BEFORE ITALY’S FALL

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 305, 20 September 1943, Page 5

BEFORE ITALY’S FALL

Axis Ships In Allied Hands (Received September’l9, 8.10 p.m.) LONDON, September 18. Axis ships valued at nearly £6,090.000 had been put into the service of the British Merchant Navy before the surrender of Itay, says the Press Association. Britain then possessed 129 Italian, German and Finnish ships totalling 450,000 tons. An additional 109 Axis ships totalling 829,400 tons, which had sheltered in United States and South American ports for nearly two years, have been seized by the Allies. Some ships seized by Britain carried millions of tons of cargo to the fighting fronts. 11.M.5. Audacity, formerly the German ship Hanover, carried planes, protected convoys, and destroyed many eueiny planes and U-boats. The Italian Navy yielded British intelligence officers no surprises in entails of the construction and operation of surface ships, says the Alexandria correspondent of the Associated Press of Great Britain. An Italian naval officer stated that the fleet was originally designed as a force complementary to the British Fleet for the co-operative control of the Mediterranean. A United States Navy communique says the destroyer Rowan was sunk by an underwater explosion in Italian waters on September 11.