AMERICAN FLEET

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVII, Issue 23202, 16 May 1945, Page 5

AMERICAN FLEET

Tentative Post-war Plans (9.30 pan.) WASHINGTON, May 14. “Tentative Navy plans call for reducing the American Fleet by at least 30 per cent after the collapse of Japan, but final plans cannot be completed until we know the national post-war defence policy, the Western * Hemisphere policy and American commitments respecting the maintenance of world peace, said Admiral E. J. King in a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee. Admiral King estimated that the Japanese have about 20 large destroyers left. Mr J. V. Forrestal (Secretary of the Navy) sold the committee that American destroyers, designed to be overhauled after 40,000 miles, have been at sea for 250,000 miles and are still going. “We are driving them at a rate and under pressure that no fleet has ever been driven before,” Mr Forrestal said. He estimated that the Japanese have left 4000 effective planes. Rear-Admiral Dewitt Ramsay, chief of the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics, said that 70 per cent, of Japan’s army of 5,000,000 to 8.000,000 were concentrated in Manchuria and the Japanese home islands. Instancing the Allied supply difficulties, he said that 70 tankers were needed to supply the Philippines with one tanker load of gasoline daily, 50 of which were at sea between the west coast and the Philippines, and 10 each at loading and unloading depots.