AMERICAN NAVAL EXPANSION

Southland Times, Issue 23388, 21 December 1937, Page 5

AMERICAN NAVAL EXPANSION

HEAVIEST BUDGET IN HISTORY

TWO NEW DREADNOUGHTS AND 20 SMALL CRAFT

(United Press Assn.—Telegraph Copyright) (Received December 20, 7.20 p.m.) WASHINGTON, December 20. It is understood that the President (Mr Franklin D. Roosevelt) will recommend that Congress approve a naval programme of 576,000,000 dollars, which is 50,000,000 dollars more than previous appropriations. The programme includes two super dreadnoughts and 20 smaller craft. RUSSIAN SUBMARINE STRENGTH GERMAN REPORT OF SOVIET NAVAL POWER

LONDON, December 10. According to a German report, Russia today possesses the world’s largest submarine fleet; she is building heavy cruisers, fast light cruisers, destroyers, and other craft; and several 35,000-ton battleships are projected. These details are contained in a report of the Soviet’s naval power issued by the German Admiralty. The German report further asserts that new naval bases of the first rank have recently been created in Far Eastern and European waters. It is added that there are at present in the Baltic and in the White Sea, 16 large, 30 medium, and 25 small submarines; in the Black Sea 30; and in the Far East 50 of various sizes, making a total of 151. Italy, with 108 boats built and building, has hitherto been credited with the largest undersea fleet. The Island of Kotlin, in the Gulf of Finland, says the report, is equipped with up-to-date fortifications and harbour works, and described as “the Malta of the Baltic,” constitutes the outpost to the defences of Kronstadt and Leningrad. In the Far East, Vladivostock has been transferred into a thoroughly modern naval stronghold. A new base, remote from the open sea and the Manchukuo frontier, and therefore safe from surprise attack, has been established at Komsomolsk, on the Amur river.

Another new fleet base has been built at Poliamoie, on the White Sea, where a large dockyard, founded on the canal connecting the Gulf of Finland with the White Sea, will enable Russia secretly to transfer submarines and destroyers from the Baltic to the Atlantic at least in summer.

The naval correspondent of The Daily Telegraph, Mr Hector Bywater, comments that if the German report is accurate, the Soviet Navy is already a formidable factor. “Of the number of Russian submarines, I was informed early in 1937 on excellent authority that there were then 40 or 50 boats at Vladivostock alone, and that structural parts of new submarines were periodically arriving at this base by the transSiberian railway to be assembled at the local dockyard.”