BRITISH FLEET

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 136, 10 June 1940, Page 10

BRITISH FLEET

LARGE ADDITIONS

BALANCE OF ALLIED POWER

FAR GREATER NOW

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.)

, LONDON, June 8

The Admiralty states, that during the next few months the Royal Navy will receive a further large increase in strength—every category of warship from battleships to motor tor-pedo-boats, and also a very large number of auxiliary craft. The balance of naval strength in favour of the Allies is now far greater than at the outbreak of war. •

The strength at the outbreak of the war was 15 capital ships, seven air-craft-carriers, 62 cruisers, 185 destroyers, 58 submarines, and 108 minesweepers, sloops, patrol vessels, and gunboats.

All British losses have been, and will be, announced without delay. The losses to date are one capital ship, one aircraft-carrier, two cruisers,. 20 destroyers, eight submarines, and six of the mine-sweeping, sloop, and patrol vessel types. The Navy has been strengthened* by more than 50 armed merchant cruisers, of which one has been lost (the communique presumably was issued before the loss of the Carinthia was announced), and by more than 1500 minor auxiliary craft, of which 58 have been lost.

The French navy, already very powerful, is ' rapidly growing, and the Allied fleets have been reinforced by the active co-operation of Polish, Norwegian, and Dutch naval forces. The acceleration of work in the naval shipyards is increasing progressively. Nearly a million tons of warships are building in. British shipyards. - - The contrast between the German naval weakness and the Allies' great and growing strength has apparently alarmed the German High Command, as is shown by its efforts to convince neutral opinion that German air power has achieved a spectacular ascendancy over British naval power.

Nine months of war experience enables a balance to be struck. Concentrated air power in close proximity to its own aerodromes can inflict losses on less strongly armoured naval units. However, it has signally failed to annul the decisive advantages com ferred by sea power. A recent .striking example was the successful withdrawal of the Allied armies from Flanders.