Submarine Destroyers 



A TLQw use for motor boats 



SKIPPERS sleep peacefully in their 

 berths on the freighters lying in the 

 Thames near London in spite of sub- 

 marine warfare. Freight from America 

 and other countries, munitions of war 

 and food supplies, arrive there in such 

 quantities that the boats cannot be 

 unloaded immediately, but they are 

 just as safe in the mouth of the Thames 

 as they would be in New York harbor. 

 For that, England has America and 

 Russia to thank. Some enterprising 

 Russian must have seen Flyaway III 

 winning races in American waters; there 

 is the secret of the safety of commerce in 

 the mouth of the Thames. 



What keeps the German submarine 

 away is the huge fleet of pert, saucy, 

 little American launches. All of them 

 were developed from the lines of Flyaway 

 III, one of the few new engines of war 

 for which America is responsible. Each 

 boat is sixty feet long and is driven 

 thirty miles an hour by gasoline engines. 

 "Submarine swatters," the boys down 



on Long Island, New York, nicknamed 

 them before they were shipped. With 

 supplies of food and fuel for several days' 

 cruise these boats spread fanlike from 

 the mouth of the Thames, and from 

 other shipping centers in England and 

 Russia on the lookout for the wily 

 submarine whose evil eye trails a tail of 

 oil and bubbles behind it. In the 

 deck house of the submarine swatter is 

 a three-pound quick firer, capable of 

 knocking the periscope clean off, or 

 mortally wounding the submarine before 

 it can come to the surface and get into 

 action against the little American 

 launches. No submarine can sail any 

 waters where these fleets are located for 

 half a day without being spotted, trailed, 

 and destroyed. As was said before, the 

 skippers of the freighters in the mouth 

 of the Thames, waiting for a chance to 

 unloail, sleep peacefully on. 



A trial order of these submarine 

 swatters was given to a Greenport, L. I., 

 construction company late last year, and 



The motor-boat, up to this year considered insignificant in warfare, is proving to be the 

 submarine's livest foe. Its powerful engine gives it speed and a wide radius of action 



ISO 



