vogensen_................._Quincy_.

[Footnote 1: Is not this rather a reflection upon a perfectly good American city?]

CHAPTER XI

Camouflage--American System of Low Visibility and the British Dazzle System--Americans Worked Out Principles of Color in Light and Color in Pigment--British Sought Merely to Confuse the Eye--British System Applied to Some of Our Transports

While our naval vessels, that is to say war-s.h.i.+ps, have adhered to the lead-gray war paint, the Navy Department has not declined to follow the lead of the merchant marine of this country and Great Britain in applying the art of camouflage to some of its transports, notably to the _Leviathan_, which, painted by an English camoufleur, Wilkinson, fairly revels in color designed to confuse the eyes of those who would attack her. A great deal has been written about land camouflage, but not so much about the same art as practised on s.h.i.+ps. Originally, the purpose was the same--concealment and general low visibility--at least it was so far as the Americans were concerned. The British, on the other hand, employed camouflage with a view to distorting objects and fatiguing the eye, thus seriously affecting range-finding. The British system was known as the "dazzle system," and was opposed to the American idea of so painting a vessel as to cause it to merge into its background.

The American camouflage is based on scientific principles which embody so much in the way of chromatic paradox as to warrant setting forth rather fully, even though at the present time, for good and sufficient reasons relating to German methods of locating vessels, the Americans have more or less abandoned their ideas of low visibility and taken up with the dazzle idea.

A mural painter of New York, William Andrew Mackay, who had long experimented in the chemistry of color (he is now a member of the staff of navy camoufleurs), had applied a process of low visibility to naval vessels long before war broke out in Europe. The basis of his theory of camouflage was that red, green, and violet, in terms of light, make gray; they don't in pigment.

The Mackay scheme of invisibility will be easily grasped by the reader if we take the example of the rainbow. The phenomenon of the rainbow, then, teaches us that what we know to be white light, or daylight, is composed of rays of various colors. If an object, say the hull of a vessel at sea, prevents these rays from coming to the eye, that hull, or other object, is of course clearly defined, the reason being that the iron ma.s.s shuts out the light-rays behind it. Mr. Mackay discovered that by applying to the sides of a s.h.i.+p paint representing the three light-rays shut out by the vessel's hull--red, green, and violet--the hull is less visible than a similar body painted In solid color.

In a series of experiments made under the supervision of the Navy Department after we entered the war an oil-tanker s.h.i.+p was so successfully painted in imitation of the color-rays of light that, at three miles, the tanker seemed to melt into the horizon. The effect was noted in the morning, at noon, and in the evening. In the case of various big liners, more than 500 feet long, no accurate range could be made for sh.e.l.ling at from three to five miles--the usual sh.e.l.ling distance--while at eight miles the vessels melted into the ocean-mists.

But the first trials of the system were conducted at Newport, in 1913, in conjunction with Lieutenant Kenneth Whiting, of the submarine flotilla. After a period experiments were continued at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. In 1915 Commander J. O. Fisher, U.S.N., painted the periscope of his submarine--the K-6--with the colors of the spectrum. Mr. Mackay got in touch with this officer and explained the work he had done with Lieutenant Whiting. Fisher, deeply interested, invited the painter to deliver a series of lectures to the officers of the submarine flotilla at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

With the aid of a Maxwell disk--a wheel upon which colored cardboard is placed and then revolved--he demonstrated the difference between paint and light, as set forth in a book on the chemistry of color by the late Ogden N. Rood, of Columbia. He showed, for example, that yellow and blue in light make white, while yellow and blue in pigment make green. The bird colored blue and yellow will be a dull gray at a distance of 100 feet, and will blend perfectly against the dull gray of a tree-trunk at, perhaps, a less distance. The parrot of red, green, and violet plumage turns gray at 100 feet or more, the eye at that distance losing the ability to separate the three color-sensations.

It is upon this principle, then, that s.h.i.+ps painted in several varieties of tints and shades form combinations under different lights that cause them to waver and melt into the sea and sky. They _seem_ to melt, to be more explicit, because the craft so painted is surrounded by tints and shades that are similar to those employed in painting the craft.

Vessels thus painted, as seen at their docks, present a curious aspect.

At their water-lines, and running upward for perhaps twenty feet, are green wave-lines, and above, a dappled effect of red, green, and violet, which involve not only the upper portions of the hull, but the life-boats, masts, and funnels.

This, then, as said, was the American idea as first applied by Mr.

Mackay, and which would have been greatly amplified had not listening devices been so perfected as to render it unnecessary for the Germans to see until their quarry was so near, say a mile or two, that no expedient in the way of low visibility would serve. It was then that our navy, which had been following experiments in camouflage, accepted the dazzle system for some of its transports, while retaining the leaden war-paint for other transports and for fighting craft.

The dazzle system as applied on the _Leviathan_ and other vessels under jurisdiction of the navy, has for its idea the disruption of outline and deception as to the true course a vessel is following. The writer saw the _Leviathan_ under way shortly after she was camouflaged, and at a distance of two miles it was utterly impossible to tell whether she was coming or going; and the observer could not tell whether she had three funnels or six, or only one. It was noted that as her distance from the observer became greater the vessel a.s.sumed a variety of effects. Once it seemed as though both bow and stern had dropped off, and finally the big craft suggested in the morning haze nothing so much as a cathedral set in the middle of the bay.

