RMS Lusitania, 7 May 1915
RMS Lusitania, 7 May 1915
AT THE OUTBREAK OF THE WAR, the German army was by far the mightiest and best-prepared military force in the world. However, Britain’s navy governed the seas, and thereby controlled the world’s international trade, as well as the major supply routes to Europe and Germany. The Kaiser was actively developing a strategy to counter the British sea supremacy. It was to be a two-pronged approach.
They developed oil-fed turbines for their warships, to replace the traditional coal-fired ones, which doubled the speed of the ships, as well as eliminating their telltale smoke. Winston Churchill and Jack Fisher, the British Sea Lord, were not far behind, and these developments stimulated their search for oil supplies in Persia. Meanwhile, as Germany didn’t have a reliable source of oil, and was blocked by the British in the Persian Gulf, they decided to build a railroad to Baghdad, in partnership with the Ottoman Empire. It was one of the factors that eventually led to World War I.
Concurrently, Germany focused their engineering skills on the development of the submarine. By 1914, Germany already had a fleet of what they called U-boats, which were initially harboured in the Baltic, and subsequently, after the fall of Belgium, began to be based just north of the Western Front. The curtain was raised on 7 May 1915 when a U-boat sank the world’s most luxurious ocean liner, the Lusitania, off the coast of Ireland. It was a significant event, both in terms of understanding the power of the U-boat strategy, but also in influencing the Americans to begin to think about joining the war, which President Wilson was doing everything to avoid. Britain itself became a realizable target. In April 1917 alone, more than a million tons of British and neutral ships were lost. One ship out of every four leaving British ports never came home. Neutral and American ships refused to sail to British ports. There was no hope of replacing the losses with new ships.
Soon after the outbreak of World War I, the Admiralty had become increasingly concerned about the threat of the German U-boats, and decided in July 1915 to create the Board of Invention and Research (BIR), to research and develop technology to eliminate the threat. Lord Fisher was chosen to become president. A panel, mostly comprised of leading British scientists, was put together. Among those selected were Sir Ernest Rutherford and his good friend, another eminent British scientist, William Bragg. The Board was split into six sections, with Section II, Submarine and Wireless Telegraphy, assuming the greatest importance. Bragg became the senior scientist of that section.
Ernest Rutherford’s early research activities had been in related fields to those that challenged the BIR. Following three years at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, he had accepted in 1898 the position of Professor of Experimental Physics at McGill’s new Macdonald Physics Laboratory. Assisted by Robert Boyle and A.S. Eve, he undertook early experiments in what eventually was to become SONAR. Boyle was to receive McGill’s first Physics Doctorate, and Eve became a very close friend of Rutherford. Rutherford left McGill in 1907 to chair the Manchester University Physics Department, where he stayed for the following twelve years.
During 1916, the BIR reviewed thousands of suggestions, either developed internally or received from the public at large. They included charming procedures involving the training of sea lions to search under water, or seagulls to leave their excrement on enemy conning towers! The admirals also got into the act, and one came up with the Q-boat procedure, where dummy merchant boats, acting as decoys, would suddenly open fire on surfacing U-boats.
Lord Jellicoe, Supreme Commander of the “Grand Fleet,” complained that the BIR was too independent and was not concentrating on the necessary technological developments. In December 1916, Lloyd George was elected prime minister, and one of his first priorities was to address the U-boat threat. He promoted Admiral Jellicoe to First Sea Lord, and he created the Anti-Submarine Division to be headed by Admiral Duff. It was to spearhead the anti-U-boat technology, and oversee the activities of the BIR. Despite considerable friction between the two organizations, the emphasis became technologically oriented, and William Bragg and Section II were at the helm. Hydrophones initially seemed to be the most promising development, but Bragg decided to concentrate on the “Loop” technology that had the dual capacity of both harbour protection and high-seas U-boat elimination. It had been initiated in 1915, but had so far failed. “Loops” rely on the production of an induced current in a stationary loop wire, when a magnet (or, say, a submarine) moved overhead. As early as 1916, cables were laid at the entrance of a number of harbours in Britain, but despite good laboratory results, acoustical disturbances in these large outlays rendered them useless for reliable submarine detection.
At about this time, Etienne had been wounded at the battle of Arleux, and had spent three months at the Camberwell Hospital in London. In August 1917, he had returned to Canada to complete his rehabilitation. He was demobilized in November, and returned to McGill to pursue his MA in Physics. At one point, he joined his friend and mentor, the physicist, Louis King, who was undertaking some experiments on the transmission of sound through fog. They took off by boat and on foot to define the acoustics of different types of sirens, and what modifications resulted during storms or foggy periods. The thick Labrador fog and the big waves sweeping the bridge were a pleasant transition from the foul smells of the trenches. It was good for him, and he returned looking like an old sea captain.
