ONLY FIVE SUNK FROM 2000 ESCORTED SHIPS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 199, 24 August 1942, Page 3

ONLY FIVE SUNK FROM 2000 ESCORTED SHIPS

AMERICAN CONVOYS

Losses On Atlantic Coast Since Last May

Rec. 12.30 p.m. RUGBY, Aug. 23. The disclosure by the United States Navy Department that only five ships had been sunk from 2000 escorted in convoys along the American Atlantic coast since May 14 is noted with the greatest interest m London. The British Navy has during the past three years tnat the escorted convoy system is an answer to U-boats just as it was in the last war, even though the Germans are now attacking from the whole Atlantic coast of Narvik to Biaritz.

In this war, out of over 100,000 snips escorted up to last February, fewer than one half per cent was lost. By June, 1941, the Germans had claimed about 13,000,000 tons of shipping sunk. The true figure was 7,145,000 tons. Since then the Admiralty has not published losses. Shipbuilding Rate Higher The rate of merchant shipbuilding in this war is much greater than it was in the last war. The British Empire output in 1941 is reliably estimated at about 2,500,000 tons. American launchings during the year are now expected to considerably exceed 5,000,000 tons gross. In July America launched 71 ships. By the end of the year the figure will exceed 90 monthly, while in 1943 the United States estimates to build some 9,000,000 tons or 15,000,000 tons deadweight. An ex-German trawler now sailing under the White Ensign is one of the few British warships which have been refitted in Russia. She recently spent a month in a northern Russian port, 25 miles behind the front line, while Russian workers under the direction of a Russian engineercaptain repaired the damage done by ice and overhauled tae ship's engines. The Work was done without interpreters. Describing the way the Russians worked, the trawler's captain said that if they were unable to finish a certain job they would keep at it until 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. Often he went down to the engine room and asked them if they wanted food, but they would not eat until they had finished the job, he said.