Effects of this sort are produced by vertical stripes of black and white at bow and stern, by long, horizontal lines of black and blue, and by patches of various hues. One funnel is gray, another blue and white, another all blue. There can be no question that the sum total of effect offends the eye and dazes the senses. Submarines have been known to make errors of eight degrees in delivering torpedoes at dazzle boats even at close range.

In addition to camouflage experiments on one of our great inland lakes, the Navy Department also investigated other ideas relating to the self-protection of craft at sea. Among these was a device by which a vessel zigzags automatically as she proceeds on her ocean course. The advantage of such an invention when the war zone is filled with submarines waiting for a chance for pot shots at craft is obvious.

The Navy Department, in short, has neglected nothing that would tend to enhance the safety of our s.h.i.+ps on the sea, and many valuable schemes have been applied. But when all is said and done these defensive elements are and, it seems, must remain subsidiary to the protection as applied from without, the protection of swift destroyers with their depth-bombs, their great speed, and their ability quickly to manoeuvre.

CHAPTER XII

The Naval Flying Corps--What The Navy Department Has Accomplished And Is Accomplis.h.i.+ng in the Way of Air-Fighting--Experience of a Naval Ensign Adrift in the English Channel--Seaplanes and Flying Boats--Schools of Instruction--Instances of Heroism

In writing of aviation in the navy an incident which befell one of our naval airmen in the English Channel seems to demand primary consideration, not alone because of the dramatic nature of the event, but because it sets forth clearly the nature of the work upon which our flying men of the navy entered as soon as the United States took hostile action against Germany. Our navy aviators, in fact, were the first force of American fighters to land upon European soil after war was declared.

Here is the story as told by Ensign E. A. Stone, United States Naval Reserve, after he was rescued from the Channel, where with a companion he had clung for eighty hours without food and drink to the under-side of a capsized seaplane pontoon. "I left our station in a British seaplane as pilot, with Sublieutenant Moore of the Royal Naval Air Service as observer, at 9 o'clock in the morning. Our duty was to convoy patrols. When two hours out, having met our s.h.i.+ps coming from the westward, we thought we sighted a periscope ahead, and turned off in pursuit. We lost our course. Our engine dropped dead, and at 11.30 o'clock forced us to land on the surface of a rough sea. We had no kite nor radio to call for a.s.sistance, so we released our two carrier-pigeons. We tied a message with our position and the word 'Sinking' on each. The first, the blue-barred one, flew straight off and reached home. But the other, which was white-checked, lit on our machine and would not budge until Moore threw our navigation clock at him, which probably upset him so that he failed us.

"Heavy seas smashed our tail-planes, which kept settling. I saw that they were pulling the machine down by the rear, turning her over. We tore the tail-fabric to lessen the impact of the waves. It wasn't any use. The tail-flat was smashed and its box filled with water.

"This increased the downward leverage and raised her perpendicularly in the air. At 2.30 P.M. we capsized. We climbed up the nose and 'over the top' to the under-side of the pontoons. Our emergency ration had been in the observer's seat at the back, but we had been so busy trying to repair the motor and save ourselves from turning over that we didn't remember this until too late. When I crawled aft for food Moore saw that I was only helping the machine to capsize. He yelled to me to come back and I did, just in time to save myself from being carried down with the tail and drowned.

"From then on for nearly four days, until picked up by a trawler, we were continually soaked and lashed by seas, and with nothing to eat or drink. We had nothing to cling to, and so to keep from being washed overboard we got upon the same pontoon and hugged our arms about each other's bodies for the whole time. We suffered from thirst. I had a craving for canned peaches. Twice a drizzle came on, wetting the pontoon. We turned on our stomachs and lapped up the moisture, but the paint came off, with salt, and nauseated us. Our limbs grew numb. From time to time the wreckage from torpedoed s.h.i.+ps would pa.s.s. Two full biscuit-tins came close enough to swim for, but by then in our weakened state we knew that we would drown if we tried to get them. We did haul in a third tin and broke it open; it was filled with tobacco.

"Every day we saw convoys in the distance and vainly waved our handkerchiefs. We had no signal-lights to use at night. Our watches stopped, and we lost all track of time. We realized how easy it was for a submarine out there to escape being spotted. On Sunday night we spied a masthead light and shouted. The s.h.i.+p heard and began to circle us. We saw her port light. Then when the crew were visible on the deck of the vessel, she suddenly put out her lights and turned away.

"'She thinks we are Huns,' said Moore.

"'I hope she does,' said I. 'Then they'll send patrol-boats out to get us. 'We couldn't be worse off if we were Germans.'

"But no rescue came. The next afternoon a seaplane came from the east.

It was flying only 800 feet overhead, aiming down the Channel. It seemed impossible that she could not sight us for the air was perfectly clear.

She pa.s.sed straight above without making any signal, flew two miles beyond, and then came back on her course.

"'Her observer must be sending wireless about us,' I said.

"'Yes, that is why we get no recognition,' said Moore, 'and now she's decided to go back and report.'