CORVETTES PUT TO NEW USE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 73, 29 August 1947, Page 6

CORVETTES PUT TO NEW USE

METEOROLOGICAL SHIPS TEN NATIONS CO-OPERATING Recently, one of Britain’s wartime corvettes sailed from London on a new peace-time career. She is the first of a fleet of meteorological ships, which will operate by International Agreement in the North Atlantic. She is also the first ship from any country to be ready for these new duties. She has' been renamed “Weather Observer,” and painted a bright yellow, the. colour chosen by the International Air-Sea Rescue. It will make the vessel conspicuous enough to enable aircraft in distress to alight near at hand. Her twofold task will be to provide meteorological data at regular intervals, and to make upper air observation, while providing navigational aids for aircraft in difficulties and assisting in rescue work.

Britain is contributing four such ships, so that two shall always be at their stations while others are in harbour. One will be at a point roughly 250 miles south of Iceland and the other some 300 miles west of Ireland. The other three British ships will be ready at intervals of one month, and all will be on duty before December. Their crew of about fifty will include seven meteorological men and thirteen radio and radar technicians'. They will normally spend 27 days at sea and fifteen in port. The nations are co-operating in providing ships for this weather fleet, which will be made up of twenty-six vessels. Half of these will be on duty simutaneously at different points in the Atlantic, while the remainder are in port.