A BACKGROUND OF THE WAR

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 45, 17 November 1941, Page 6

A BACKGROUND OF THE WAR

Naval Losses In Two Wars FAME OF ARK ROYAL

The news of the loss of the famous aircraft-carrier Ark Royal when undertow only 25 miles from Gibraltar after she had been torpedoed in the Eastern Mediterranean has been received, with sorrow in all democratic countries, but the sorrow is tempered with satisfaction that the sinking has been attended by the loss of only one of her normal complement of 1600 officers and men. In her active service career of a little oyer two years H.M.S. Ark Royal has seen service in widely separated areas and has been “sunk” by Axis propaganda on a number of occasions. The question “Where is the Ark Royal?” became at one time an almost daily part of the radio output of the Nazi propaganda machine, and there have been Iron Crosses awarded to German submarine commanders for accomplishing the sinking. On this occasion, the first that in Mark Twain’s famous words cannot be termed “greatly exaggerated,” it is notable that the announcement came first from the Admiralty, and it was not till some 12 hours later that the German wireless, following the usual fanfare of trumpets, announced the sinking “by two of our submarines.” The German announcer thought it fit to reassure the German people on this occasion by hastening to tell them that the loss of the ship had been admitted by the British Admiralty. H.M.S. Ark Royal is the third vessel of the class to be lost by the'Royal Navy in the war. The. previous losses were H.M.S. Courageous and her sister ship Glorious. Courageous was lost exactly two weeks after the outbreak of war, on September 17, 1939. She was torpedoed by a U-boat in the Channel, and nearly half of her complement of 1200 officers and men were lost with her. H.M.S. Glorious was lost in the naval operations covering the evacuation from Narvik, in June, 1940, almost the -whole. of her complement going down with her, British Naval Losses /

A comparison of the Royal Navy’s losses in the first two years of this war with those in the period August, 1914, to August, 1916, makes interesting reading. The total losses from September 3, 1939, to September 3, 1940, apart from auxiliary vessels, such as armed merchant vessels, minesweepers, trawlers and similar vessels, was 96, including H.M. Ships Courageous and Glorious. The two latter vessels are of a class non-existent in 1914-1916. In the similar period of the last war the Royal Navy lost 79.

The notable difference between the losses in the two periods is that whereas in the last war losses of the larger vessels were bigger than in this war, the losses of destroyers and submarines have been much heavier In the last two years than in 1914-1916. The comparative figures are as follow: —

The battleship lost in this war was the Royal Oak, sunk by a German submarine in Seapa Flow®on October 16, 1939,. and the battle-cruiser-was .the Hood, which blew up after receiving a hit from the shells of the Bismarck in the action in Denmark Strait this year.

Convoy Escort Strain

A number of factors combine to cause the increased losses in smaller ships in this war. In the first place the Royal Navy has far jnore onerous duties to carry out. In 1914-16 the guarding of convoys was shared by the; British, French, Italian, and Japanese navies. In this war the Italians are enemies, the Japanese hostilely neutral, and the help of the French, since the summer of 1940, lost to us. This has meant the exposure of our destroyers to enemy attack to a much greater extent.

In the second place the three; big evacuations, Dunkirk, Greece, and . Crete, cost the Royal Navy a number of light cruisers as well as destroyers. The larger losses of destroyers have been balanced almost completely by the transfer of the 50 “lease and lend” ' vessels from the United States Navy. The losses in battleships and battlecruisers can be set down to the fact that the German Navy is appreciably smaller in the matter of capital ships, and the Italian Navy’s ships in these categories effectively crippled or coop- • ed up at their bases. The only notable losses sustained by the Royal Navy in the period since September 3 this year are the Ark Royal and the famous destroyer Cossack, which figured big in the Altmark incident and distinguished herself at Narvik and in the destruction of the Bismarck.

1914-1916 1939-1941 Battleships .. 10 1 Battle - Cruisers 3 1 Cruisers ... 17 9 Destroyers .. 24 53 Submarines .. 24 29 Monitors ... 1 ' 1 -