Aircraft-Carriers Are Fleet’s Wasp Nests

Northern Advocate, 27 April 1940, Page 2

Aircraft-Carriers Are Fleet’s Wasp Nests

The latest type of British aircraft carrier has a flying deck 65.000 square feet in grea. This protects abcfi.it 70 modern naval aeroplanes that shelter in hangars beneath. On the deck is a landing space of about two acres. It is fitted with wires, hooks, springs and other apparatus to grab aircraft as they land and bring them to a standstill. Some 130 feet width is none too much for putting down a fast and powerful machine whose wingspan may exceed 50 feet. A big white line is marked on which descending machines should land; but gusts of smoko and pockets of hot air from the funnels, as well as the movements of the ship itself, make the task one for a skilled pilot. Small Angle of Roll. The latest carriers are so steady that I even in a Bay of Biscay gale the angle of roll does not exceed five degrees from the horizontal. !

Elaborate precautions are taken against fire. Two great steel fire-curtains, each about 70 feet wide, can be dropped in a few seconds to subdivide each of the hangars where the machines are housed, thus localising any fire outbreak. Four srhaller fire-curtains, half the width of the others, can be dropped round the open wells of lifts, to stop flames going up or down. About 600 automatic sprinklers arc fitted in vital parts of the vessel. The four pumps operating them have a delivery of 150 tons a minute. Scores of chemical fire extinguishers are placed ready to hand round the hangar walls, and every man aboard is trained and practised in fire drill.

Electrical Equipment. Electrical equipment aboard includes 620 motors, 240 miles of cable, and 3500 lamps. About 65 per cent of the hull of the ship is welded, with a saving of weight, through the absence of rivets, of about 500 tons. There is a “silence room” aboard, where officers of the watch can receive orders from the bridge. Down in the bowels of the ship there are repair sheds manned by skilled mechanics who can carry out work of all sorts on the dive-bombers, deck-fighters, reconnaissance machines and other types now used for naval flying. The funnels, superstructure and controls of an • aircraft carrier are all jammed over to one side, out of the pilot’s way. Slim, long-muzzled anti-aircraft guns, heavy machine-guns with, long range and terrific delivery of high-explosive bullets, and lighter machine-guns stick uu in blobs and groups like asparagus sticks at a flower show.

Guarded by Fighters. Moreover, the motor-ship is guarded by 350 m.p.h. fighters that zoom up into the skies about her on the first hint of danger, like angry wasps when someone has thrown a stone into the nest. Once, the wasps’ nests of a fleet were destroyed, the wasps would be rendered- largely powerless, after their first attack, and'one of the Nfactors of naval battle now most feared by all experts would be removed. Many a thousand tons of food for Britain has been saved because these wasps’ neSts of the Fleet never relax from their everlasting humming activity: .

Dr. J. D. Salmond, of Knox College, Dunedin, and Director of Youth Work for the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, arrived in Whangarei last night, and is a guest of the Rev. W. and Mrs Elliott, the Manse. Dr. Salmond will conduct the morning service in the Presbyterian Church tomorrow, and will be in the district for a few days, including-the meetings of Presbytery and P.A, next Wednesday.