NEW BATTLESHIP

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 67, 21 March 1939, Page 10

NEW BATTLESHIP

FIRST OF PROGRAMME THE KING GEORGE V DISPATCH TO WATER (By Air Mail, from "The Post's" London Representative.) LONDON, February 23. The first battleship to leave ■ the slipway of a British yard for 14 years, the King George V, was named and launched by the King in the presence of .thousands at Newcastle this week. The 35,000 battleships, of which few details are available at present, made a perfect launch. The King, who was accompanied by the Queen, swept his white-gloved hand to the salute after he had pulled | a lever to send the ship on her way, and he fixed his eyes on the bows as they retreated down the slipway, t "I name this ship," he said, "King George V. May God bless this ship and all who serve in her." "Rule Britannia" was played as she ran down to the water and the siren of every ship on the River Tyne blared out. Guests and workpeople cheered their loudest, and the roar was taken up by thousands who were unable to see the actual launching. Six tugs took the ship in charge and nosed and coaxed her into the fitting-out yard nearby.' LITTLE INFORMATION. Little has been made known about the King George V apart from the fact that she is to cost about £8,000,000 and that she will mount,ten 14-inch guns in three turrets, with a secondary armament of sixteen SJ-inch guns in twin turrets. There will also be numerous smaller guns, chiefly for. anti-aircraft defence, and aircraft accommodated in hangers and flown off by catapult. _ In Weyer's Pocket Book of Warships, published recently in Germany, however, many other details of the battleship were given. It was stated that she would have ten 14-inch guns, sixteen 5.2-inch guns, thirteen 1.5-inch anti-aircraft • guns, sixteen A.A. machine-guns, would carry four seaplanes, and have a speed of 30 kpots. Under the Anglo-German Naval Treaty the British and German Admiralties exchange details of all new' ships. The German Admiralty would, therefore, have the details of the King George i.V. ' Mr. Geoffrey Shakespeare, Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty, replying to a question in the House of Commons on February 16, said "certain of the particulars given by the German editor are inaccurate." LARGER SHIP TO FOLLOW. Welcome news to follow the launching was the announcement that another battleship is to be laid down immediately at the vacant berth, and that she will be an even larger warship, one of the two giants sanctioned in the 1939 programme. News of the decision to lay down the second ship at the same berth : was conveyed by Admiral Sir Roger Backhouse, First Sea Lord, at the reception following the launch. "The King George V is one of. five ships of the same class which will immensely increase the strength of the Fleet," he said. "They are to be fol- ! lowed, too; by two larger ships in the 1938 programme and two more in the 1939 programme, just announced. "I told you that the Admiralty was about to order the two battleships of the 1938 programme. I am confident that it will give much satisfaction here if I say that I have the First Lord's authority to tell you that one of these ships is to be a successor on the building slip which has just been vacated. I realise well what this means in the iway of work and in continuity of employment." It is stated that two North Country shipyards have been given contracts for the battleships of the 1938 programme. The Lion will be built at Walker-on-Tyne by Vickers-Armstrong and the Temeraire at Birkenhead by Cammell Laird. The Lion will go down on the slip vacated by the King George V, and work on her can start almost immediately, as much of the preliminary material has been prepared. ANOTHER AT BIRKENHEAD. The Temeraire will probably not go on the stocks until the big slip at Birkenhead is made available by the launch of the battleship Prince of Wales, a sister-ship to the King George V, on May 3. About 3000 men will be directly employed on each ship for more than three years, and many thousands more in other parts of the country on sub-contracts, making engines, pumps, floor coverings, brass rails, optical instruments, and all the fittings needed. Some 350 firms are concerned in sub-contracts for a battleship. More than £ 12,000^000* will be paid out in wages to men engaged on work for these two ships between now and 1942 or 1943. The Lion, and Temeraire will be larger than the King George V class. They have been designed under the new limitations of the Naval Treaty, which allows Britain to go up to 45,000 tons. It is understood that they will be 40,000-ton vessels. They will carry 16in guns, against the 14in to be mounted in the King Georges. Admiral Sir Roger Backhouse, at the reception, recalled that the last battleship to be built in the yard at Newcastle was the Nelson, launched on September, 1925, and the Nelson and her sister-ship, the Rodney, were the only two capital ships of post-war desigja which Britain had built since the war, for the Hood was begun in 1916 and completed in 1920. It had been a long holiday, and Britain had had to reconstruct most of her old war-time ships to keep them up to date and equal to modern scales of attack. Now she was starting again, and the King George V was one of five ships of the same class which would immensely increase the strength of the Fleet. -