Following the changes of emphasis at the BIR, additional scientists were recruited. Rutherford recommended that three of his former McGill assistants, A.S. Eve, Robert Boyle, and Louis King, be invited. Then, in late 1917, Eve suggested that Etienne should also be approached. Etienne had been offered a position as professor at Princeton University, training American officers in the management of ammunition delivery in the battlefield. Feeling that it was his duty to return to the military, he had accepted the post. Eve was disappointed, but with the help of the McGill chancellor, convinced Etienne that his duty would be even better served in London.
Etienne arrived in London in January 1918. Eve introduced him to William Bragg and described him as “pure gold.” Etienne was now surrounded by some of the leading scientists of the day. He was intrigued by the research that Rutherford and Robert Boyle were doing, particularly as Rutherford felt that their ASDIC program (later to be called SONAR), would eventually be superior to the “loops.” Several months went by, in which Etienne mingled with the scientists at Kew and Greenwich. They discussed together many of the projects that were in process and they gave him ideas to further his work on solving the “loops” problems.
The eventual decision of the Germans to undertake unrestricted U-boat warfare had pushed the US into the war, and opened the relationship between the British and US navies. Lloyd George, against the opinion of senior admirals, listened to the American advice and introduced convoys. The Americans loaned a number of destroyers to supplement the decimated British fleet. The result was an important decline in shipping losses. There was nevertheless an urgent need to pursue the anti-submarine program. The U-boat sinkings had to be further reduced, the fleet needed to be protected, and the US destroyers were required elsewhere.
By mid May, Etienne and his team were ready to put aside the theory and get on with the practical. Bragg was very keen to try to solve the “loops” dilemma. This would require extensive onsite experimentation. The Admiralty had established its initial Experimental Station near Harwich in January 1917, which was conveniently close to the British Submarine Flotilla, but it could not be considered a satisfactory deep-water experimental site. Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands, on the other hand, was ideal. It was the key Royal Navy harbour, and there were a number of deep-water entrances already cabled.
Staff of the McGill Physics faculty, 1926–27.
(Left to right) A.S. Eve, L.V. King, D.A. Keys, and Etienne Bieler
IN EARLY JUNE they embarked on a tiny trawler in the midst of a violent storm. It took them twenty-four hours in unusually heavy seas to reach Kirkwall, the capital and only major settlement on the island. The Orkney countryside is so heavily windswept that no trees or even bushes survive, but when the sun comes out, the soft, hazy light sparkles with the blue of the sea, the purple of the heather, and the red of the rocks. Kirkwall is a strange little capital, more like a fishing village, lost in the midst of the desert. Several trees, protected by the Roman Church, lend a special charm. Nearby, there is a military post, with its empty infirmary. Etienne and his team were warmly greeted by the officers. They lost no time in recruiting a group of local fishermen to help them set up a laboratory, and to plan the laying of additional cables in appropriate locations.
In this country, where in June and July it’s possible to read your newspaper at midnight on the beach, there is ample time to get a lot done. There was a lot to do, which did include some very pleasant moments. The clergyman took them out on a miraculous fishing trip, where they caught sixty-two huge fish. Another time the major invited them for tennis. He was a very hospitable fellow, whose place was always open for the local officers. His family came for the summer holidays to enjoy their huge house with its ancient walls and fields of wild flowers.—(BB)
ETIENNE AND HIS TEAM ADDED lengths of cable to a network that had been laid a few years earlier at several entrances to the Scapa Flow harbour. They then undertook a series of experiments, based in good part on the research that Etienne had developed. Eventually, they succeeded in resolving the problems that had plagued the loops ever since their original installation. As their facilities in the Orkneys were not sufficient to complete their work, in early August they moved to the Weymyss Bay Experimental Station, not far from Glasgow.
Bragg was pleased with the result, but, despite the good news from the Front, decided to send Etienne to Hardelot on the French Channel coast, a few miles from Boulogne. The latest plan was to install a loop across the channel from Harderlot to Dungeness, in Kent. There was competition from another approach, necessitating the construction of a dozen ninety-foot-high towers to be sunk in place between Portsmouth and Cap Gris Nez, just north of Boulogne!
On 28 October 1918, with the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet anchored within the Scapa Flow harbour, U-Boat UB-116 was blown up in one of the loop minefields. An observer had noticed the telltale deflection of a loop’s needle, and, seeing that there was no surface ship there, he pressed the button and the line of mines exploded. It was the first recorded use of indicator loops. They became the leading anti-submarine defence system between the two world wars, and were replaced by Boyle’s SONAR at the start of World War II.
At war’s end, Rutherford was appointed chair of the Cavendish laboratory at Cambridge. He was instrumental in directing Etienne to join him there and submitted his thesis to the Royal Society of London. The thesis had been fundamental for the resolution of the “loops” problems.
Magnetic Material graphic
THE VIABILITY OF the “loops” and the Armistice were confirmed. Etienne was free to return to the hospital to have a final operation on his leg, and enjoy the Armistice lying on his bed in Camberwell.—(BB)
