NAVAL STRATEGY.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18591, 16 January 1926, Page 13

NAVAL STRATEGY.

CENTRE IN PACIFIC. REVISED BRITISH TACTICS. 'BY CABLE—PSESS association— copyright.) (Sydset "Sch" Service.) LOXDOX", January 14. Tho naval correspondent of tho "Daily News" learns that several of the principal shipbuilders are consulting the Admiralty regarding the construction of a gigantic floating dock in connexion with the Singapore base, capable of lifting a 50-000-ton ship, although the heaviest British ivarship, the Hood, weighs 41,000 tons, and future ships under the Washington Treaty will ■weigh at a maximum 3,",000 tons. It is expected that there will be keen competition for the dock, which is to cost £1,000,000. Singapore is also to have a double graving-dock to accommodate two super-Dreadnoughts.

The base will have more extensive docking accommodation than any British naval establishment, suggesting the intention to make Singapore the station for the major part of the Battle Fleet in Eastern waters, but the reasons for this policy remain obscure. Singapore will not be completed before 1934, and Great Britain's Navy will be reduced by 1935, under the Washington Treaty, to 16 capital ships, and Japan's will be reduced to nine Dreadnoughts.

Therefore it seems that either British naval opinion regards the southwestern corner of the Pacific as the strategic centre demanding the presence of the bulk of the fleet, or that measures are being taken to forestall the contingency of the Washington Treaty becoming invalid or inoperative.