America Only Lost One Battleship in Pacific

Manawatu Times, Volume 70, Issue 190, 13 August 1945, Page 5

America Only Lost One Battleship in Pacific

Received Sunday, 10.30 p.m. WASHINGTON, Aug. 12. The Navy Department greeted Japan’s bid for peace by lifting the security restrictions revealing the hitherto unannounced loss of 108-Ameri-can warships and 45 landing-craft, making the total warships lost so far 437, says the Herald-Tribune’s Washington correspondent. A Navy spokesman pointed out that the mosses should be regarded as small in view of the fact that the fleet had grown to over 100,000 vessels, including land-ing-craft. The losses announced included three destroyers, a 10,000-ton attack-trans-port, two destroyer escorts, four submarines and 46 P.T-boats. Only one American battleship, the Arizona, was sunk during the year and she was lost in Pearl Harbour. The Navy also lost eleven carriers, six heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, 69 destroyers and 50 submarines. The following table compares the Navy’s size at Pearl Harbour and now: Battleships, 16/23; carriers, 4/26 plus 70 escort carriers; cruisers, 38/72; destroyers, 173/386; destroyer escorts, nil/ 368; submarines, 112/240. Navy officials emphasised that there was still an important task ahead. The ships will be required in order to police Japan, supply the Pacific bases, bring the troops home, remove the estimated 250,000 Japanese from the bypassed islands and retur. prisoners-of-war.