NAVY AND ARMY

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 76, 11 March 1933, Page 7

NAVY AND ARMY

INCREASE IN ESTIMATES

EXPENDITURE ON WARSHIPS.

TERRITORIAL TRAINING

(British Official Wireless.) (Received 11. 11.15 a.m.) Rugby, March 9.

Increased allocations are made in both the Navy and Army estimates this year. The Navy estimates are £3,093,700 above those for 1932, and in the case of the Army the increase is £1,462,000. The Navy estimates issued to-day show a net total for 1933 of £53,570,000, which exceeds the net total for the previous year by £3,093.700. Of this increase £2,355,360 is required to make normal progress with new construction. A large part of the normal expenditure upon shipbuilding in 1932 had been deliberately retarded in the interests of economy and disarmament into subsequent years by the temporary expedient of deferring orders for the 1931 programme. The remainder of the increase provides for an automatic rise in 1933 in the total of non-effective votes including provision amounting to £295,367 for increases of retired pay, pensions, and superannuation allowances. The new construction programme provides for four cruisers, one leader, and eight destroyers, three submarines, three sloops, one convoy, one coastal sloop, and small’ craft.

The cruisers constitute the final in. stalment of the replacement programme due for completion by December, 1936, under the terms of the .London Naval Treaty. The numbers of destroyers and submarines are the same as in previous buildng programmes since the Treaty.

The first word of the Admiralty in submitting the estimates was that, like those for previous years, they have been restricted by the exigencies of the the financial situation, and do not fully provide all the potential needs of the Navy. Interesting developments were recorded by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir Bolton Eyres-Monsell, in presenting the Navy estimates. All submarines have now been equipped with the Davis submarine escape apparatus. Special escape hatches and indicator buoys are being fitted to all submarines. Trials of a boiler of a new express type have been satisfactorily carried out, and will continue under service conditions in H.M.S. Guardian. Oil fuel produced from British coal by low temperature carbonisation is being tried in a number of ships. Fifteen capital ships and cruisers are now fitted with catapults for aircraft. It is hoped shortly to renew the interchange of ships between the Royal and Australian Navies, which was suspended for financial reasons. New Zealand’s contributions to the Singapore base amount to £72,000. ' ARMY MECHANISATION, JUSTIFICATION BY RESULTS. The Financial Secretary to the War Office, Mr. A. Duff Cooper, in introducing the Army estimates, said that the economies effected in last year’s Estimates in view of the exceptional financial conditions were made with great misgiving. Estimates now presented represented an increase of £1,462,000. The principal increases were connected With the resumption of Territorial camps and school cadet corps.

Referring to the mechanisation of the Army he said that experience had justified the adoption of light tractors and one more field artillery brigade had been equipped with it. That they were on right lines in the development of mechanical transport and that the cars in use were admirably adapted for Dominions and colonial use, had been demonstrated last year when a convoy of four vehicles, namely, a 40cwt. sixwheeler, a 30cwt. four-wheeler lorry, a 15cwt. commercial van. and a 9 h.p. motor-car, travelled from Cairo to Juba, near the Uganda border, 2900 miles’, in 29 consecutive days. The return journey by another route was equally successful. Experiments had been going on tor many years regarding the tank corps, and it had now been decided that light and medium tanks should be employed in combination, and tank battalions had been reorganised on that basis.