ITALIAN LOSSES AT SEA

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 140, 10 March 1941, Page 7

ITALIAN LOSSES AT SEA

Two Naval Craft SUBMARINE & OTHER WARSHIP

(British Official Wireless and Press Assn.)

(Received March 9, 7.5 p.m.)

RUGBY, March 8.

An Admiralty communique announces : “On March 6, the Italian submarine Anfitrite attempted to attack a British convoy in the Aegean Sea. She was immediately sunk by our escort craft.”

A Rome communique announces that a warship of medium tonnage (presumably Italian) sank in the Mediterranean. The cause of her loss is unknown. Most of the crew was saved. A Berlin communique says that a U-boat reports that it sank five enemy merchantmen, totalling 33,000 tons. A recent Admiralty statement that the enemy had so far claimed to have sunk or seriously damaged 34 battleships and battle-cruisers provides an interesting contrast to the opinion of a German, Rear-Admiral Gado, who recently admitted, according to the Berlin correspondent of the Norwegian “Aften Avis,” “that only one English battleship, the Royal Oak, has been sunk and this would not have happened if the torpedo had not struck the ammunition chambers below a gun turret.” In the same statement he declared that battleships had a great task to fulfil in the ocean and were in no way superseded, though needing improvement to assert themselves as a decisive weapon.