From British Admiralty sources have come many tales of
the skill and courage of the American aviators. There was one recent
instance noted of an American pilot scouting for submarines who spotted
a periscope. He dropped a bomb a few feet astern and a few feet ahead of
that periscope, both bombs falling perfectly in line with the objective.
He circled and then dropped a bomb in the centre of a disturbance in the
water. Up came oil in great quantities.
Another American pilot managed the rare feat of dropping a bomb
precisely upon the centre of the deck of a submarine, and had the
unhappy experience of seeing it fail to explode--as recently happened in
the submarine fight off Cape Cod, near Chatham.
In hunting for the submarines the American destroyers have patrolled an
area as wide as that bounded roughly by the great V formed by New York,
Detroit, and Knoxville, Tenn. And while patrolling they have become
skilled in the use of the depth charges, in establishing smoke screens
so as to hide vessels of a convoy from the periscope eye, and in
marksmanship. One gun crew not long ago saw the spar of a sunken ship
which they at first took to be a periscope. They shattered that spar at
a distance of 2,000 yards--more than a mile.
Filled with the enthusiasm of each new encounter with the enemy, the
Americans have not been slow to build upon their experience, devising
more effective methods against the next affray. For example, two
officers working on designs for new destroyers have introduced many new
ideas gained from their experiences in submarine-hunting.
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