BRITISH WARSHIPS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 32, 8 February 1939, Page 20

BRITISH WARSHIPS

LAUNCHINGS THIS YEAR

| During the next year Britain will I launch 45 new warships, with a total tonnage of 355,705, writes Hector C. Bywater in the "Daily Telegraph and Morning Post." Such a iigure has never before been | approached in time of peace by any country, and is little, if at all, below the aggregate tonnage launched in Britain in any single year of the Great War. The vessels due to be launched in 1939 are:— , Displacement Type. No. tons. Battleships 5 175,000 Aircraft carriers .. 3 . 69,000 Large cruisers ... 5 40,000 Small cruisers ..» 7 38,150 Destroyers ...... 11 20,000 Submarines 9 9,855 , Sloops 5 3,700 45 355,705 All the above are combatant ships, and the total of launchings in the coming year does not include a considerable number of auxiliary craft, such as boom defence vessels, motor torpedo-boats, depot ships, and tugs. The first important vessels to go afloat will be the battleship King George V, which the King is to launch on Tyneside on February 21. A sister ship, Prince of Wales, will take the water at Birkenhead in March, and during the summer and autumn three more vessels of the same class—Anson, Jellicoe, and Beatty—will be launched at Clydebank, Wallsend-on-Tyne, and Govan respectively. GUN-POWER REINFORCED. These five units, the largest and most strongly armoured battleships ever built in Britain, will reinforce the gunpower of the Fleet by 50 14in guns of a new and most powerful type. With a designed speed of 30 knots, they will be among the world's fastest battleships. The three aircraft carriers to be launched are the Illustrious, Victorious, and Formidable, each «of 23,000 tons. They are the largest carriers so far built for the Royal Navy. The first is building at Barrow-in-Furness, the second on the Tyne, and the third at Belfast. The five large cruisers to be put afloat are the Fiji, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, and Trinidad, representing a new type of 8000 tons and 33 knots speed, armed with 12 6in guns. , The seven smaller cruisers in the 1939 programme are Dido, Euryalus, Naiad, Phoebe, Sirius, Bonaventure, and Hermione. They, too, form an entirely new class. 5450 tons, with a speed of 33 knots. The armament is unique, consisting as' it does of 10 5.2 in guns, a new model credited with a rate of fire of 14 rounds a minute. Of the 11 destroyers eight are of the Laforey class, understood to be of a very large and powerful type. All the new submarines are big ocean-going craft, and most of the sloops are escort vessels heavily armed with anti-aircraft guns. Even when the 45 ships enumerated are in the water, many others will remain oh the stocks. These wiH include two 40,000-ton battleships, four heavy and three light cruisers, and numerous smaller craft, without counting the battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines to be provided for in the 1939 Navy Estimates.