Today -100: April 13, 1916: Of saboteurs, u-boats, and rears admiral

The NYPD arrest 4 more members of Franz von Papen’s sabotage squad, for placing firebombs on ships carrying munitions to the Allies. 33 ships, the police rather unbelievably claim.

Germany still denies that one of its u-boats sunk the Sussex, but it will admit having sunk another ship in the same location in the English Channel, 5 minutes later. But the sketch the u-boat captain made of the ship he sank doesn’t match the one of the Sussex in the Daily Graphic, they say, so the Sussex probably just hit a British mine.

The Senate demands to see correspondence between Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels and then Aid for Operations Rear Admiral Bradley Fiske from 1914 in which Fiske said the Navy was unprepared for war. Daniels says Fiske’s resignation a year ago was not over that disagreement but because he hadn’t been promoted to Commander of the Atlantic Fleet and because he strongly objected to the order ending the navy officers’ wine mess.

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