GUARD TO EMPIRE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 19890, 18 March 1939, Page 5

GUARD TO EMPIRE

NAVY OF BRITAIN ! NEW POWER PLANNED MEASURES OF PROTECTION MENACE OF SUBMARINES :.) ATTACK FROM THE AIR, ie in (Elec. Tel. Copyright—United Press Assn.) (Reed. March 18, 10 a.m.) ip LONDON, March 17. P Replying to the debate on the navy !d estimates in the House of Commons ,n yesterday, the Civil Lord of the Admiralty, Colonel J. J. Llewellyn, said it was still true, as Sir Samuel Hoare said two years ago, that we were ?' building a fleet which, it was hoped, 3r in conjunction with the navies of the y - Dominions, would prove sufficient to „ protect British interests in both 1 hemispheres If Passages in the speech of the Par- | liamentary Secretary to the Admiralty. § Mr. G, H. Shakespeare, in presenting p the navy estimates, which were folH lowed with close attention, dealt with. H the measures for the meeting of § special threats of submarine and I aerial, attack. I Mr. Shakespeare argued that the 1 danger of submarine attack had been | exaggerated through neglect to ob- | serve that, for some 16,500 vessels sunk | by enemy submarine action in the I last war, only 102 had been sunk while | in convoy. As a result of two years I of close co-operation between the Ad- | miralty and leaders of the shipping | industry, he could state that they 1 would be in a position to institute the 1 convoy organisation soon after the 1 outbreak of war on any route , where I it was considered necessary. Convoy Protection d They had already in. stock sufficient ' , anti-submarine guns to meet all expected requirements. Over 9000 officers of the merchant navy had already in attended a course in convoy protection or gunnery. The appropriate r ' armament equipment for a large number of ships, which would immediately it be taken over for anti-submarine work i- on the outbreak of war, was already it in stock. P- Mr. Shakespeare then turned to the I immense progress since the last war in •“ scientific aids to anti-submarine war'e fare. “I cannot, of course, reveal the nature and extent of our progress in this respect, but I believe that our methods of detecting, hunting and killing submarines are more advanced than any others in the world,” he said. He described a hunt for submerged submarines, whose position, was unknown, in which he himself had taken part and, as a result of which experience, he felt able to accept the claim of the experts that, in favourable circumstances, in nine cases out of 10, the exact position of a submarine could be detected without any doubt. ,t Threat to Submarines e Finally, he drew attention to the e success of the Nyon patrol in the Mediterranean as proof that those in d control of submarines did not them- . selves under-estimate the capacity of e British ships to carry out their threat i to sink any submarine found sub!t merged in certain areas. - Regarding attack from the air, Mr. s Shakespeare said the Admiralty’s ~ policy had been to concentrate in war- ■’ ships the most modern anti-aircraft s guns possible—there had been an ine crease in the number of such guns - of 75 per cent —and an attack on a ship bristling with anti-aircraft guns : j would be a very different matter from e attacks on defenceless merchant ship1, Ping. Moreover, this did not take into d account the presence of aircraft and d of convoys- of defensively-armed mern chant ships. There would be the closest co-operation with the Royal Air Force as they came into narrow ~ seas and approaching Home coasts. Official Confidence " Generally, the Board of the Ad- . miralty believed the British fleet was , so strong to-day that it could confidently accept a direct challenge m 1 battle by any combination of foes. Other matters touched upon by tha. Parliamentary Secretary Were the recruiting and progress of the fleet air arm. They had just had a record year for recruiting, 18,000 officers and men having entered the navy in 1933 . and they had been picked out of 70,000 applicants. Contracts for aircraft and for six new aircraft- carriers, which would come into commission from 1940 onwards, had been placed and production was in full swing. Several new types would start bulk delivery during the year. The total personnel of the fleet air arm had increased from 3000 in 1937 L ' to 6000 to-day and would reach 10,000 1 in 1942. Labour Satisfaction i Mr. A. V. Alexander (Lab., Hillsr borough), for the Opposition, expressj ed qualified satisfaction with the pro- ■> gress revealed in the speech on the j estimates. The Admiralty had taken f measures for the develppment of the country’s naval power which would j have been excellent in ordinary cir- : cumstances, but his criticism was that the National Government’s foreign policy had led Britain into the position in which the navy had to face a series of strategical facts and strate- : gical dangers which it ought never to . have had to confront. Its strength might not be sufficient to give the country the naval security so vital to it-Lieutenant-Commander R. T. H. Fletcher (Lab., Nuneaton) stressed the difficulty of covering two hemispheres with 21 capital ships. “British interests in the Far East have gone up -in smoke because the pressure at Home has forbidden us „ to send out ships,” he declared. ‘lf we had to fight in two hemispheres, it would be necessary to let events rio in. the Far East and that would mean, good-bye to the Dutch East Indies.” He asked what prospect was there of the United Kingdom stationing u fleet at Singapore in an emergency sufficient to safeguard her interests in the Eastern Hemisphere on the bas : s of 19 or 21 capital ships.