RIGHT SORT OF FLEET

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 60, 12 March 1937, Page 9

RIGHT SORT OF FLEET

BRITAIN'S AIM

FACING NEW CONDITIONS

THE MAIN QUESTION

MAINTAINING NARROW SEAS

ROUTES

(British Official Wireless.) (Received March 12, 11.15 a.m.)

RUGBY, March 11

Asking the House of Commons tc approve an expenditure of more than £100,000,000 and a naval programme of eighty new ships, the First Lord of I the Admiralty, Sir Samuel Hoare, said that the demand meant that at the end of this year Great Britain would have under construction the remarkable number of 148 new ships, including five capital ships, four aircraft carriers, and 17 cruisers. The size of the programme was the measure of past deficiencies. Sir Samuel Hoare devoted his speech introducing the Naval Estimates to three principal questions. First, were they building- the right kind of fleet for new conditions? Secondly, what was the naval policy behind the programme? Thirdly, what was the future of naval armaments? • As to the first, since 1919 there had been a continuous effort, both at the Admiralty and in the fleets, to learn the lessons of the war and to keep abreast of subsequent developments, which was even more important. Ship designs, therefore, had been based upon lesson and experiment, and he instanced new battleships for which *l p designs had successively been discarded before the final was accepted. FOUR MAIN REQUIREMENTS. The First Lord then discussed four questions, bearing on the right sort of fleet required for the future, namely, the danger of air attack, safety of bases, vulnerability of communications, particularly the Narrow Seas, and offensive power. 1914, he argued, had caught the Navy in a dangerous transition stage before it had had time to organise defence against newlyemerged forms of attack. Now they had had 17 years in which to develop counter action. Without giving details he could say that they included the fullest use of air power itself and the production of anti-aircraft weapons <y5 a scale and of a precision undreamt o» in 1918, with the result of making th» fleet in general and the battleship in particular the least attractive target for an enemy air force. Sir Samuel stated that repeated investigations carried out by the three Services—for the protection of naval bases was mainly an Air Force and Army task —showed that they could and would make these bases very formidable objects to attack, whether the Fleet was present or not. He regarded the surface raider as still the.greatest danger to trade routes, so that an adequate number, of warships remained the first essential for their protection. TRADE COMMUNICATIONS. The First Lord dealt in particular with the question—to which the naval and air staffs had given closer attention than to any other—of trade communications through the Narrow Seas. The plans developed were necessarily confidential, but he told the House of Commons that if that threat developed they were ready to meet it, and he added the information that a committee representative of the Admiralty, the Board of Trade, and shipping interests was preparing measures for ensuring the least possible dislocation of shipping in an emergency. But the Navy still believed that the best form of defence was bold offensive. Attack would not be a monopoly, of the enemy. CHANGES IN POLICY. Remarking on - changes affecting naval' policy since before 1914, the First Lord said that whilst so many had been for the worse one was preeminently better: now and henceforth, there could be no rivalry between navies of the United States and Britain. Also, under the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, there could be no race between Britain and Germany in naval armaments. He was not prepared to state the desired standard of British naval strength in terms of countries or in terms of numerals. Ha preferred to say that they must, in order to keep open their trade routes and Imperial communications, have a fleet strong enough to carry out its responsibilities in both the Eastern and the Western hemispheres, for they were an oceanic Empire with oceanic communications. - After parenthetically assuring the House that the naval base at Singapore was within sight of completion, Sir Samuel recalled that the general argument he had given for naval strength was as essential for any part in collective action which Britain might have to take under the Covenant as for self-defence.

He anticipated that if the naval programme were criticised in the light ot these considerations it would be for its shortcv/mings rather than its excess, but he replied that in a changing situation the programme must be flexible and for the present the proposed expansion was as much as wai either wise or practicable.