COAST DEFENCE AGAINST TORPEDO-BOAT ATTACK. 2 ? 
to a fresh situation and there appears but one satisfactory method of 
arriving* at a solution of the problem for any particular locality, that 
of practical trial on the spot, a method which so often upsets plausible 
theories. The two things, guns and lights, hang so much on one 
another that it appears fatal to separate them as is done in our service. 
The lights (except on a mine field) are absolutely no use without the 
guns, and the guns on many nights in the year are useless without the 
closest co-operation of the lights. Without such intimate co-operation 
the lights may, and at present frequently do prevent the guns acting 
at all, though the guns could sometimes be effective if the lights were 
not there. 
Disunited 
defence. 
There seems to be a prevalent notion that torpedo 
boat attack can be met with a sort of ci go as you 
please 99 system of guns and lights, that in fact each 
Q.F. battery and electric light installation will be most effective ifleft 
entirely to itself, uncontrolled and unaided. Manoeuvres of any 
reasonable numbers of guns, lights and torpedo-boats working at one 
time show its fallacy. This unfortunate idea has crept in from the 
use of Q.F. batteries close to the water’s edge, whence they can see 
little or nothing at night, while their fire is almost unaimed. It is 
then possible for control to be useless. A very little practical work 
at manoeuvres with reasonably sited guns suffices to prove that the old 
maxim f unity is strength 9 is as true in counteracting torpedo boat 
attacks as it is in all other military operations. Torpedo-boats will 
slip in with ease through a disjointed defence when the attack is made 
by a combination of these vessels. Light Q.F. batteries sufficiently 
close to each other to fire into the same water areas will be compara¬ 
tively ineffective, unless they are under very instantaneous and strict 
control. This is best effected, in most cases, by placing a superior 
artillery officer at some central station as a superintendent of gun fire. 
He should be able to see most, if not all, the water covered by his 
guns, and it is a distinct advantage if he can also see the positions of 
the Q.F. batteries themselves; it aids his decision when he knows 
what battery is firing. The central station must act as a sort of 
intelligence department to all its branches. It should receive reports, 
sift true from false, have the power of instantaneously checking or 
releasing fire, and of, somewhat less rapidly perhaps, warning batteries 
when it is discovered that boats are about, telling them the direction 
in which they were last seen. The central station should be on the 
highest available ground; it should be fitted with a C.O.’s P.F. 
instrument, (or if on a very high site even a simpler means of giving 
bearing and range) and a large chart furnished with small leaden 
blocks representing torpedo-boats ; by means of which the number of 
torpedo boats about will soon be conjectured as reports come in ; even 
the plan of attack of the boats may gradually be worked out. The 
look out of the station must have the bell pushes of each battery of 
guns and of the electric lights close to his hand and distinguishable 
by the feel, for the lookout station itself must be in absolute 
darkness. 
