FOOD SHIPS IN WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 92, 20 April 1938, Page 11

FOOD SHIPS IN WAR

BRITISH PROTECTION

■The Admiralty is steadily building up an immensely powerful and mobile force, expressly designed to protect merchant shipping from1 the attentions of enemy air raiders/ wrote Hector ■ Bywaterin the "Daily Telegraph and Morning Post" on March 19.

Behind the brief reference to the subject in' the speech of Mr. Geoffrey Shakespeare, Financial Secretary to the. Admiralty, when introducing the Navy Estimates, lies an impressive story of how the Navy is coping with the air menace to our food supplies in w,ar time. ' Special measure are already far advanced... In' a, lew years. Britain will possess .what- will certainly be the largest and'most "powerful anti-aircraft fleet in the world. . It will.comprise three distinct types: escort vessels, specially designed as anti-aircraft. ;ships, converted cruisers, and converted destroyers. The escort vessels, of which four are building and others projected, are each of about 1200 tons, with a speed of 19 knots. In the first of the type, Bittern, six 4in high-tingle guns are .mounted, but the later vessels carry eight of these guns. Multiple machine-guns are also mounted. . , The first . cruisers ,to be converted were the Coventry and Curlew. These 29-knot ships are armed with ten 4in high-angle , guns, '. two.,, multiple pompoms, and many light . machine-guns. The Dauntless and Cairo are now being converted, and six further "D" and "C" class cruisers will shortly,be taken in hand. .. ~..'.' CONVERTED DESTROYERS. Other; vessels of the same group are to be converted as .opportunity permits. Their armament will be much more formidable 'than -that of the .Coventry and Cutlet, consisting of the latest type of anti-aircraft- guns recently developed by the Navy, of 4in and 4Jin calibre.

Finally, a large number of older destroyers,' "V" and "W" types, laid down towards the end of the war, are to be refitted as anti-aircraft vessels. More than 50 of these' are. available. They will also be equipped with the most modern devices for detecting and "killing" submarines. -

Even this is not the whole story, for it has now been decided that many of the earlier escort vessels, 22 in number, are to be re-armed with the new anti-aircraft guns.

Protection against submarine attack will be equally effective, for excepting the cruisers all these vessels .will have, special anti-submarine equipment.