Axis Shipping Problems

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23964, 3 June 1943, Page 4

Axis Shipping Problems

While the Allies have been watching with anxious interest the progress of the war against the U-boats, the Axis has seen its own shipping resources continuously depleted. In the Mediterranean, the Italians have lost dozens of ships in air and sea attack during the last few months. German shipping has been ceaselessly harried, from the Baltic to the Bay of Biscay. When Germany entered the war she had about 4,500,000 tons of shipping, to which early successes in Europe added considerably. Allied records make it certain that of her original tonnage Germany has lost threequarters—sunk, captured, or damaged; and the pounding of German and German-occupied ports in the air offensive has checked repair work and new construction. Italy at the beginning of the war had a merchant fleet of about 4,000,000 tons, and her ratio of losses has been even greater than the German. Moreover, owing to faulty organisation, and want of materials, Italian repair work has been slow and inefficient, and practically no new building has been done. In the Pacific Japan’s shipping has probably been her greatest weakness. The wide spread of her temporary empire has heavily strained her shipping resources. Road and rail serve her mainland fronts and conquests to a considerable extent; but the first or the last link in even the most advantageous of Japan’s supply routes is a sea link, and in Japan’s situation it is a weak one. Great ingenuity has been shown; for example, in multiplying the number of small, light vessels for use in home waters so as to free all larger

vessels and many small coasters for remoter service; but even the ingenuity confesses a difficult problem and does not solve it. It is possible that Japan’s further campaign plans, west or south, have been restrained more by this deficiency than by any other. It is not, however, by any means a crippling one. It may be remembered that one of General MacArthur’s headquarters reports, not long ago, noted that shipping destroyed at bases like Rabaul was rapidly replaced. The fact is one that powerfully argued the need to reinforce Allied air power in the Pacific as soon and as heavily as possible.