EYES ON THE AIR.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 69, 22 March 1928, Page 7

EYES ON THE AIR.

U.S. NAVY BUDGET.

Lion's Share For Aviation

Development.

DIRIGIBLES PROVIDED FOR.

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WASHINGTON, March 21

Tho annual Navy Appropriations Bill was reported to the House of Representatives to-day. It provides for the largest expenditure since before the Washington Conference.

The total amounts to approximately £73,838,051, and includes funds for continuing the construction on tha ten vessels now building, modernising two others, including gun elevation, beginning the work 011 two new dirigibles, building two more submarine salvage vessels and additional airplanes, and maintaining the marine corps in home activities, in Nicaragua and in China.

Tho committee says it can see "no prospect of declining naval costs in the near future," and "all indications point to an appreciable upward trend."

The large outlay in 1029 is explained by the fact that all of the eight 10,000ton cruisers authorised in 1924 will be under construction at the one time. Looking into the future, with an eye on the sixteen new vessels retiently authorised, the report declares that the funds required would "swell the aggregate of future annual Appropriation Sills to sums considerably in excess ot the total of the bill herewith presented."

The total direct appropriations is about £4,000,000 above 1927, but with the appropriations already authorised in an Urgent Deficiency Bill at the present session, the increase will be nearly £8,600,000.

The present bill does not carry funds for a new programme. Its principal feature is that aviation gets the lion's share, totalling £6,263,000, or an increase of over 50 per cent on the 1927 appropriation.

The committee published in the report the testimony given at the hearings, and it transpired that Mr, C. D. Wilbur, Secretary to the Navy, and other naval officers rejected the proposal of Mr. B. 1 L. French, chairman of the suncommittee, to cut the expenditures by agreeing with Britain and Japan to decommission part of their fleets.

Mr. Wilbur contended that ship operation was needed in order to keep crew* in training.