TO END U-BOAT MENACE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXII, Issue 253, 24 September 1942, Page 5

TO END U-BOAT MENACE

(N.Z. Press Association.—Copyright.) (9.40 a.m.) WASHINGTON, Sept. 23. The chairman (Mr Vinson) of the Naval Affairs Committee to-day asserted that the sinking of ships off tho American Atlantic coast had almost ceased. He predicted that the navy which is being built in America will furnish sufficient escort and patrol craft to end the U-boat menace altogether. The New York Times Mexico City correspondent says General Abelardo, commander of the Gulf Coast defences, declared the United States was not sending Mexico enough arms to enable her to prepare adequately for war. He added: We need more torpedo-boats, aeroplanes, and guns to fight the submarines. ORDEAL OF CREW. The Herald-Tribune's correspondent at a West African port described the rescue of 18 members of the crew of a torpedoed American freighter who had been adrift in an open lifeboat for 32 days in mid-Atlantic, subsisting on concentrated food. They were emaciated and sore, and experienced drenching rains and a scorching sun. A Norwegian freighter on which the correspondent was a passenger encountered the boat 425 miles from tho point where the victims' ship had been torpedoed. They had drifted in circles for days and tried to row and sail to South America. The U.S. Navy Department announced that an Italian submarine torpedoed and sank a medium-sized United States merchantman several hundred miles off the northern coast of South American in the middle of August. The survivors were adrift for 23 days before they were picked up and landed at an East Coast port. The submarine at first shelled the ship, but the marksmanship was so poor that it was finally forced to fire a torpedo.