NAVAL BUILDING IN DENMARK

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 226, 19 June 1940, Page 14

NAVAL BUILDING IN DENMARK

Resources For Nazis The action in. Norway rather overshadowed the German seizure of Denmark, but there are naval consequences of that event which we must take into account, states a London message. One of these is the extent to which the wellequipped shipbuilding industry of Denmark can be turned to account by the German Admiralty in its efforts to replace submarine losses and to build up the enormous flotillas that have been planned to increase the pressure against our sea-borne trade. . Germany’s paper programme probably aims at an output of 20 new boats a month. We know that so far it lias fallen below expectations, just as it did in 1917 and 1918, when the German yards could deliver only half the vessels the German Admiralty projected. The Danish yards, provided the Danish workmen do not indulge in passive resistance, should help to increase the output; Diesel-engine production is one of the troubles, and in the Burmeister and Wain works at Copenhagen there is plant that can produce marine oil engines totalling 235.000 h.p. in a year. That provides enough sets to equip 100 U-boats of the 750-ton type, which Germany has found the most useful for commerce destruction. There is another marine engineering works at Elsinore, whose output could probably be stepped up to provide another 20 sets a year. The five main shipbuilding yards 'have 20 slips and seven graving docks ready equipped, and some of the slips are of sufficient length to take two submarine hulls at once. Apart from these there is the royal dockyard at .Copenhagen, where all the existing Danish submarines were built and where a pool of skilled constructors already exists if they 1 can be compelled to work. The Germans require no instruction in the tactics of that, form of warfare, and passive resistance would probably be broken.