THE POCKET BATTLESHIP.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21136, 19 March 1932, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE POCKET BATTLESHIP.

ENGINES OF THE D£UTCHSLAND.

Germany recently produced and launched something new in\ battleships—a pocket battleship it has Been called. Forbidden under the terms of the Treafy of Versailles to produce war vessels of more than 10,000 tons calibre, and faced with the refusal of the nations to fulfil their Disarmament Pledge, she has sought ways of making a vessel within these limits which would compare in speed and all-round efficiency with the monsters still possessed by other nations. The Deutschland, recently launched at Keil, is the result of their engineers setting their brains to work. The most interesting things about the Dcutschland arp her cngines i for never before has a war vessel of more than 2000 tons been motor-driven. Deutschland has Diesel engines of new and secret design which develop 50,000 h.p. It may be that some new alloy has been used in their construction and that electric welding Has been employed, for these engines are comparatively lightweights, developing one horse-power for each 17J pounds. Special alloys have certainly been used for many parts of the structure of the vessel, and weight lias been further saved by welding the plates of which the hull is built instead of the more usual method of riveting them. In addition to other armament the new vessel is to carry six eleven-inch guns having the remarkable ranger of 50.000 yards, and this, combined with her speed of 26 knots, will make her a match for vessels three times her tonnage. Twentysix knots is, of ocurse, to be her top speed but with her Diesel engines running at only half-power a speed of 20 knots is expected for a distance of 10,000 miles, and that range may be nearly doubled ? if the engines are run still slower. Brains alone have not made all this possible. A great deal of money has been wasted on this engine of death. It is said that its cost will amount to four million pounds—the cost of running the League of Nations, with all it represents, for more than three vears.