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July 27, 2025 18 mins
Delve deep into the clandestine world of submarine warfare during WWI with the Journal of Submarine Commander Von Forstner. As the commander of the German U-boat U-28, Forstner provides an unvarnished account of the gritty realities of life under the sea, including detailed descriptions of torpedo attacks on Allied ships. First published in 1916, this 1917 English translation aimed to support the Allied war effort by revealing the fearsome nature of their invisible enemy. Inspired by a visit to the captured WWII German U-505 submarine at Chicagos Museum of Science and Industry, this audio reading offers a visceral understanding of the claustrophobic conditions endured by the submarines crew, exemplified by the cramped sleeping quarters nestled alongside 15-foot-long torpedoes. This is a journey into the heart of the submarine warfare experience. (Introduction by Sue Anderson)
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Part one of an introductory essay by John Hayes Hammond
Junior to the Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner. This
is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
LibriVox dot org. Recording by Sue Anderson. The Journal of

(00:24):
Submarine Commander von Forstner by Georg Gunter Fraher von Forstner,
translated by Anna Krafts Codman, with commentary by John Hayes
Hammond Junior, Part one of the introductory essay The Challenge
to Naval Supremacy. In a letter to William Pitt of
January sixth, eighteen o six, relating to his invention of

(00:47):
a submersible boat, Robert Fulton wrote prophetically, Now in this business,
I will not disguise that I have full confidence in
the power which I possess, which is no less than
to be the means. Should I think proper of giving
to the world a system which must of necessity sweep
all military marines from the ocean, by giving the weaker

(01:11):
maritime powers advantages over the stronger which the stronger cannot prevent.
It is interesting to note that about one hundred years later,
Vice Admiral Fournier of the French Navy stated before a
Parliamentary Committee of Investigation that if France had possessed a
sufficient number of submersibles and had disposed them strategically about

(01:35):
her coasts and the coasts of her possessions, these vessels
could have controlled the trade routes of the world. He
said also that the fighting value of a sufficient number
of submersibles would re establish the balance of power between
England and France. The history of naval warfare during the
last few months has confirmed the opinions of these two authorities,

(02:00):
although in a manner which they in no way anticipated.
Direct comparison is the usual method by which the human
mind estimates values. We would measure the strength of two
men by pitting them against each other in physical encounter.
In the same way, we are prone to measure the
combative effect of weapons by pitting them in conflict against

(02:24):
other weapons. But modern warfare is of so complex a
nature that direct comparisons fail, and only a careful analysis
of military experience determines the potentiality of a weapon and
its influence on warfare. Robert Fulton and Admiral Fournier both
indicated that they believed in the submersible supremacy in actual

(02:46):
encounter with capital ships. The war so far has shown
that in action between fleets, the submersible has played a
negative part. In the Jutland Bank Battle, the submersible, handicapped
in speed and eye sight, took as active a part
as a jack tar humorously put it as a turtle

(03:10):
might in a cat fight. Not even under the extraordinary
conditions of the bombardment in the Dardanelles, when the circumstances
were as lent themselves strikingly to submarine attack, did these
vessels score against the fleet in action. It is easy
to understand why the submersible did not take a vital
part in any of the major naval actions. In the

(03:33):
naval battle of today, we have a number of very
high speed armored craft fighting against one another over ranges
extending up to seventeen thousand yards. There is a constant
evolution in the position of the ships, which it is
impossible to follow from the low point of vantage of
a periscope. For the different formations of ships mean nothing

(03:55):
to the submersible commander. He is so placed that his
range of vision is excps extremely limited, and on account
of the low speed of his boat while submerged, he
can operate over only a very limited area of water,
while the other vessels are moving many miles. Then, too,
he is extremely vulnerable to the effect of enemy shells

(04:17):
and to the ramming of enemy ships. Under these conditions,
the submersible commander is more or less forced to a
policy of lying ambushed to surprise his enemy. It is
said that the Lusitania was decoyed into a nest of submersibles,
there was but little chance of torpedoing her in any

(04:39):
other way. There is also the statement that Admiral Beatty
passed with his battle cruisers through a flotilla of enemy
submersibles without being touched. Submersibles cannot attack their target in
definite formations as to surface vessels, and therefore they cannot
operate in numbers with the the same effectiveness as do

(05:01):
the latter. They must maneuver more or less singly and
at random. Being limited to the torpedo, which, when they
are submerged, is their sole weapon of attack, they have
an uncertain means of striking their armed enemy. The eccentricities
of the automobile torpedo are well known, but even eliminating

