Defending the United States 

 with Motor Torpedo Boats 



How deadly torpedoes can be safely carried on high-speed motor boats 

 and hew the landing of an enemy could be prevented by their means 



By Edward F. Chandler 



ON THE Atlantic coast alone there 

 are no less than one hundred and 

 sixteen undefended points where 

 an enem\- could land troops. New 

 York, long considered invulnerable, is in 

 reality helpless. Its guns are so mounted 

 that an enemy fleet could lie off Far 

 Rockaway and throw shells into Four- 

 teenth Street. Not one of our guns 

 could touch the invader. 



Our own army officers have pointed 

 out that 400,000 men could easily be 

 landed on the Atlantic coast; that they 

 could possess themselves of a line three 

 hundred miles long, extending from 

 Lake Erie to Chesapeake Bay; that they 

 could hold that line at the rate of one 

 man for every three \-ards or 176,000 for 

 the entire length; and that the rest, 

 224,000 strong, could cut off ten of our 

 states, all of our great manufacturing 

 establishments, our munition plants, and 

 our richest cities and financial institu- 

 tions from the rest of the Union. In our 



harbor defences we have less than 

 15,000 men, who must remain where 

 they are stationed to serve their guns. 



Against this foreign invading force we 

 could oppose no adequate resistance. 

 The popular notion that we "can lick all 

 creation" with pitchforks and shotguns 

 finds no justification in our military 

 histor>'. In the War of 1812, Washing- 

 ton was defended by 5,400 raw recruits, 

 mostly militia and volunteers. About 

 1 ,500 British soldiers ignominiously drove 

 out the American defenders of the 

 capital with a loss to themselves of only 

 eight killed and eleven wounded. 



Years must elapse before our coast 

 defences and our mobile army can be 

 developed into fighting units capable of 

 frustrating an invasion of our seaboard 

 states. In the meantime we must make 

 the most of the ci\ilian materiel at hand. 

 And so we find that during the month of 

 September the Navy taught a handful of 

 motor-boat owners how to look for sub- 



Each of the proposed motor torpedo-boat stations would be equipped with wireless 

 sending and receiving instruments and would harbor from ten to fifteen boats 



