AIR THREAT TO SEA POWER

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 103, 3 May 1937, Page 8

AIR THREAT TO SEA POWER

The sinking of the Spanish in|surgent battleship Espana by bombs launched by loyalist aeroplanes off Santander may mark an epoch in warfare as revolutionary as that which followed the duel between the Monitor and the Merrimac, the "first fight of ironclads," off Hampton Roads in the American Civil War. It. is not as if the Espana was a thinskinned destroyer or a scantilyarmoured cruiser; she was a fullfledged battleship, if a small one. Completed in 1916, she probably i embodied, if in a minor degree, some !of the lessons of naval warfare in 'the early stages of the Great War. She was armed with 12in guns, the ' largest of their kind until the British battleship Queen Elizabeth came on the scene with 13.5 in guns. Her armour corresponded to her tonnage (15,000) and would make her a sufficiently, formidable vessel in her day, and quite the most powerful in the insurgent fleet in the present civil war. It is stated that the bombing planes of the Basques dropped "seven very powerful missiles"—the exact weight is not stated —and two of these struck the Espana's stern. There was a terrific explosion, and in half an hour the doomed battleship plunged stern first beneath the waters, with a loss of the majority of her crew of 800. It is true that the Espana was far from being a first-class modern capital ship, and nothing is said, in the account of the air attack, of any attempt to repel the attackers with anti-aircraft batteries. When the loyalist air squadron, flushed with success, turned to the more modern rebel cruiser Almirante Cervera and endeavoured to dispatch her also to the bottom, they had time "to drop only three bombs." The cruiser "fired off all her 'archies' and de- | parted northwards," apparently unscathed. It cannot, therefore, on the ; evidence available at the moment, be isaid that the first serious encounter i between combatant aircraft and seai craft, though a battleship was sunk, jwas conclusive and decisive, but it ! will undoubtedly give- the nations 'building, or contemplating building, I big battleships, "seriously to think."