PAGEANT OF POWER

New Zealand Herald, Volume 82, Issue 25345, 29 October 1945, Page 5

PAGEANT OF POWER

NAVY DAY CELEBRATED WARSHIPS STUD HUDSON PRESIDENT REVIEWS FLEET (Rfrd. 8.10 p.m.) NEW YORK. Oct. 27 Aew lork celebrated Navy Day ■with a majestic pageant of the air and sea power which helped to win victory. Forty-seven warships, ineluding the Missouri, the supercarrier Midway and the battle-tried carrier Enterprise, studded the Hudson River for seven miles. Twelve hundied fighters and bombers roared overhead as President Truman reviewed the Fleet from the. destroyer Renshaw, to the accompaniment of a 21-gun salute from every warship. Millions viewed the warlike panorama from Riverside Drive, city skyscrapers and New Jersey palisades. All British vessels in port were decorated with flags.

Earlier President Truman commissioned the carrier Franklin 1). Roosevelt. The President drove through New lork streets amid showers of ticker tape, then spoke in Central Park before an immense crowd. Secretary of the for Air, said: "If a public demand arises for the early release of the occupation forces in and around Japan it might be well for us to recaH our regret that the First World War died 6o soon after Armistice Day. "The will to implement war and peace offensives may be dissipated in direct proportion to the premature and extended demobilisation of military personnel and power. After the last war the boys returned very quickly, and the nation spent the next 23 years regretting that they had not gone ,on to Berlin." In Honolulu, Admiral C. W. Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief of the United States Pacific Fleet, in a Navy Day speech, urged the maintenance of a strong peacetime navy under a separate Navy Department. "For many years the United States will have a great obligation in the Pacific which must be supported with adequate sea power," Admiral Nimitz said. "This means not only a fleet of ships and planes, but. dominion over the sea and air." Admiral Nimitz praised unity of command, but opposed the merger of the War and Navy Departments, reversing the view he expressed last year. The proposal for a single department was still in the blueprint stage, he said, whereas the greatest war in history had been won with the present organisation. He explained that his earlier statement had been made without adequate opportunity for study.