BATTLESHIPS BUILDING

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 138, 7 December 1935, Page 8

BATTLESHIPS BUILDING

After an interval of some years, in which naval construction by the world's sea Powers was almost wholly confined to the smaller craft, the building of big battleships seems to have begun again in earnest. This is emphasised in the latest issue of Jane's "Fighting Ships," published, as a cable message announces today, on the eve of the Naval Conference. This "new era in battleship construction," as Jane calls it, is dated from the laying down of the French battleship Dunkerque three years ago. Since then Italy has entered the race by laying down two great ships of 35,000 tons each, the maximum tonnage; allowed .under the.-Washington

Treaty of 1922. These are the only ships to be begun by any Power since the Nelson and Rodney were built by Britain to balance the retention of post-Jutland vessels by the United States and Japan. Both France and Italy are exercising their rights under the Washington Treaty, continued in the London Treaty. Great Britain, the United States, and Japan, on the other hand, have agreed under the London Treaty not to lay down any replacement vessels in this category. In the meantime Germany has come again into the picture with her famous "pocket battleships" of 10,000 tons, now to be supplemented by two 26,000-ton vessels as a counter to the Dunkerque of the French Navy, which will bq ready next year. And so the race goes on. It is an exceedingly costly affair with these big ships. The Nelson and the Rodney cost £7,500,000 each, and it might have been considerations of economy, as much as the alleged vulnerability of the big ship to aircraft attack, that dictated the preference for smaller vessels. Presumably the experts are satisfied that the big battleship represents good value in naval defence and the taxpayers in the countries which are building them will have to foot the bill with a good grace in the hope that, perhaps, the Naval Conference may find a less costly method of adjustment.