ALLIED NAVAL LOSSES

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21648, 8 May 1940, Page 7

ALLIED NAVAL LOSSES

Three Destroyers Sunk

Operations Off Norway

United Press Association-Bv Electric Teiegrßpn Copvrtftht

LONDON, May 6.

The loss of three Allied destroyers, Afridi (British), Bison (French), and Grom (Polish), in operations off Norway, is announced. An Admiralty announcement stated: “Following the withdrawal of the troops from Namsos, his Majesty’s ships, including Afridi (Captain P. L. Vian, D. 5.0.), provided defence for the convoy against aircraft and submarine attack. With the arrival of daylight, repeated waves of enemy aeroplanes kept up an incessant attack against the convoy, but the barrage maintained by the escorts of anti-aircraft guns was so effective that the transports were untouched. It was in the course of this operation that Afridi was struck by bombs and subsequently sank. Two enemy aeroplanes were shot down.” Afridi was a destroyer of the Tribal class, and a sister-ship of Cossack. She was of 1870 tons, and had been fitted out as a flotilla leader. She carried a normal complement of 190 men. Afridi was the eleventh British destroyer to be lost since the outbreak of war and the fifth since the Norwegian campaign began. The Royal Navy has 170 destroyers in service, even if no more ships have been put into service since the war broke out. Ten out of 185 have been sunk, but this total does not include Hardy, which ran ashore at Narvik and has since been refloated. Basis for German Claims

The loss of Afridi is presumably the basis for the German claim to have sunk a battleship and a cruiser of the York class, which has been denied by the Admiralty. The Germans have now added to this claim by saying that they scored a direct hit on another battleship. The French destroyer lost, while escorting troops from Namsos last Friday, was Bison (2436 tons), Bison was built twelve years ago and carried 209 men. The French Admiralty stated that a large portion 'of the crew had been saved.

The Polish destroyer Grom (2011 tons) was sunk in operations off the Norwegian coast. The Polish Naval Staff in London has announced that one officer and sixty-five ratings are missing, and believed lost.

The announcement also said that an offer by the British Government to replace the lost destroyer by one building in a British shipyard had been gratefully accepted.

Grom was one of the three Polish destroyers which escaped from the Baltic and joined the British Fleet. Each had sunk at least one submarine. Nazi Propaganda

In spite of the official denial of the loss of a battleship off Namsos, the German propaganda machine continues to make this claim and even goes so far as asserting that the “sinking” of a ship of this type by an aerial bomb must be considered “an epoch making event in military history.”

One Berlin broadcast said, regarding the alleged incident: “On Friday of last week, there perished the belief in the invincibility of battleships to bombs.”

Authoritative circles point out that there has been no expression of belief in the “invincibility” of any warships against bombs. There has hot yet been sufficient experience for competent critics to express a confident opinion. All that can be said at present is that the heavy bomb which hit H.M.S. Rodney caused eleven casualties, but resulted in such slight damage to the ship that she was able to keep her station. British Navy Supreme

It can confidently be declared, other than this, that no British battleship has been hit by a bomb, no British battleship has been damaged by a bomb and no British battleship has been sunk by a bomb in any of the Seven Seas, in each of which the British Navy is still supreme. The true figures of the British losses were given by Mr Chamberlain in a speech in the House of Commons on May 2, and the only addition since then is Afridi, the loss of which was officially announced to-day. The German High Command claims that seaplanes captured a British submarine which was found damaged by a mine in the Kattegat. The officii German News Agency states that German patrol vessels approached the submarine before it could scuttle itself. A German officer took over command and towed the submarine out of the minefield in which it had been drifting. The British crew said that a mine put out of action the diving apparatus and damaged the engines. A Swedish fishing boat earlier was blown up in the same minefield. Three Grimsby trawlers, Pen, Hurcules and Leonora, each with a crew of nine, are overdue and presumed lost.

The German newspapers now admit that the Oskarsborg batteries sank the cruiser Blucher at dawn on April 9.