BRITISH LOSSES AT SEA

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 131, 30 November 1939, Page 14

BRITISH LOSSES AT SEA

The announcement by British Official Wireless yesterday that 131 ships totalling 483,000 tons had been sunk by German action since the war began brings the admitted losses of merchantmen just past the. level at which Nazi propaganda put them a month ago. On October 28 the German official claim was that 115 foreign merchantmen had been sunk. This figure, it was said, included only those ships which had been admitted to. have been lost by the Western Powers, or vouched for by German warships. In addition, it was claimed that 78,000 tons of | British naval craft had been sent to jthe bottom. The claims were somewhat impaired by the fact that only three submarines were admitted to have been lost, whiereas a week earlier naval circles had disclosed that five U-boats had been sunk, and more losses were admitted in the next few days.

To reinforce the submarine campaign, it has been reported recently that Germany would buy submarines from Russia, possibly paying for them with her idle merchant. tonnage. The report' first came from Stockholm, and described an agreement between Germany and Russia to enable the Reich to obtain undersea boats from various Soviet flotillas, including those in the Baltic and Black Seas and at Murmansk, on the Arctic Oceani It was reported, also, that the Russians had agreed to allow German crews to enter the Soviet Union and man the ships. Russia is known to have 150 submarines, more than twice as many as Germany.' possessed when the war began. However, this story is discounted by American correspondents resident in Berlin, who reported recently that German naval leaders emphatically declared that they wanted to have .nothing whatever to do with Russian undersea boats. The Germans have no opinion of the Russian talent for mechanics, it seems, and believe that the submarines would not be in good condition.- At.the same time, it was said that influential Nazis thought that a deal with Russia.would"be the most rapid and satisfactory way of increasing the German U-boat fleet.