Word: u-boats
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...power. Surprisingly lost that day was the aircraft carrier Courageous. Last week an even more astonishing disaster occurred. The Admiralty sent an electric thrill of horror through the nation by tersely announcing, with regrets, that "His Majesty's Ship Royal Oak has been sunk, it is believed by U-boat action." Royal Oak* was a battleship of 29,150 tons, built in 1914, and her loss reduced from 15 to 14 the number of Britain's capital ships. The time and place of the sinking were not officially divulged, but it appeared to have happened between midnight...
...gallant Emden was at sea. The new raider they heard of was so mysterious, so peremptory, so cruel that she might have been a submarine-and first reports of the sinking of the Clement led the world to believe it had been attacked by a U-boat. Survivors told a different story. Bound with a cargo of gasoline from Pernambuco, Brazil, to Bahia, standing about 70 miles offshore (580 miles inside the neutral zone set up by the Panama Conference; TIME, Oct. 9), the Clement was plugging along at her weary ten-knot pace when members of the crew heard...
...matter of "duty" all Nazi commanders were ordered to attack Allied ships without warning. First ship to feel such a stab was the neutral Danish freighter Vendia (bound for Scotland empty to get a cargo of coal which would have made a fine prize had the U-boat waited). Eleven men were killed, six taken ashore by another Danish ship after the submarine had rescued them. Danes were furious. Aside from the coldbloodedness of this attack, it followed on the heels of Germany's seizure of four Danish ships, three carrying butter, eggs and bacon to Britain, one timber...
...which it was said that, according to a message, all hands had drowned. Who then, Berlin asked, survived to send the message? After the BBC had fumbled with that for a time, Berlin sent its version: that another British ship, the Browning, had been spared by the U-boat commander to care for the Royal Sceptre's crew. Later, the Royal Sceptre crew turned up safe in Bahia, Brazil. Other Berlin hotfoots: reports that "fat City men" hustle through London's financial district with steel helmets concealed under toppers; that English women are adopting a new helmet hairdo...
Finding the direction, or bearing, of a U-boat was not enough to locate it. But if each of three patrol vessels, say a mile apart, picked up submarine sounds, determined the bearing, then communicated their bearing readings to the other two by wireless telephone, three direction lines could be drawn on a chart and the point where the lines intersected was the quarry's approximate location. Another such "fix," obtained a few minutes later, would show the submarine's course and speed...