Sub Killers

The Navy last week quietly prepared for a sustained offensive against the Axis submarine menace on the Gulf, Caribbean and Atlantic coasts. On Miami's Pier 2 Navy men swarmed through a quarter-mile length of offices and warehouses. They pored over textbooks on gunnery, enemy ship and plane recognition, seamanship, navigation. They raced over the sea in fast, sleek boats. These were the men of PC--Patrol Craft.

It was high time. U-boat sinkings in this hemisphere's waters, several of which were reported almost every morning, had become a national disgrace. Louisiana's Senator Allen Ellender, aroused, said naval officers might be called into a public hearing "if we are not entirely satisfied that everything possible is being done. ..."

The Navy was trying hard. Its job was extraordinarily tough. The Nazi subsea technique and ships have greatly improved since World War I. U-boat packs have a host of devices to permit their skulking and striking with greater safety. Destroyers are no longer the complete answer. U-boat skippers outfox destroyers by outmaneuvering them with fast turns underwater. And the Navy had not enough destroyers to convoy both in coastal waters and cross-ocean supply routes too.

The Navy hopes that a solution is at last pouring down the ways; a 1942 version of the subchaser. But World War I's "Cinderella" has gone through a face lifting. There are two types for 1942: 1) a 110-ft. wood-hulled boat for inshore work, 2) a steel-hulled 173-footer for oceangoing. A third and larger one is in the making. These are the PCs.

PCs are fast enough to catch their quarry, can wheel about on their heels to follow the squirmings of U-boats below the surface. Their main weapon is the depth charge, to open the enemy's steel-laced seams. They carry a medium-size foredeck gun, a battery of anti-aircraft machine guns.

But their best equipment is their detection devices, mechanical ears which trace a U-boat's course below the surface.

Whether the PCs will prove effective will be shown this summer when a considerable number of PC units get to work. The men of the PC have firm faith; a lieutenant commander, veteran of the Battle of the Atlantic, audaciously predicted: "We'll turn off this Nazi submarine campaign like turning off a faucet."

Newly in charge of the new Gulf sea frontier, faced with the onerous job of squashing Axis subs, is Rear Admiral James Laurence Kauffman, transferred from the Iceland Naval Base. Commandant of the PC training center is Lieut. Commander Eugene F. McDaniel. He preaches each week to recruits to instill them with what he calls "the PC religion." After one such lecture two men, spokesmen for 150 who had been on ships sunk by the Japs, tagged him to his office. They wanted to pledge him 100% cooperation, they said. They were in tears.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.