(05:23):
the fact that this missile is unreliable, the important question
of accuracy in the estimate of range and speed which
the submersible commander has to make before firing the torpedo,
must be considered. There is usually a large percentage of
error in his calculations unless the submersible is extremely close

(05:44):
to its target. Realizing these limitations, the German submersibles are
equipped with small torpedoes, which are generally fired at ranges
not exceeding eight hundred to two thousand yards. The necessity
of approaching the targets so closely is of course a
tremendous handicap in the general operation of these boats. In

(06:07):
view of these facts, it is not surprising that the
submersible should not have been able to sweep the capital
ship from the seas, as was predicted by certain experts
before the war. Admiral Suscipient Bridge regards the functions of
defense by a navy as divisible into three main classifications.

(06:27):
He says, the above mentioned three divisions are called in
common speech coast defense, colonial defense, and defense of commerce.
From this classification we are given a hint as to
what a sailor means by naval supremacy, freedom of the seas,
and other terms so misused that today they mean nothing.

(06:51):
Coast defense means defense against invasion. Colonial defense means the
safeguarding of distant possess against enemy forces. The defense of
commerce means such supremacy on the seas as will insure
absolute safety of the mercantile marine from enemy commerce destroyers.

(07:15):
Today every great nation is waging a trade war. The
industrial competition of peace is as keen as the competition
of war. All the great powers realized years ago that
to gain and keep their place in the sun, it
was necessary for them to construct navies that would insure
to them a certain control of the seas for the

(07:37):
protection of their commerce. In this way began the abnormal
naval construction, in which the powers have vied with one
another for supremacy. A simple way of looking at the
question what constitutes the power of a fleet is to
consider the warship as merely a floating gun platform. Even

(07:58):
though this floating platform is the most complex piece of
mechanism that was ever contrived by man, nevertheless, its general
function is simple. The war has given us enough experience
to convince us that the backbone of a navy is,
after all, the heavily armoured ship of moderately high speed

(08:19):
carrying a very heavy armament. This floating gun platform is
the structure best fitted to carry large guns into battle
and to withstand the terrific punishment of the enemy's fire.
The battleship is today, notwithstanding the development of other types
Queen of the seas. It is therefore not difficult to

(08:40):
estimate the relative power of the fleets of different nations.
In fact, a purely engineering estimate of this kind can
be made and the respective ranks of the world's naval
powers ascertained. Germany has shown all through the war that
she thoroughly appreciated the British naval supremacy. See her fleet

(09:01):
has ventured little more than sporadic operations from the well
fortified bases beyond Heiligoland. It was probably the pressure of
public opinion, and not the expectation that she would achieve
anything of military advantage, that forced her to send her
high sea fleet into conflict with the British squadrons off Jutland.

(09:22):
If one should examine the course of this battle, which
has been represented by lines graphically showing the paths of
the British and German fleets, one could easily see how
the British imposed their will upon the Germans in every
turn that these lines make. It reminds one very much
of the herding of sheep, for the German fleet was

(09:43):
literally herded on May thirty first, nineteen sixteen, from five
thirty six in the afternoon until nine o'clock that night.
Admiral von Cheer, however, fought the only action which was
possible for him to fight. It was a loser action,
and one which he knew from a purely mathematical consideration,

(10:05):
could not be successful. Through the very definiteness of this
understanding of what constitutes naval strength, Great Britain's navy until
recently has remained a great potential force, becoming dynamic for
only a few hours at Jutland, after which it returned
to that mysterious northern base. Whence it seems to dominate

(10:27):
the seas. Because of the potentiality of these hidden warships.
Thousands of vessels have traversed the ocean, freighted with countless
tons of cargoes and millions of men for the Allies.
Even at that psychological moment when the first hundred thousand
were being transported to France, Germany refrained from a naval

(10:48):
attack which might have turned the whole land campaign in
her favor. Today, however, the world is awakening to a
new idea of sea power, to a new conception that
will have a far reaching influence on the future development
of naval machinery. Si Ciprian Bridge has stated that one

(11:11):
of the functions of a fleet is the defense of commerce.
There is no more important function for a fleet than this.
A nation may be subjugated by direct invasion, or it
may be isolated from the world by blockade. If the
blockade be sufficiently long and effectively maintained, it will ruin

