Light On Secrets Of New Fighting Ships

Chronicle (Levin), 21 December 1949, Page 5

Light On Secrets Of New Fighting Ships

LONDON, Dec. 19. Comment.ing on the new edition of "Jane's Fighting Ships," the naval corrpspondent of the Daily Herald says that scientists and naval constructors are secretly shaping an atomic age chapter in naval history. They are concentrating on three main factors — firstly, the need to make provision for atomic warfare in attack and defence at sea; second, the possibilities of future naval battles being fought by submarines under the sea; third, submarinefighting surface ships must have such speed that the fastest submarines cannot elude them or their new weapons of detection and destruction. Effective answers to those problems, he says, can only mean startlingly new types of warships within the next 10 years. Some have actually reached the blue-print st&ge, and some in America are already under construction. A British naval expert told the Daily Herald; "Don't imagine because no official announcements are being made here that nothing is being done. In fact, vast changes are taking place. The old orthodox service ships will have to be modified in the light of the new menaces — faster speeds on, over and ' under the sea, planes faster than sound, fast submarines which can stay submerged for weeks, in addition to developments in atomic warfare." The naval correspondent of the Daily Express comments that the security curtain on the four-year race by Britain, the United States and Russia to build the first 25-knot submarine driven by hydrogen peroxide or compressed oxygen, is lifted little by "Jane's/-' British scientists, helped by German designers, are believed by the Admiralty to be further advanced than any others. But they have not yet produced a practical operational prototype. The cost of running a submarine at 25 knots on purified hydrogen peroxide fuel would be £15,000 an hour. Britain has on the secret list the world's only known peroxide-powered submarine — the Meteorite. "Jane's" says it is the only survivor of the U-boats surrendered by Germany after the war, and has been in experimental commission with a British crew. , "Flottes de Combat," the newly published French naval annual, says the Meteorite is of the German Type 17, which does about 20 knots under water. The Nazis built only seven experimental models of this type, all small boats with a crew of only 19.