In World War I, the submarine, like the airplane, came into its own as a serious weapon. Armed with torpedoes, German submarines seriously interfered with Allied supplies. Britain, an island that had to import much of its food, was especially hard hit. It was hit even harder in World War II. “The only thing that really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril,” Winston Churchill said. At the beginning of the war, submarines had improved far more than antisubmarine tactics. Later, such innovations as airborne radar and the cracking of German naval codes more than evened the odds, but it was a close thing. It was a different story on the other side of the world. By 1943, U.S. submarines finally had efficient torpedoes. That year they sank 22 Japanese warships and 296 merchant ships. The next year, the submarine U.S.S. Archerfish sank the huge, 59,000 ton Japanese aircraft carrier, Sinano. A month later, another sub, U.S.S. Redfish, knocked out two more Japanese carriers, Junyo and Unryu. By the end of the war, U.S. submarines sank 2,117 Japanese merchant ships — 60 percent of all those destroyed — and 201 of the 686 Japanese warships sunk.
For most of its existence up through World War II, the submarine’s biggest handicap was speed. On the surface, it was the slowest of all naval vessels.
Submerged, it might have trouble outrunning a row boat. That changed after the war, when the U.S. Navy launched the U.S.S. Skipjack. Almost all previous subs had been compromises — designed for surface travel but usable under the water. The somewhat tubular hull interfered with surface speed, while the surface-type bow and deck, not to mention the complicated conning tower, impeded subsurface travel. Skipjack, which resembled a whale with a smooth dorsal fin, was designed for subsurface travel alone. Submerged, she was faster than most surface craft. When the navy combined the Skipjack hull with a nuclear engine, in the U.S.S. Nautilus — the name taken from both Fulton’s submarine and the craft of Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo — the modern submarine was born.
Today’s nuclear subs can stay submerged almost indefinitely and outrun most surface ships. In contrast to the small, fragile submarines of World War I, they are extremely durable and huge. They carry torpedoes with a variety of guidance systems and three times the range of the best torpedoes of World War II. They also carry a variety of rockets, including intercontinental missiles, and they can fire them while submerged. During the Cold War, U.S. submarines were able to intercept Soviet messages by tapping undersea cables. During the Iraq War, American submarines fired Tomahawk cruise missiles at Iraqi targets — some from tubes designed for that purpose, some from ordinary torpedo tubes.
In the two centuries or so since David Bushnell created American Turtle, the submarine is now bidding to take the place of the aircraft carrier as the new capital ship.
Chapter 30
Bigger (and Cleaner) Bangs for the Buck: Smokeless Powder and High Explosives
President Theodore Roosevelt is famous for advising his countrymen to “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” But prior to this day, July 1, 1898, he and his fellow war hawks had been roaring at the top of their voices while carrying a toothpick — at least as far as land forces went. The navy was moderately large and more than moderately modern. The army, though, had only 28,183 men, and many of them were needed on the still-not-quite-settled western frontier.
Consequently, at least half of the troops here in Cuba were volunteers, not regulars. And that requires a brief explanation of just what “volunteer” means.
Volunteer units were an outgrowth of the country’s ancient militia system, which has its roots in the Dark Ages. Militia were originally all men able to bear arms. They could be called upon by the monarch to fight in his wars. Later, there were limitations on who could be called up and for how long and where.
Age limits were set. In the United States today, all males are between the ages of 17 and 45 are the militia. In England, in the Middle Ages, militia were required to serve for only 40 days, and they had to be paid by the royal treasury for any duty outside their own counties. In colonial America, militia could not be required to serve outside their own colonies. For troops to be used outside the colonies, colonial authorities relied on “volunteers.” These were men who formed their own military units, elected their own officers, provided their own weapons, and served under regular army officers for a limited time or for the duration of the war. Until the 20th century, the United States depended heavily on volunteer units in its wars.
Originally, the volunteers provided their own weapons, but, by the end of the 19th century, the states provided many units with their arms. The Krag Jorgensen repeating rifle and carbine had just been adopted for the regular army.
Krags were not for sale to private owners, however, and none of the states were ready to invest large sums in new rifles for militia units — many of which were not even in existence. Consequently, most of the troops closing in on Santiago de Cuba had single-shot rifles using the old standard cartridge, the .45–70, adopted in 1873. Single-shot rifles could not, of course, fire as fast as repeaters. But the big disadvantage of these single-shots, most of them varieties of the Springfield “trap door” action rifle, was that they used black powder, not smokeless. We’ll see in a moment what that meant. Only one unit of volunteers, the Rough Riders, composed of cowboys and Ivy Leaguers recruited by Theodore Roosevelt, had Krags. Political connections are a wonderful thing.
The Spanish regulars had the Model 1893 or 1895 Mauser, 7 mm bolt action repeaters. Mauser’s late model rifles were by far the best military rifles of the day. The Spanish also had Krupp quick-firing field pieces. (See Chapter 28.) Of the U.S. troops, neither regulars nor reserves had modern artillery.
What the Americans had, at least in the field, were numbers. The right wing of the American army, under Brigadier General Henry L. Lawton, had 6,653 men and four field pieces. It was moving against the Spanish fortifications around the village of El Caney, where Spanish General Joaquin Vara de Ray had 520 men. Lawton’s troops were to take El Caney and swing around the main defenses of Santiago de Cuba. At the same time, the main body was to attack the Spanish line on the crest of the San Juan Heights. The dismounted cavalry division, which included Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, the 9th and 10th regiments of African American cavalry (“Buffalo Soldiers”) and the 1st, 3rd, and 6th cavalry regiments, formed the right wing of the main body. It faced fortifications on what became known as Kettle Hill — not San Juan Hill, which was a short distance to the south. The Rough Riders were the only volunteers in the force, and like the rest of the division, who were regulars, they had modern rifles.
The day before, Lawton had surveyed his objective and estimated that his men would take it in two hours. Planning for the main assault was based on that estimate. Given the odds Lawton enjoyed, that was a most reasonable estimate.
To understand what kind of advantage 10-to-one odds gives a military unit, let’s consider some extremely simplistic propositions. Say one side has 100 men and the other side 1,000, and say that, on each exchange of fire, 10 percent of each side score hits. On the first exchange the larger force will be reduced to 990 men, but the second will be annihilated. Say only 5 percent score hits on each exchange. On the first exchange, the larger force will be left with 995 soldiers; the smaller one with 50. Of course, real life is more complicated than that (at least now). In the days when soldiers stood shoulder to shoulder and fired volleys at each other, that proposition would have been more accurate.