SEA SUPERIORITY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 177, 27 July 1940, Page 7

SEA SUPERIORITY.

A DECIDING FACTOR.

LESSONS OF HISTORY.

TRIUMPHS OVER I.AHD OR

AIR POWER.

The guns of H.M.A.S. Sydney, sealing ( the doom of one of Mussolini s cruisers and sending another, hard driven, to the sanctuary of port, gave emphasis to' the command which Britain exercises ever the inland sea. And, as a significant echo to that action, comes the statement of H. C. Bailey in the London "Daily Telegraph and Morning Post": "The Mediterranean is still, of all regions of the world, that in which those who hold the dominion of the sea are most clearly supreme." He develops and proves the argument by an appeal to history, whose cavalcade pictures the long march of human destinies controlled and determined by the mastery of the Mediterranean. In the narrow Mediterranean the capacity of sea power was lirst discovered. More than two thousand years ago a tyrant aiming at world domination mustered a great host to crush the Grecian civilisation. Xerxes brought his hordes in triumph as far as Athens and destroyed the city. I hen bis fleet was overwhelmed at Salainis and the huge Persian army went dwindling back to Asia. Never before had a land empire tried its strength where a fleet could act against its army. The result—amazing, miraculous to the defeated and to many of the conquerors —decided larger issues than tbey perreived. Not only was Greek civilisation preserved, but for some thousand years there was no more danger of an Asiatic conquest of Europe. First Lesson on Sea Power. The lesson was speedily learnt by Athenian statesmen, and one of them put it on record when, speaking of warfare between a military power and a mval ezngiie, bg told his geople^

"Our enemies will be unable to get other territory without fighting. But! we have much territory, insular and continental, to supply us. Great is the dominion of the sea." His words describe exactly the position of the Allies i to-day.

When the tide of invasion turned and 1 flowed east, Alexander the Great, being 1 something wiser than Hitler, would not 1 risk his throw for the empire of the • world till he had made himself supreme at sea. The Phoenician ports and ships, 1 as well as the Greek, were in his hands before he marched on to the depths of Asia. i Once more the Mediterranean drove the same truth home on an ambitions State. With overwhelming superiority in man-power, the Roman Republic could not conquer Carthage, a single Phoenician trading city, till a navy was built and trained. Rome wns, indeed, never at her best at sea. Even when the legions held all the coasts of the Mediterranean she could not keep the seas clear of pirates. If the Roman Empire had maintained an efficient navy the Goths and Vandals would not have surged across Spain into Northern Africa. Thereafter, relying on sea power, the Saracens conquered all that coast from Syria to Morocco. Britain Controls Mediterranean. The prosperity of Italy before the sixteenth century was founded on the exploits in arms and trade of her maritime republics, Genoa and Venice. When the Turkish fleet drove them out of the firecian seas, decline began and the victory of a temporary naval coalition over the Turks at Lepanto proved elusive and brought no relief. * In the next century Britain became a Mediterranean Power by rijiht of trade and ships and possessions, first at Tanpier and then Gibraltar. "The Rock" lias been ours since 1794, and it was captured by a fleet. Whenever war came to the Mediterranean in the confused eighteenth century struggles, naval strength was all in all. Though . our fleets evacuated the sea—the strategy is thought weak—in 1790 they were soon back again to give an exemplary demonstration of the effect of sea power when Nelson, by destroying • Napoleon's fleet in the battle of the Nile, made an end of his ambition to strike at the East and conquer India. From that day t<i this there has been 1 no effective -military action across tbej

Mediterranean against the opposition of British sea power. How much British naval action has done to assist good causes may be read in the pages which tell of the liberation of the Italian [people and their achievement of unity.

All this demonstration of the efficacy of the command of the sea in the past, it may be argued, is sound enough, but aircraft and submarine and mine have so changed conditions that command of the Mediterranean is 110 longer a sea affair.

Before 1940 we were informed by German writers on nav&l warfare that its] real aim nowadays was the "control of communications," which would be obtained in spite of the enemy's superior fleet by concentrating the full strength of attack—air, submarine, mine and surface—against merchant shipping. Thus far the efforts of all those arms have not effectively reduced the tonnage in the service of the Allies. Norway and Dunkirk. The success of Germany in overrunning a great part of Norway is claimed as proof that air power has made it possible to conquer countries overseas in spite of all sea power can do. But, in the Norwegian affair, Germany was operating from within a closed sea, and her transports had not far to go. Nevertheless, 30 of them at least were stink, and in the adventure the German Navy was so mutilated that two or more such efforts would leave nothing of it fit for action. All the efforts of the German Air Force in three weeks of fierce fighting failed to sink a sinple British warship larger than a small old anti-aircraft cruiser.

We have had a still more striking example of the limitations of air power at Dunkirk. There the German air force massed its strength for a grand effort. The result was greater success for the British and French navies than anyone believed possible. Day after day, night after night, numerical superiority in the air could not seriously impede the movement of troops by sea from a difficult coast.

One conclusion to be drawn from this, is from the whole course of the war, is that, as an expert has put it, warships ire difficult targets for aircraft "both 011 account of their small projected area and their powers of movement." A second deduction is equally certain— neither air strength nor submarines make it possible for an inferior licet to "control i