UNRESTRICTED WARFARE

Evening Star, Issue 25708, 4 February 1946, Page 5

UNRESTRICTED WARFARE

AMERICAN SUBMARINES IN PACIFIC A " TOUGH " DECISION TO MAKE WASHINGTON. February 2. According to Japanese figures, American submarines during the war sank 1,944 vessels, including 1,750 merchant ships. These figures were given by Vice-admiral Charles Lockwood, wartime commander of United States suitmarines. Admiral Lockwood said that the United States lost 52 submarines and 3,505 men. The- Japanese had claimed 490 American ships sunk or probably sunk. At the end of the war Japan had 51 submarines and the United States 240. The Japanese built three huge aircraft carrying submarines intended for an attack on the Panama Canal. These submarines were now. at Pearl Harbour for study. Two were of 5.500 tons and the other was-3.000 tons. Tho larger craft carried four planes and the" other two. Admiral Lockwood believed" that submarines would survive the atomic bomb threat. Ha pointed out that the atomic bomb left no crater at Nagasaki, indicating that there was no underground or underwater menace from an atomic bomb exploded in mid-air. that did not refer to the possibilities of surface or underwater atomic explosion. Admiral Lockwood said that the navy instituted unrestricted air and submarine warfare against Japan a few days, after Pearl Harbour, and used the wolf pack system against the enemy navy and merchant service. Admiral Lockwood handed out the navy statement, declaring that it required moral courage of the highest order to initiate unrestricted warfare. " The existing instructions for the United States navy were so restrictive as to preclude submarine attack against anything but an unmistakable man o' war," he said. "We were bound by the London Navy Treaty of 1930 to observe such restrictions. " It would have been an easy course to have insisted on submarine warfare in accordance with the treaty, thus shifting to other shoulders the responsibility for an inevitable increase* in the length of the war and the longer casualty lists that would have resulted. Now that the war is over and the country is safe, theorists can he expected to climb down from their ivory towers and criticise those who made that tough