'PLANE OR BATTLESHIP?

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 64, 16 March 1936, Page 11

'PLANE OR BATTLESHIP?

As aa ex-naval man with, a- goodly number of ye are' service ia tlie Royal Isavy behind him, may I be permitted to reply to Mr. Palmer and others who advocate big ships, big gunjj, and a,, bigger, better and brighter Navy? It has been stated that during the late war no battleships were sunk by enemy submarines; yet the enemy claimed to have sunk the Audacious (dreadnought battleship) and several pre-dreadnoughts by torpedoes from submarines. In any case it must be remembered that the battle fleets at sea were guarded from submarine attack by numerous light cruisers and torpedo boat destroyers. The battleship is not competent to defend itself from efficient and determined submarine attack; that was definitely proved during the war, and 1 fail to see how the battleship in the next war, relying on its own defences, is going to keep afloat if attacked by either submarines or the modern bombdropping aeroplane. Prior to the outbreak of war in 1914 I had served several years in the submarine service, had been at sea in a submarine under war conditions, and when the weather hag-been so bad that tlie big ships were in harbour—weather bound. I had, therefore, some idea of what the submarine was capable of doing against an enemy. When war was declared I was serving in a light cruiser in the North Sea—patrol duties. In view of the fact that our cruising speed was. about eight knots on a straight course, I ventured to put before the "powers that be" my knowledge of a submarine's capabilities, and made certain suggestions, one of them being that if we continued our tactics we stood a very good chance of being torpedoed by the first "'enemy submarine that met us. My suggestions were "pooli-poohed." "Submarines ? Why, they wouldn't get half way across the North Sea before they would all be sunk." " Well, as a matter of fact, we were torpedoed and sunk by enemy submarines in less than five weeks after the outbreak of war, vith the loss of 90 per cent of the ship's company. In quick succession followed the sinking of the Hawke, Cressy, Hag'ue and Aboukir, in each case accompanied by grievous Joss of life, and all by a single enemy submarine! All these losses could and should have been averted by the exercise of common sense and the knowledge gained by the experience of our own submarine service,, and in possession of the Admiralty, but probably pigeonholed! Again, the finest submarine officer in the Navy or any other navy at that time was at the outbreak of war serving in a semi-obsolete cruiser, the Monmouth, in the Pacific. He went down with his ship in the battle of Coronel, another deplorable piece of stupidity which cost nearly 2000 valuable lives. Fortunately Admiral "Jacky" Fisher came back to tlie Admiralty, and to him is due the credit of sending out the battle cruisers which destroyed the enemy fleet in the Falklands. But as on land, so at sea, wo muddled through, the Courage and efficiency of our officers and men constantly hampered by red tape and an unbelievable lack of vision and common sense among the "brass hats." Notwithstanding the fact that during 1918 enemy submarines were sinking as many as 16 merchant ships each day (and the battleships were impotent and utterly powerless to stop them) we won the war! To sum up, the modern battleship of to-day is utterly impotent, cxcept for one purpose, and that is to engage and destroy the enemy's battleship. When it is considered that 500 modern bombing 'planes could be built at less cost than a battleship, and in much less time, it seems utter folly to build more big ehips. ESCAPED FISH FOOD.