FIGHTING SHIPS OF FUTURE

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 191, 9 May 1921, Page 6

FIGHTING SHIPS OF FUTURE

AMERICAN ADMIRAL’S BELIEF

Belief that airplane carriers would displace battleships as the capital fighing ships of the future was expressed recently by Admiral William S. Sims in a speech at the National Republican Club. Admiral Sims qualified his opinion slightly by saying that this would be true if tho airplane would do what Us advocates claimed for it, but added that that this would be sufficient, without regard to what might be developed in the airplane of the future. _ Admiral Sims described the airplane carrier as a ship which would carry 80 airplanes, and have a speed of 35 knots an hour, sufficient to outpace the swiftest battleship. “The airplane carrier is a battle-ship that can fire on the enemv at a range of TOO miles,” he said, explaining fhat swift airplanes could leave the ship at a speed of from 90 to 150 miles an hour, and drop bombs or shoot torpedoes at the slower battleships, . ~ The aii-plane officers said they could carry torpedoes weighing 16001 b. or bombs weighing 10001 b. each, and obtain a fair percentage of hits on a single battleship and a greater percentage on a fleet, Admiral Sims said. He also said the airplane experts expected to make effective use of gas bombs dropped from heights of from 5000 to 10,000 feet. Admiral Sims then described a battle between two fleets, one of 16 battleships and four airplane carriers and the other of twenty airplane carriers each with an equal complement of auxiliary ships. “The alirplanes of the battleship fleet' would be swept out of the air,’’ he said. “The only defence the battleship fleet would have then, as it would bo unable to close with the swifter airplane carriers, would ‘be through anti-aircraft guns.’ I have had some knowledge of gunnery, and accurate gunnery is pos sible only when the target is in the same place. The preeentage of hits by anti-aircraft guns on the western front during the war was less Hi an one out of a thousand." Admiral Sims said the naval officer was naturally a conservative and that it was a matter of record that the majority of naval opinions had opposed inovations. As an illustration, he said that practically all naval officers, German as well as British and American, underestimated the possibilities of the submarine before the war demonstrated what the under-sea craft could do. “Any new weapon that comes up is bound* to be misunderstood.” 'he saiid. “I told Chairman Butler of the House Committee on Naval Affairs that the only thing he and his colleagues could do in deciding upon the building programme was to accept the preponderance of the evidence; that’ they would probablv decide wrong, and that, as usual, the United States would continue to suck the hind teat in naval construction.’’