ATOM SUBMARINES FOR N.A.T.O. POWERS URGED

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28435, 15 November 1957, Page 11

ATOM SUBMARINES FOR N.A.T.O. POWERS URGED

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

PARIS, November 13.

All members of. the isorth Atlantic Treaty Organisation should have atomic submarines, said N.A.T.O.’s naval chief (Admiral Jerauld Wright. U.S.N.) at a meeting of the N.A.T.O. Parliamentary Assembly. The Soviet Navy, he said, with 500 submarines and building 75 more a year, had three times the strength of all the Allied submarine forces combined. Atomic submarines would help neutralise the Soviet advantage.

Admiral Wright warned that Russia was building a huge navy designed to isolate North America from Europe and to destroy the Atlantic alliance. He said that Russia had built the largest peace-time submarine fleet ever known. This indicated to him that the Soviet leaders "do not visualise a short war.’’ Admiral Wright said the task of

the Allied Atlantic Command was to prevent the Soviet aim from being achieved and to assure that North America and Europe were strongly tied together. "We are mutually supporting each of the other,’’ he said. Weapons for Europe A Canadian delegate urged that atomic tactical weapons should be given to the European N.A.T.O. countries. "This defence could be used to avoid plunging the world into a nuclear war,’’ said the speaker, Mr Charles A. Cannon. There was no doubt about the difficulties of carrying out such ja programme as a sort of halfway measure between the use of {conventional weapons and a fullj scale atomic war. but it should {be attempted, and N.A.T.O. was the place where this attempt 'Should be made, Mr Cannon • added. "It would be necessary to make it crystal clear to any possible aggressor that this use would not be extended to the ultimate weapons of annihilation, such as the hydrogen bomb, unless the Russians use one first,” he said. Mr Cannon also called for the establishment of a N.A.T.O. North American sector in which Europe would help the defence of North America, where the danger of attack might be greater than in West Europe. Europe, including Britain, was very vulnerable to Russian attack if deprived of North America s support, he said. The Russians would begin by attacking the United States and Canada, knocking them out and depriving the West of the power of retaliation. A British delegate. Brigadier O. L. Prior-Palmer, said he hoped that the N.A.T.O. Council would establish contact with other regional defence organisations bordering on the N.A.T.O. Breathe South-east Asia Treaty Organisation and the Bagdad Pact countries. | A British Labour M.P., Mr George Brown, suggested that in further standardisation of forces the new American “pentomic” division should be used as the model for a standard N.A.T.O. division.