=Submarine Air Chasers.=—Besides the submarine chasers just described, there are two other kinds that have shown great possibilities as destroyers of undersea craft. These are (1) the _airship_, or dirigible balloon, and (2) the _airplane_, and it is more than likely that in the near future, should the war keep on, the latter craft alone will be used for submarine chasers.
Where a boat chaser cannot see a submarine at all when she is submerged, an airplane can fly directly over her, follow her every movement, and see her when she is at a considerable depth. (See Fig. 68.)
As the airplane is much more steady in the air than a submarine is on the water and as the former is much quicker and speedier than the latter, a battle between these two very different kinds of craft is an unequal one with the odds greatly in favor of the warplane.
=A Way to Lift the U-Boat Blockade.=—Here, then, is a real, ready way that the submarine can be destroyed and Germany’s blockade lifted. To put an end quickly and for all time to the U-boat menace, the United States ought to build several thousand airplanes at once and arm these with bombs and rapid-fire guns like the Lewis[39] and send this fleet to patrol the seas.
[Illustration: FIG. 68. HOW AIR CRAFT CAN SPOT A SUBMERGED SUBMARINE.]
If this were done there wouldn’t be enough U-boats left in a month’s time to flag a Norwegian fishing trawler. So the thing for your Uncle Sammy to do is to build a great fleet of airplanes, and in the shortest possible time.
There is still another way to break the blockade, and this will be described in the next chapter.
The Adventures of the “Deutschland” and Some Schemes for a Merchant Submarine Service
IT is less than twenty years agone that the first five baby Hollands were built in this country for, and delivered to, England, and from that time dates the beginning of the art of modern submarine construction.
Since then the size, speed, and cruising radius of each succeeding type of submarine has grown greater and ever greater, until from a craft hardly larger than a power pleasure boat there has been evolved a truly wonderful undersea vessel of magnificent proportions.
=Uncle Sam’s Latest Submarines.=—The result of this marvelous development is that the latest of Uncle Sam’s submarines are of the 1200 and 1500 tons _displacement_ type and they have a speed of 21 knots on the surface.