MORE WARSHIPS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20103, 23 March 1928, Page 7

MORE WARSHIPS

AMERICAN NAVY Huge Expenditure and No Reduced Costs in Future AVIATION WELL SUPPORTED. (By Telegraph—l'er Press Asm.—Copyright.) (A. N.Z.) WASHINGTON, Mar. 21. The annual Navy Appropriations Bill reported in the House to-day provides the largest expenditure since before the Wasnington Conference. The total of 369,190,259 dollars includes funds for continuing construction* on ten vessels now building, modernising two others, including gun elevation, beginning work on two new dirigibles, building two more submarine salvage vessels, and additional aeroplanes and maintaining the Marine Corps in home activities and Nicaragua and China.

The Committee says "that it can see no prospect of declining naval costs in the near future, and all indications point to an appreciable upward trend. The large outlay in 1929 is expained by the fact that all the eight 10,000-ton cruisers authorised in 1924 will be under construction at one time.

Looking into the future with an eye on the sixteen new vessels recently authorised, the report declared that the funds required would swell the aggregate of future Appropriation Bills to sums considerably in excess of the total Bill now presented. The total direct appropriation is about 20,000,000 dollars above 1927, but with the appropriations already author-

FURTHER ATTEMPT ON AIR SPEED RECORD Received March 22, 8 p.m. (A. & N.Z.) LONDON, Mar. 21. The Air Ministry has decided to make another attempt to beat the air speed record at Calshot during the coming two months. The pilot has not yet been selected.

ised in the urgent deficiency Bill at the present session the increase will be nearly 43,000,000 dollars. The present Bill does not carry funds for the new programme. Its principal feature is that aviation gets the lion’s share, totalling <1,315,000 dollars, or an increase of over fifty per cent, on 1927. The appropriation committee publishes in its report the testimony given at the hearings and it transpired that Mr Wilbur and other naval officers rejected the proposal of the chairman (Mr French) of the sub-committee to cut expenditures by agreeing with Britain and Japan to de-commission part of the fleets. Mr Wilbur contended that ship operation was needed in order to keep the crews in training.