Royal Tour Rot A Certainty: Naval Viewpoint

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 October 1948, Page 7

Royal Tour Rot A Certainty: Naval Viewpoint

LONDON, October 7.

Discussing the Royal Navy’s readiness for an emergency, the naval correspondent of Lloyd’s List and Shipping Register says he understands that plans for curtailing the Home Fleet’s cruise to the West Indies and South Africa are ready, to meet any emergency. ‘Similarly,” he says, “H.M.S. Vanguard’s tour to Australia and New Zealand could be cancelled. Already there is a feeling in the Fleet that the Royal visit is not the foregone conclusion it was.”

Lloyd’s List and Shipping Register, says that the Admiralty has sent out a “general alert” about the readiness of the Fleet for an emergency. An Admiralty spokesman said that the article only reflects recently announced orders to speed up the recommissioning of some vessels and the priority renovation of others—in effect, to halt the gradual disposal of ships by sale or scrapping which had been under way since the end of the war.

The naval correspondent of the paper says that almost all the new weapons developed since the war are already mounted or could be mounted on warships if necessary. Should an emergency arise, he adds, “the latest aircraft could be flown from suitably equipped modern aircraft-carriers, the most recently developed antisubmarine weapons could be operat-' ed in our most powerful destroyers, and the newest mines could be laid from fast surface ships, submarines, and aircraft.” He estimates that in an emergency the Admiralty would be able to muster five battleships, 23 fleet aircraftcarriers, 32 cruisers, 127 destroyers, 181 frigates, 65 submarines, 69 minesweepers, 36 motor torpedo-boats, three fast minelayers, and 200 other warships. This does not include the ships of the Commonwealth navies, which could muster between them two aircraft-carriers, eight cruisers, 26 destroyers, 55 sloops and frigates 65 minesweepers, and 100 other vessels.