Booms and Blimps

Dusk, October 22, 1914, just weeks after the start of World War I, The 14,000 ton German liner “Berlin”, under the
command of Catain Pfundheller, reached the entrance of The North Channel. It came as little surprise to discover that
the lights on The Mull of Kintyre and Rathlin Island had both been extinguished and, rather than trying to lay his
cargo of mines inside The Clyde, Pfundheller turned out again to lay his mines some 70 miles north-east of Tory Island
where they might catch a passing convoy, the first casualty was the battleship H.M.S. “Audacious”.

In 1915, when the German submarine offensive began, the effort to counteract it took the form of guarding particular
areas rather than particular ships and, as in The Clyde and The North Channel, anti-submarine booms were put in
place. In February 1917, the German Government announced unrestricted submarine warfare.

Early in 1917, owing to heavy losses in ships taking coal from Britain to France, a system of “controlled sailings” was
introduced for these sailings and losses severely reduced. In April 1917, a convoy system was introduced between
Britain and Scandanavia and then, in May 1917, when shipping losses had reached their most serious point,
experimental convoys, one in each direction, were tried between Gibraltar and America, both convoys arrived
without loss.

Though the principal purpose of convoys was to protect troops coming from Canada and Australia, the convoy system
proved equally effective in bringing the Argentinian wheat crop safely to Britain too. In the summer of 1918, 307
ships joined convoys to bring wheat to Britain, France and Italy, only one ship was lost through enemy action. It was
not really until 1918 and then only in fine weather that both airships and seaplanes were introduced to help to the
convoy escorts.

The Admiralty began to realise that U-boats were able to encircle the whole of The British Isles but, as the Germans
soon discovered, the British ships were still very vulnerable as they made their way to the convoy assembly points and
the U-boats found The North Channel a particularly fruitful hunting ground.

To combat the U-boat threat, a zone, some 30 miles square, was established between Kintyre, Rathlin and The Mull
of Galloway where submarines would be forced to submerge to get through and in doing so would have to use up
precious battery power. At the end of their passage, so went the theory, they would have to surface for air and
recharge their batteries which would, hopefully, allow them to be spotted and attacked by air and by sea. Rathlin
became the hinge point of the operation and all shipping was diverted through Rathlin Sound, a small guiding light
being built at Rue Point.

A force of some forty fishing drifters was employed to stretch a system of wire nets from The Mull of Kintyre across to
Fair Head to deter the U-boats trying to get through The North Channel. The nets were 96-feet in depth and some
2,000 yards long with a 12-foot square mesh, notoriously clumsy to handle in the swirling tideways of The North
Channel. The idea however was not to catch the U-boats but rather to indicate their presence and, in the later type of
nets, a section of net would tear away if struck by a U-boat.

Phosphorus flares would be released at the break in the net and other flares ignited in the torn away section of the net,
now attached to the U-boat, which allowed its course to be tracked as it tried to move away, still submerged. The
moving target could then be attacked and depth-charged by ships or from the air.

Though there were plans for the provision of air cover for “protected shipping lanes”, it was not until 1918 that air
cover became a reality and too that summer came the introduction of hydrophone listening stations on The Mull of
Kintyre and at Torr Head. The U-boats however discovered that, by using a fair tide and keeping their engine
revolutions down, they could not be heard so easily and thus, perhaps, avoid detection.

In May 1918, the first hydrophone station was built at The Mull of Kintyre and, in June, the station at Torr Head
came into operation too. Each station had 8 hydrophones laid out in a string across The North Channel. Operators
stood 2-hour watches, listening for a few minutes to each hydrophone in sequence. They might pick up sounds
between half-a-mile and three miles away and, depending on whether the weather was rough or calm, the operators,
with practice, could tell whether sounds were made by electric motors, diesel or steam engines. The hydrophones
were connected in series to a low-powered battery of between two and six volts and, in turn, to telephone receivers.
Anything between four and sixteen separate hydrophones could be connected to a single listening station and these
‘phones’ could be strung out over a distance of up to some 18 miles.

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In the summer of 1917, an intrepid flyer, Gerald Wakeham, one of the sons of Canon Wakeham of Campbeltown’s
Episcopal Church, had become the first aviator to land in Kintyre, at the Moy Park and then a year later, in July 1918,
when 255 Squadron’s “A” and “B” flights were being established at Luce Bay, 272 Squadron was formed at
Machrihanish, air cover came at last to The North Channel - another base too was established at Larne. The pilots,
flying their little D.H.6 aircraft, soon called their efforts ‘scarecrow patrols’ for, with only a single small bomb, they
had little chance of doing any real damage to a U-boat.

At least three airships, SSZ 11, SSZ 12 and SSZ 13, operated over The North Channel. SSZ 12 collided with the
flagstaff on Stranraer pier, damaging its ‘car’ and ripping open its envelope open, on July 15, 1918, but was repaired
and soon back in service. SSZ 13 was destroyed on August 30, 1918, when it failed to clear the cliffs at Rockcliffe,
five miles south of Dalbeattie. Worryingly, she had as usual been carrying seven top-secret Admiralty communication
codes, these printed on glazed cards contained in separate bags inside a main pouch. The pouch was recovered but the
‘No 9’ wireless code card was missing, it was later concluded that it had been reduced to waste pulp. The recovery of
the missing pouch of code cards was due largely to the inspiration of one of the local Coast Watchers - The watchers,
wearing a black armband with the letter “C.W.” in red, had the power to question and arrest anyone suspicious. They
worked in six-hour shifts and were responsible for reporting all ship and aircraft sightings by type - monoplane, bi-
plane, seaplane or airship - and advising of their heights and directions.

The poor weather of September 1918 caught out airship SSZ 20 escorting an outward-bound convoy and she had to
make a forced landing at Machrihanish on September 20 to deflate her envelope. When conditions permitted, the
D.H.6’s, operating in pairs, carried out 2-hour patrols covering up to 100 miles.

On September 30, 1918, just ten days after SSZ 20’s forced landing at Machrihanish, the airships and the D.H.6’s
began operating joint patrols for the first time. The final phase of U-boat activity to affect the local bases was on
October 10, 1918, when the “Leinster” was torpedoed in heavy seas. With ‘The Armistice’ of November 11, 1918,
bringing The Great War to an end, the net barrage across The North Channel was quickly removed and the
hydrophone listening stations closed too in December 1918.

Neither net barrages nor hydrophone listening stations would be used in World War II except at naval anchorages and
convoy assembly points for the intervening peacetime years brought many notable improvements to submarine
detection systems.

Many of these developments in submarine detection were due to Reginald Aubrey Fessenden, the 1905-builder of the
400-foot high radio mast at Machrihanish, who had conceived and designed the first practical sonar oscillator in 1912
and then further developed his early, World War I, U-boat “asdic” detector systems.

Despite there being stories of German spies on Rathlin Island in both wars, it was later supposed that there had in fact
been none and it was concluded that reports from ‘Rathlin’ had come from another, unknown, reporting station which
had chosen to confuse its identity using the ‘Rathlin’ station identity !