I've been (re)reading Castles of Steel, a history of the RN in WW1. One of the things mentioned in passing is some of the strange ideas considered to fight subs, as at the start of WW1 no way of finding or killing a sub underwater existed. Two ideas are mentioned. Motor launches with two swimmers, one with a black bag the other with a hammer. Upon sighting a Uboats perscope they swim over to the scope and try to tie the black bag onto it. Failing that smash it with a hammer. Other even crazier idea was training seagulls to land on the perscopes and poo on them For some strange reason either scheme went operational. Anyone come across other strange ideas?
There was the idea of dropping hooks on the end of ropes and literally reeling in the subs. Nothing came of it, of course.
hooks the japanese used dragging as a means of finding bottomed subs according to what i have read. once you have a grappnel on the sub its easy to slide a charge down the cable. direct hit and no more sub.
Acctualy this a good example of getting feedback from the ranks. 1000 ideas will be idiotic but a few would be usefull.
Now that is why every country is paying huge numbers of "very smart" individuals on high ranking places (a lot of gold rings on their sleeves) who have option of sorting it out or die of bordeom in their offices