(11:35):
the nation as effectually as direct invasion. Thus, in the
maintenance of a nation's merchant marine on the high seas,
its navy exercises one of its most vital functions. There
can therefore, be no naval supremacy for a nation unless
its commerce is assured of immunity from considerable losses the

(11:59):
thas the attack of its enemy. It is idle for
us to speak of our naval supremacy over Germany when
our navies are failing in one of their most important functions,
and when our commerce is suffering such serious losses, the
persons best qualified to judge are those who are most

(12:21):
anxious regarding the present losses in mercantile tonnage. While it
has been shown that the submersible of to day as
a fighting machine is considerably limited and in no sense
endangers the existence of the capital ship, nevertheless, in the
new huge submersible, it seems that the ideal commerce destroyer

(12:42):
has been found. This vessel possesses the necessary cruising radius
to operate over sufficient distances to control important routes. It
makes a surface speed great enough to run down cargo steamers,
and has a superstructure to mount guns of considerable power
up to six inch. It embodies almost all the qualifications

(13:04):
of the light surface cruiser, with the additional tremendous advantage
of being able to hide by submergens. To be completely successful,
it must operate in flotillas of hundreds in waters that
are opaque to aerial observation. Germany has but a limited
number of these submersibles, otherwise she would be able to

(13:29):
crush the Allied commerce. The ideal submersible commerce raidar should
be a vessel of such displacement that she could carry
a sufficient number of large guns in her superstructure to
enable her to fight off the attack of surface destroyers
and the smaller patrol craft. She should be capable of

(13:49):
cruising over a large radius at high speed, both on
the surface and submerged. The super submersible flotillas should comprise
fifty or sixty of these units. The attack on the
trade route should be made by a number of flotillas
operating at different points at unexpected times. To day, Germany

(14:11):
has concentrated her submarine more, particularly in the constricted waters
about England. It is here that the shipping is most congested,
and therefore the harvest is richest. But it is also
easier to protect the trade routes over these limited areas
of water by patrols, nets, et cetera, than it would

(14:32):
be to protect the entire trans oceanic length of the
steamship lanes. If the submersible were capable of dealing directly
with the destroyer in gun fighting, a tremendous revolution would
take place in the tactics of submarine swatting. Then it
would be difficult to see how the submersible could be

(14:52):
dealt with. Improvement in motive machinery is the vital necessity
in the development of the submersible. The next few years
may see unexpected strides taken in this direction. A great
deal will also be accomplished in perfecting methods of receiving
sounds under water, particularly in relation to ascertaining the direction

(15:13):
of these sounds. When this is done, it will be
possible for the submersible commander to tell a great deal
about the positions of the vessels above him, and thus
his artificial ears will compensate to a great extent for
his blindness. By the addition of a greater number of
torpedo tubes and the improvement of their centralized control in

(15:36):
the hand of the commander at the periscope, along lines
which we are now developing, it will be possible for
the submersible to achieve a greater effectiveness in its torpedo fire.
Probably torpedoes will then be used only against the more
important enemy units such as battleships, cruisers and the like.

(15:57):
To be certain of striking these valuable targets would be
worth expending a number of torpedoes in salvol fire. Whether
the German U boat campaign succeeds or not will be
largely a question of the number of submersibles that the
Central Powers can put into service, and to what extent
the submersible will be developed. During the present war, German

(16:22):
submarines have sunk over seven million, two hundred and fifty
thousand tons of the Allied shipping. In December nineteen sixteen,
it was stated in the British Parliament that the merchant
marine of Great Britain had at that time over twenty
million tons. Within the first three months of the unrestricted

(16:47):
submarine warfare, one million, one hundred thousand tons of British
shipping went to the bottom. At this rate, England would
lose twenty five percent of her merchant marine per annum.
It is for this reason that the attention of the
entire world is concentrated upon the vital problem of the

(17:10):
submarine menace on land. The Central Powers are still holding
their ground, but there is a continuous increase of the
forces of the Allies, which should lead finally to such
a preponderance of power as will overwhelm the forces opposed
to them. The Allied armies, however, depend for their sustenance

(17:32):
and supplies upon the freedom of the seas. The trade
roots of the world constitute the arteries which feed the
muscles of these armies. Germany is endeavoring to cut these
arteries by the submarine. Should she even appreciably limit the
supplies that cross the ocean to the Allies, she will

(17:54):
bring about a condition that will make it impossible to
augment their armies. In this way, there will inevitably be
a deadlock, which, from the German standpoint, would be a
highly desirable consummation. End of the first part of the
introductory essay by John Hayes Hammond Junior
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