TO THE NEEDS OF THE UNITED STATES NAVY. 123 
The defensive idea is now deeply rooted in our minds and has influenced our building 
program, our war games and maneuver problems; in consequence the initiative is freely 
given to the enemy forces, our own being assigned a defensive role. 
The submarine should be considered a weapon for the purpose of extending our sea 
frontiers. If we build submarines capable of keeping the seas in all parts of the Atlantic 
and Pacific, then the risk to an enemy expedition will become so great that few nations 
will accept the hazard involved. Our industrial development and our great resources of 
material will permit this nation building offensive submarines in sufficient numbers to pre- 
vent any one nation from controlling the seas against us. In fact, the development of an 
offensive submarine has struck a hard blow at the command of the sea by any one nation. 
A warship or a fleet in any part of the ocean will be in constant danger of destruction 
from an invisible enemy. 
You, gentlemen, can aid this country to obtain the type of submarine a correct doc- 
trine of naval war councils us to build. Help us to develop a Diesel engine of great reliability 
of about 2,000 shaft horse-power to put in our submarine hulls. The submarine hull we 
want is known and understood in this country. Germany has made it standard for her 
undersea vessels—some of you may have seen it recently, represented in the German sub- 
marine Deutschland. 
Submerged speed and radius of action for these offensive types are merely matters of 
weight and space provided; storage battery development in this country is sufficiently 
advanced. 
The submarine of 500 tons displacement will not give us our offensive submarine type. 
It will not aid us in extending our frontiers. As a step in evolution it was needed, but we 
now have passed beyond. To maintain ourselves stationary, as is suggested in this paper, 
and accept the passive defensive idea is not the true mission of our submarine policy. 
Nava. Constructor T. G. Rozerts, Member (Communicated) :—This paper is timely 
and appropriate, where a viewpoint from the uses of submarines may be pitted against that 
of their design and construction. 
The shipbuilders will no doubt be gratified at the conclusion reached in the paper that 
the coast-defense type is more suitable for the needs of this country, since any radical de- 
partures bring abnormal responsibilities upon their shoulders, as they are required under 
the language of contracts to guarantee novel results in new and untried dimensions and 
speeds. 
The author’s conclusion is identical with mine, as the result of a careful analysis made 
some time ago when there were so many conflicting opinions afloat. There has been an 
accumulation of data and ideas here at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, which has been 
the central submarine building plant in the past, and the opinions and reports and testimony 
of officers as they have occurred have passed in review, and it may be of particular interest 
to mention the case of at least one eminent tactical expert who completely reversed his origi- 
nal opinion in favor of the coast-defense type to that in favor of the larger vessels, and this 
out of the same information, as modified by other considerations to be mentioned later, from 
which Captain Rodgers has deduced the opposite conclusion. 
At the outbreak of the war, being in London, I read in the daily papers the account of 
the first German submarine destroyed in the war, which was by the British cruiser Birming- 
ham, by gun-fire. It seemed the submarine in daylight was maneuvering, submerged, with 
