L-8

NHHC photo NH 46541 courtesy of the Naval History & Heritage Command.

L-8 was a Lake design built under license at the Portsmouth Navy Yard in Kittery, ME. It is shown here on April 13, 1916 on the building ways in the old Franklin Shiphouse. It was the first submarine built at a U.S. government owned shipyard. The USN was trying to gain experience in building submarines so that some level of competition could be provided to Electric Boat and Lake. Simon Lake desperately needed the cash the license provided his company, and the Navy gained valuable experience in the complicated art of building submarines.

Photo from the Private Collection of Ric Hedman.

L-8 was armed with four 18-inch torpedo tubes in the bow. Her primary weapon was the Bliss-Leavitt Mk 6 or Mk 7 torpedo. She could carry eight of the weapons, four in the tubes with one reload each. The large handwheels on each tube opened the breech door. The levers on each tube side would open the outer muzzle doors once the tube was flooded and prepared to fire.

Photo from the Private Collection of Ric Hedman.

L-8 control room looking aft from the forward starboard corner. The ladder to the conning tower in on the left. Just to the right of the ladder is the diving control station, with a large depth gauge and control wheels for the diving planes. The two large valve handwheels on the right are most likely for the ballast control system.

U.S. Navy photo.

L-8 in drydock, probably in at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in the late fall of 1917. She was undergoing an overhaul prior to deploying across the Atlantic. Her torpedo tubes are open for maintenance, and her three starboard side diving planes are partially rigged out. The Lake design emphasized diving with a zero angle, as opposed to the Electric Boat design which favored angling the boat downward to dive. The Lake technique required additional planes amidships to enable adequate control during the diving/surfacing maneuver. Ultimately the Lake method would prove to be unsatisfactory and the Navy standardized on the EB method of angle diving/surfacing with one set of planes forward and one set aft.

Photo contributed by Clifford Chapski. His grandfather, Alfred G. Benjamin, took this photo while serving aboard the USS Charles Whittemore.

L-8 underway during ASW operations in conjunction with the USS Charles Whittemore (ID No. 3232), September or October 1918. The Whittemore would tow the submerged L-8, and would wait for a U-boat to approach for an attack. The intention was for the L-8 to then attack the U-boat with torpedoes. Unfortunately, none were sighted during this patrol. Apparently, by this late date the German U-boat commanders had grown heavily suspicious of even innocuous looking ships like the Whittemore, fearing that they were decoy ships. They would either let them go or torpedo them while submerged.

Photo contributed by Clifford Chapski. His grandfather, Alfred G. Benjamin, served aboard the USS Charles Whittemore

USS Charles Whittemore (ID No. 3232), mother ship and decoy for L-8 on her WW I ASW war patrols. Originally put into service as a civilian lumber hauling ship, she was taken over by the Navy and commissioned at Naval Stations Newport, R.I. in the spring of 1918. Whittemore first worked with USS N-5 (Submarine No. 57) in the ASW decoy role, and was similarly unsuccessful. It was a good idea on paper that didn't work well in practice. Perhaps if tried earlier in the war it may have made a difference.