RELIANCE ON BATTLESHIP

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 119, 16 November 1936, Page 9

RELIANCE ON BATTLESHIP

FIRST LORD'S JUSTIFICATION

CO-OPERATION IN AIR

[ (British Official Wireless.) j (Received November 16, 10.45 a.m.)] | RUGBY, November 15. Referring last night, in a broadcast speech on sea power, to the bomb versus battleship controversy, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir Samuel Hoare, said that great progress had been made in the defence of ships. Their armour had been made stronger, their range of operation greater, and their power of attack strengthened by their own usa of the new air arm.

It was these reasons, he said, that had made the Cabinet Committee affirm once again the principle of sea power and to conclude that while a new problem had undoubtedly been created and finality could never be reached in a struggle between attack and defence, there was no reason to change Britain's historic attitude to the sea or her confidence in the Fleet as the arm upon which the country depended for food, raw materials, and Imperial solidarity.

They declared that the capital ship must remain, that no ship was less likely to be destroyed than the heavy battleship, and that no air force could replace the Navy. But a system of the closest co-operation must be worked out between the Navy and the Air Force for insuring the greatest practicable measure of security in essential areas of the narrow seas, naval bases, and civil harbours. DEPENDENCE ON THE OCEAN. For this purpose, Sir Samuel Hoara said, it would be necessary for the Fleet to make the fullest possible use of ship-borne aircraft, and it would ba necessary for the Air Force to ba strong enough to give effective assist" ance with its land-based machines. It was sea power that had created tha British Empire, and in doing so it had established the greatest area of internal, peace the world had ever seen. It was the very foundation of the Imperial structure, and though the details had varied the fundamental remained the same. The British Commonwealth here and overseas depended for it? highways on the ocean.