DEFENCE OF THE EMPIRE

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXII, Issue 4641, 18 May 1938, Page 7

DEFENCE OF THE EMPIRE

STEPS TAKEN BY BRITAIN. Defence, Rearmament, Defence, Rearmament. The words are on everyone's lips, says C. A. Lyon in an English paper. The reality they represent has been the nation's central thought in the last weeks. And yet how much does the nation as a whole know of this reality? How many soldiers, aeroplanes, guns, ships we have. How good they are. How strong a force they represent. Are they up to date or not? First, the Army. Britain has an Army of 170,000 men. There are 113,000 of them in the barracks spread up and down Britain. The rest are in garrisons overseas. There are 55,000 more in India. There are 160,000 soldiers in the Territorial Army. There are 130,000 more fully trained soldiers in the reserve. The 113,000 troops of the Regular Army in Britain are divided up into six divisions, five ordinary and one mobile.

These six divisions look puny beside Germany's thirty-nine announced divisions, which are, moreover, undoubtedly being built up to fifty. Or even against France's thirty divisions.

But the new doctrine of war is that men do not matter in comparison with machines.

The British Army resembles a factory which is installing new machinery at top speed.

Every battalion is being made into a machine-minded one. The machine they are being given to use is a very efficient one, the famous Czech Bren gun.

The Bren gun is so light that it can be carried, and even used by one man—and yet it is a machinegun. It is capable of more rapid, sustained and accurate fire than any other gun of the kind. The number of Bren guns with which the. infantry are being equipped is from 6000 to 7000. The mechanised cavalry may alio be equipped with the Bren gun. Their allotment would bring Britain's strength in this vital arm to a grand total of 10,000 guns.

Now for the artillery. Until recently most important classes of guns were of two kinds—l B-pounder field guns and howitzers. All this is now being wiped out. A great part of the field guns in the British Army are now being converted to 25-pounder combined field gun howitzers. The new kind of gun combines the long range of the field gun with the high trajectory, and plunging fire effect of the howitzer.

In all, the British Army, including the Territorial Army, has nearly two thousand guns. There are eight tank battalions. Each has approximately sixty tanks nearly 500 in all.

Eighteen of Britain's twenty-two cavalry regiments have been mechanised. These regiments are being equipped with tanks and mechanised vehicles. If all the cavalry is equipped with tanks it will bring the total number possessed by the British Army up to 1500. The mechanised vehicles will run into thousands.

Two-thirds of the tanks are modern light T;anks, carrying two to three men. They carry one heavy machine gun and and armour-pierc-ing gun, co-axially mounted, and travel at thirty miles an hour over roads or smooth ground. They cost from £3OOO to £SOOO to build. Now the Air Force. In a little more than two years it has seen an unprecedented expansion. The personnel in 1935 was 31,000. Now it is 70,000. In 1935 Britain had 880 first-line machines. She now has 1500, and before long will have 1750. Including the Fleet air arm and 'planes abroad, Britain has 2000, France has 1250 to 2200, and is aiming at 3000. The R.A.F. in Britain consists of 159 squadrons.

There are thirty fighter squadrons, eighty-three bomber squadrons, fifteen "army co-operation" squadrons (which do reconnaissance work with the Army), seventeen reconnaissance squadrons, four torpedo bombing squadrons. The Fleet air arm consists of a further twenty squadrons. Turn now to Britain's defences against air raids. The defences stretch in a long north-south line from top to bottom of Britain. They are manned by 48,000 Territorials.

The defence of a great city is by anti-aircraft guns. There are seven-ty-six anti-aircraft batteries, and their equipment is eight guns—6oß guns pointing to the sky. Between the cities the defences are in the hands of the fighter planes. In front of and between the great towns is a chain of searchlights hundreds of miles long. No section of the sky above the line of defence can escape their probing beams.

There are 108 searchlight companies. Each company has twenty-four search-lights—2s92 giant pencils of light in the sky. Each company covers an area of 100 square miles. The Navy is relatively stronger than it was before the war. It is be-

ing strengthened further still. Fortyseven new ships will be launched in 1938—one aircraft carrier, three cruisers, thirty-two destroyers, and eleven submarines.

These are only an instalment of what is to come. Other' ships are building. They include five battleships, four aircraft carriers, fourteen cruisers, eight destroyers, seventeen submarines.

Nearly 350,000 are engaged in this occupation of arms bearing. The cost of it all is £332,927,000 a year, or £2O 10s for every family in the country.