TRAFALGAR DAY REMEMBERED

Southland Times, Issue 24573, 23 October 1941, Page 5

TRAFALGAR DAY REMEMBERED

MR ALEXANDER TALKS OF NAVAL WAR ACTIVITY AND VIGILANCE (8.0.W.) RUGBY, October 21. Trafalgar Day, the one hundred and thirty-fifth anniversary of the great naval victory, has been the occasion of a broadcast speech by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr A. V. Alexander, in which he linked an appeal for public support of the current “Warships Week” with a heartening summary of Britain’s naval record during the present war. “The Navy,” Mr Alexander saiid, “is fighting at sea in circumstances which are unprecedented. Our ships must be ever active and vigilant from Murmansk to tire Dardanelles. There are escorts to provide for our trade in the Atlantic and for numerous military convoys. The Far East must be watched and we must safeguard the Dominions of the Commonwealth who have contributed so gallantly to our fight. All this must be done with far fewer ships than the Admiralty should have to give to the gallant officers and men who are called upon to fulfil such a variety of arduous tasks. “It is natural that public opinion focuses upon the highlights of the war at sea, like the Rivei- Plate, Taranto, Matapan and the destruction of the Bismarck, but remember the detail and routine and immense risks involved in convoying hundreds of thousands of men to the Middle East and other places in this war. “SINK AT SIGHT” POLICY “The enemy did not wait nearly two years before adopting a ‘sink at sight’ policy. He perfected a very efficient joint campaign of co-operation between submarines and aircraft. Our losses have been heavy, yet, in all the adverse conditions I have recounted, the total shipping losses—British, Allied and neutral—from all causes have been less in the last 12 months than in 1917 from submarine attack alone. I can assure you that when a U-boat attacks a convoy it is mercilessly hunted. Aircraft attacks are met by greatly improved anti-aircraft defence and by fighter aircraft carried by the convoy. We do not for categorical reasons publish many details about the destruction of enemy submarines, but Hitler and Mussolini know the extent of their great losses.” Mr Alexander paid a warm tribute to the work of Britain’s submarines. “Theirs has been a task incomparably more difficult and dangerous than that of the enemy submarines in the Atlantic,” he said. “To find their scarcer targets they have to go right into enemy waters, as they did in the first 12 months of the war on the coasts of Norway and as they have been doing since in the Mediterranean, while with the Fleet Air Arm and the Royal Air Force they have sent hundreds of thousands of tons of enemy transports and supply ships to the bottom.”