TREMENDOUS TASK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 June 1941, Page 6

TREMENDOUS TASK

THROWN ON THE NAVY BY DEFECTION OF FRANCE. FIRST LORD'S SURVEY OF WAR AT SEA. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, June 17. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr A. V, Alexander, speaking to the Royal Empire Society, revealed that after the defection of the French Fleet and the operations by the Navy in connection with the evacuation of Norway, Holland, Belgium, and France there were more than 70 destroyers undergoing repairs in dockyards due to enemy damage. Ten or 11 destroyers were sunk and heavy casualties suffered. The effect was that there was an immediate increase in the loss of merchant shipping tonnage, which was not surprising.

The first requirement was to place the damaged ships in service again. This was done in spite of the shipbuilding and repairing industry having been allowed to, drop to too below a level in peace time, which meant the organisation of additional works and the training of workers, in itself a large task. Nevertheless the ships came out, and though Britain did not build to the extent desired it was amazing how much was done to stiffen the strength of the fleet in the succeeding months. In addition to new destroyers and cruisers there had been added to the Fleet the tremendously important ships known as "corvettes," which the Navy had now in very large numbers and he hoped would get in increasing numbers.

Mr Alexander added that the defection of the French fleet meant the drafting of ships engaged in escort duly in the Atlantic to the Mediterranean to take the place of the casualtied vessels, which made the task of the other escorting ships more difficult.

"I will say, despite any criticism, that the work has been done with such a measure of success as to enable all of us not to know anything of the pangs of hunger,” he declared. Dealing with the Battle of the Atlantic. Mr Alexander said it was quite certain that in the last four months the improved organisation of the north-west approaches had resulted in a weight of attack on enemy submarines which had meant that the enemy could not stop there and take it. but had fo go to other areas. Regarding the menace from air attack, he pointed out that in the whole of the last war, when the huge total of 12,000.000 tons of shipping was sunk by enemy action, only 8000 tons succumbed to air attack. Today they had to face the air attack on shipping not only in coastal waters, but in the Mediterranean as well.

What the Royal Navy rejoiced to see was the extent to which the Air Force in the last few weeks was beginning to take toll of enemy shipping, of which they had already sunk or captured .3,200,000 tons since the war| started. In a tribute to the work of the Mer-I chant Navy, Mr Alexander concluded:, "It is perfectly grand when one hears of a merchant ship putting down a| submarine, or of a little ship off the north-east coast of Scotland coming I into port with the remains of two planes on its decks, or learns of a sea; rescue tug shooting down a great and powerful long-range Nazi bomber.”