"DIVE AT THE ENEMY"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23809, 9 November 1940, Page 1 (Supplement)

"DIVE AT THE ENEMY"

THEIR stacks are crusted with salt rind, their forecastles wet and gleaming where the green geas have walked aboard. Their engines have the power of 50,000 horses and the ismooth precision of a twenty-one-jejvel watch. Their guns speak with a^voice of thunder and their torpedoes are a menace to anything that floats. Their men wear dungarees, sway to the motion of the heaving decks, and consider themselves the corps d'elite of the modern navy, as indeed they are.

gunwale, fought hand to hand with guns, cutlasses, crockery and bare fists. Thus the destroyer is a personalised ship; her crew becomes a part of her nnd she of them; you get to close grips with the enemy, and that enemy—to destroyer sailors- —is no abstract vision but a continuing reality. With her shallow draft and high speed, the destroyer is well equipped for inshore work. Collectively important but individually cheap enough: to be sacrificed, she can be used for dangerous missions where a larger vessel would not be risked. She is a good scout; she is ideal' for hit-and-run raids; in fleet actions she is the watchdog of the bigger ships, ready and anxious to repel enemy torpedo attacks, to throw into the air a deadly screen of anti-aircraft shells, to ferret out submarines, to strike home with vicious sting against the enemy battle line. She is the best anti-submarine weapon because of her speed her gun power, her listening devices and her depth charges, and she is best suited for convoying merchant ships in submarineinfested waters. With this war she has added another. role. The anti-aircraft, gun power of destroyers has been vastly increased and they have become antiaircraft as well as anti-submarine ships. The small-calibre rapid-firing guns and their speed also made tliern one of

Tliev are the fastest ocean-going craft in the world They are the destroyers, without which no navy is complete—the destroyers, the "tin cans," the "trouble boats" of peace or war. The destroyer? more nearly than any other modern type of warship, inherits some of the traditions and tactics of the ships of wood and sail. It is the only tvpe adjusted to infighting, to slugging blows at close range. The days of boarders and ships grappled side to side are pone, it is true. But poiifx-blank gun duels in destroyer actions are not rare, and in. one epic fight of World War days British and German destroyer sailors, their wounded ships drifting gunwale to

By HANSON W. BALDWIN

Destroyers, Full of Fight, Carry on the

the most useful types—as Britain iias found —to repel assaults by torpedo boats or the fast, light motor-boats which Germany is now using with considerable effect in narrow waters. Thus, the destroyer, ; with these manifold duties and functions, is one of. the most useful craft in naval hierarchy. ITer role of unrelenting struggle, of eternal vigilance, in time of war is one of the most dangerous and exacting, and in both war and peace she faces, more closely than any other ocean-going type, continuing conflict with that clement of which she is an inescapable part —the sea. AVith her low freeboard, her thin plates, her small size and her long, slim hull, the destroyer is more subject to the whims of ocean than any other type; she is no creature of stately comfort; not for her the dignity of the capital ship. Instead she prances and curves in a seaway with all the life and spirit of a fine-bred mare. Destroyers are long and slim, with bows of knife-edge thinness; they have from one to four stacks for their oilburning boilers, and their steam-driven turbines give them speeds sometimes better than forty knots. They mount four or five guns of about four to five inches calibre. "Ash Cans" They carry the cylindrical "ash cans" or depth charges, loaded with T.N.T., 011 launching racks on their sterns and sometimes mounted on ",Y" guns on their decks. Tliev usually mount eight to sixteen torpedo .tubes —which make them dangerous to any adversary. But they can't "take if' themselves. Because of their small size and the necessity for high speed they are virtually uuarmoured. A square hit from bomb, shell or torpedo usually means serious damage or death. The destroyer can be—and sometimes is—a lone wolf; usually it operates in

"packs," for its formidability increases with numbers. Jn fleet engagements the large ships are always screened —and attacked by several squadrons of destroyers (usually about twelve ships to a squadron). In convoy work and bitter, nagging warfare, like that now going l on in the English Channel there are usually two or more destroyers to a eonvov—-the more the better. Speed and Danger The destroyer fights a spectacular kind of warfare —a warfare of speed and danger. ] n fleet action the destroyers dash in by squadrons—the great, churning wash of their wakes white behind them, the shell splashes close aboard. They drive straight toward the enemy battle line, as close as they dare, and launch their torpedoes; then they turn away and speed out of range. In the Channel and in convoy or patrol work there is more monotony but equal danger. The destroyer now acts as the shepherd dog of the sea; she must accommodate her pace to that of her slowest, charges. She must be eternally watchful; that white wisp on the ocean's surface may be the feather of foam from a-periscope; that spook in the sky a bomber. Wli<~n the enemy comes, the turbines hum to a deeper roar, the great fans sucking air into the fire rooms speed up to a high crescendo; the destroyer shakes and pirouettes as she turns and twists to escape the bomb, to drop depth charges or to get at her enemy. Destroyer sailors have more of a rakish insouciance, less formality, than their brothers of the big ships. They have work to do; they are cooped up on a tiny,steel sprinter that perpetually shakes the great cascades of foaming ocean off her plates like a dog shaking off water.; there is neither time nor possibility for the frills and furbelows that a big ship makes possible. ,—Condensed from (lie Xew York Times