ANTI-AIRCRAFT SHIPS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 46, 23 January 1939, Page 8

ANTI-AIRCRAFT SHIPS.

BRITISH NAVAL PLANS. LONDON, Jan. 9. Anti-aircraft ships for the British Navy are planned by the Admiralty, according to Mr H. C. Bywater, the naval correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. Ho states that at least 40 vessels have been specially re-armed, and equipped to- engage hostile aircraft, and that submarines will soon be available for the defence of convoys, into which the greater part of the British merchant navy would be organised, in war-time.

“The figure,” Air Bywater continues, “does not include eight ships specially built for the same purpose. It is partly to expedite the completion of the programme that the Rosyth Dockyard is being reopened on a limited scale. “The contingency of submarine and air attack possibly combined on merchant convoys iu. war-time has to be reeokned with by the naval authorities, though, in the opinion of man t y jurists. such an attack would no a gross violation of international law. The anti-aircraft vessel is considered, to be the best counter to the low-altitude bomber, which the experience of the Spanish civil war has proved to be a most serious danger to merchant vessels,” Mr By water says.