SUPREMACY IN SIGHT

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIX, Issue 21970, 23 May 1941, Page 5

SUPREMACY IN SIGHT

U.S. Production Of Bombers (11.40 p.m.) WASHINGTON, May 22. Mr W. S. Knudson (United States Production Chief) said the United States will be producing 500 heavy bombers a month late in 1942, which rate Mr Roosevelt considers will give the democracies aerial supremacy. The Secretary of the Navy (Colonel Knox) announced that the navy had received 600 first-line warplanes in the last 10 months, and an equal number had been exported to Britain in accordance with the custom of sharing the navy’s intake of warplanes with Britain. Colonel Knox, discussing the increase in production, said in the first four months of last year the navy received 79 warplanes and in the first four months of 1941 received 996. These figures did not include army warplanes, but the army also shares with Britain. Colonel Knox, at a press conference, declared that the Neutrality Act was a terrible blunder and should be repealed to return a freedom of the seas policy permitting American ships to sail to British and other ports. I am a flrm believer, like the President, of the traditional policy of freedom of the seas. It is silly to contend that because convoys were effective in the last war they should be adopted in this one.”