NAVY FACES STERN TASK

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 5 December 1940, Page 5

NAVY FACES STERN TASK

ONE HUNDRED U-BOATS OPERATING COMPARISONS IN MERCHANTMEN LOSSES SERIOUS FIGURES LONDON, 3rd December. The British United Press reports from Berlin that a neutral source estimates that at least 100 U-boats are operating. Commenting on the mercantile losses due to enemy action during the week ended 24th-25th November (22 ships totalling 87,975 tons), a naval authority said that the figures were serious, being 24,000 tons above the weekly average since the outbreak of the war, but that the increasing U-boat menace was one against which the British Navy fully recognised it would have to wage a stern fight. The actual British loss should be compared with the German claim to have sunk during the same week 118,020 tons. Between the last war and this the conditions are so different in many respects—some tending to make anything like the size of tonnage look more serious and others tending to make it less serious—that the value of such comparisons is not so great as appears on their face, but nevertheless they are interesting. The total figure of all sinkings by enemy action in April, 1917, amounted to 881,000 tons. During the four weeks ended 24th November the British tonnage sunk amounted to 268,256 tons, and the total British and allied and neutral tonnage to 323,157 tons. NAZI CLAInToF RAID ON CONVOY MANY VESSELS TORPEDOED HURRIED CORRECTION OF COMMUNIQUE LONDON, 3rd December. A German communique claimed that U-boats attacked a convoy en route to Britain yesterday and sank an escorting auxiliary cruiser, the Caledonia, and 15 merchantmen totalling more than 110,000 tons. Another U-boat, it was claimed, sank two freighters, including the tanker Victor Ross (12,247 tons), making a total of 160,000 tons sunk on that day. After the British Admiralty pointed out that H.M.S. Scotstoun (formerly the liner Caledonia) was admitted to have been sunk on 14th June, the German news agency issued an urgent correction to the communique, substituting “an auxiliary cruiser” for the Caledonia. The German news agency also stated that the appearance of German surface naval units in the Indian and Pacific Oceans was forcing Britain to take new security measures. ITALIAN SUBMARINE CLAIM ROME, 4th December. A communique states that an Italian submarine sank the Lilian Moller (British, 4866 tons) in the Atlantic cn 18th November.