ARMS FOR BRITAIN

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 49, 26 August 1938, Page 4

ARMS FOR BRITAIN

RECENT ACHIEVEMENTS

Whitehall feels that its civilian critics are not treating it fairly in the matter of guns, and it is no doubt only a coincidence that this feeling became audible promptly on the heeis of Mr. Duncan Sandys's brush with the Attor- j ney-General, says the "Manchester Guardian." One was assured by high authority that most of the statements publicly made have underestimated our ! gun strength, and that equipment has ■ kept pace with the expansion of man power in the Territorial anti-aircraft i units during the last three years from 2000 men to 43,000. The three-inch gun, one was told, has been particularly maligned. It Jis not, as it was called in Parliament, "a dud weapon." It is not the best gun in the world, but it is "a good and useful gun," and will remain an essential part of our equipment. It is no longer being manufactured for our own use (though it is still being made for sale abroad), but all existing three-inch guns here are being reno- \ vated and will be used with new instruments. The gun has been given a new shell with a bigger burst, and one is told that its "ceiling" and rapidity of fire are greater than is generally imagined. I Of the 3.7-inch gun one learns that, though its final design was only approved just over a year ago, it is now being produced at a rate unequalled even in the last war, in spite of the fact that, so one is assured, it is almost impossible to produce a new gun in quantity in less than two years or, at the fastest, eighteen months. Whitehall's view is that this is a remarkable achievement. As another instance of the speed and success of re-armament, in spite of the fact that two years ago "there was no proper armament industry in this country," one hears that 5 the factory at Nottingham, which a year ago was only a bare site, is now producing guns. It seems evident that Whitehall could make out a good case for itself if it.cared to do so, and one is left wondering why all this information was not allowed to emerge before and in a more public way.