DEFENCE NOTES

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 169, 13 April 1935, Page 24

DEFENCE NOTES

News of Rank and File ON PARADE AND OFF New Zealand Signals (By Liaison.) The depot is at present holding a period of consolidated training which will conclude on Saturday with a halfday parade at the Garrison Hall. Tests for regimental signallers’ badges will be held on this parade. Musketry parades will be held at Trentham on Saturday, April 27, and also on May 11 and 18. The company chainpionship will be fired on May 11, and the annual competition for the Western Electric Shield on May IS. The depot will take part in the garrison parade on Anzae Day, and all members of the depot are requested to make every effort to-attend the parade.

Lieutenant-Commanders. It is not unusual for differences of opinion on petty controversial .matters . to cause more irritation and friction than bigger issues. One such is the question: What should lieutenant-commanders be called when speaking to them? asks the “Fighting Forces.” . We have no quarrel whatever with Sir John Kelly’s ruling, given some little time ago. that they should be addressed verbaliy as lieutenant-commander, or, if abbreviated, as Mr. For that ruling applies only to active service officers in tlie Portsmouth Command. In a naval port, where every officer’s status and position in the Navy List is known accurately to the whole community,. lieu-tenant-commanders will suffer no -indignity, even if everyone “abbreviates” their rank to Mr. But the question is a good deal wider than the confines of the Portsmouth Command, and it is on behalf of the retired lieutenant-commanders that we take up the cudgels. For some elementary principles of justice are at stake.

Air Convoys. An interesting discussion has recently been running in the columns of at least one newspaper in England, between Commander Bowles and Admiral Mark Kerr, concerning the future value of aircraft as convoys to shipping in war. Commander Bowles has very little use for aeroplanes used for this purpose, on the score of their unreliability and . the someyvhat meagre results they obtained during the Great War. Admiral Mark Kerr, who writes from personal experience and knowledge of the facts, points out that aircraft were able to spot and deal with a submarine very much quicker than surface craft. Obviously it is no good arguing on the results of the last war in view of the vast progress made in aviation since 191 Sand and growing so rapidly that we can scarcely keep abreast of .it all —especially in the range of modern aircraft. It seems highly probable that in any future con flict. should there ever be one. the submarine menace will be very greatly nullified. In the turbid waters that lap the shores of Britain a submarine may, perhaps, stand a sporting chance. of hitting its quarry and getting away with it; but in the clear waters of the Mediterranean, for instance, if aircraft can keep iu the air in sufficient numbers, to go to sea in a submarine, far from a protecting, fleet, would seem very much like suicide —a comforting thought for the future mer-chant-man.