NOTES ON THE WAR NEWS

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 9, 10 July 1940, Page 8

NOTES ON THE WAR NEWS

THE FRENCH FLEET

CAPITAL SHIPS LOST

RICHELIEU CRIPPLED

The crippling of the powerful new French battleship Richelieu in Dakar harbour means that only two of the French capital ships are now in enemy hands and that one of these is badly damaged and the other still an ' unfinished hull.

These two vessels are, of course, two of the most modern of French vessels, the' Strasbourg, which ran the gamut of British fire and escaped from Oran last week, and the Jean Bart, a sistership of the Richelieu. Details of Ships. The Strasbourg, a 26,500-ton ship mounting eight 13in and sixteen s.lin guns and capable of nearly 30 knots, is one of France's only two battlecruisers. The Jean Bart, like the Richelieu, is a ship of 35,000 tons, with belt armouring varying from 9 to 16 inches and deck protection against aeroplanes of up to Bin. She will mount, when finished, eight 15in guns, and her secondary batteries are headed by fifteen 6in guns. In addition, she will carry four aircraft which can be launched by two catapults. Dakar, at which the Richelieu was crippled, is a seaport of Senegal and the capital of French West Africa. It holds a commanding position on the route between Western Europe and Brazil and South Africa, and is the only port of Senegal which affords safe anchorage for the largest ships. A Naval Dockyard.

The Messageries Maritimes Company has long used the port as a coaling station and provisioning depot for the South American trade. There is a naval dock and arsenal, with a torpedoboat basin and a dry dock. It was therefore a rather obvious place of refuge for the Richelieu and was promptly discovered by the British Fleet. The actual disabling of the Richelieu, with its assault on her propellers by a motor-boat and consequent prevention of her manoeuvring during the aerial torpedo attack, shows ingenuity, and resource. It has, moreover, a flavour of the old cutting out expeditions of the Napoleonic wars.

This latest piece of work by the Navy has reduced the ship gains of the Axis Powers through France's sur^ render still further. France possessed nine capital ships of the first class when the French fleet was promised to the dictators, seven battleships and two battle-cruisers. Two of these nine were the Richelieu and Jean Bart, the former freshly built, the latter still on the stocks and needing some months of work to make her ready for sea.

All Accounted For. Of the remaining seven ships all have been accounted for. Two are in v Britain, one is at Alexandria, where it will be rendered innocuous, three (the battle-cruiser Dunkerque and two battleships of the Bretagne class) were pummelled into helplessness at the raid of Oran, and one (the remaining battle-cruiser Strasbourg) escaped to France after being mauled and finally hit by a torpedo. There are, it is true, other French battleships. There is the Condorcet, a 17,000-ton vessel mounting four 12in guns, and the Ocean (formerly known as the Jean Bart) which carries twelve 12in guns and is 22,000 tons. Both these vessels have been used as training ships in recent years and ~. are.not on the effective list, though no doubt they could be fitted up for battle. There are also two other battleships of the Richelieu class, the Clemenceau and Gascogne, which are in the early stages of construction. They are unlikely to be completed for many months to come. Two Ships—One Damaged. '.. Consequently the immediate gain of the Axis Powers from the defeat of France is cut from nine capital ships to two, one of which is damaged and one of which is unfinished. The position of capital ships is substantially unaltered, and Britain still possesses a heavy preponderance of strength which cpuld be used to crush the German or Italian navies if they ever ventured forth from their hiding places.

The fundamental importance of this blocking of the reinforcement of the Axis fleets is now widely realised. But besides the advantage of the possession of heavier battle squadrons, there are other advantages of the greatest .kind. The battle fleet supports our cruisers, which in turn support our lighter craft, so that the small ships are sure of being able to operate without any grave threat to their security from surface craft. Peril Avoided. Even though the British Fleet would still have enjoyed an advantage had even more of the French ships reached home safely, it would have been an advantage which could have been maintained only by exposing the battle fleet to greater peril than it has had lo face in the past, and thus to the risk of attrition, if the enemy pushed his submarine campaign hard enough and luckily enough. The events of the last few days have thus made Britain able to view with equanimity such claims as those now made by Virginio Gayda, "Mussolini's mouthpiece," that Italy's contribution to the war is the immobilising of a large portion of the British Fleet in the Mediterranean. Britain has the ships to spare for operations such as bottling up the nation which is seeking easy profits without risk, and can continue to enforce the blockade which may soon cost Italy so dearly. Old Claim Repeated. Gayda's claim, it may be noted, is not new. On May 27 he was boasting of the fact that without firing a shot Italy was giving substantial assistance to Germany. That day many Italian newspapers printed a dispatch from Moscow claiming that 1,000,000 French soldiers were being kept on the Italian border as a precautionary measure. Gayda, writing in the "Voce d'ltalia," then estimated the Allied troops "immobilised by Italy throughout the Mediterranean" at 1,200,000 men.

"This," he said, "is the firm and silent aid which Italy has been giving Germany during these eight mpnths of war."