WORK OF BRITISH

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 21, 25 July 1945, Page 7

WORK OF BRITISH

TRIBUTE FROM AMERICA

NEW YORK, July 23.

Paying a tribute to the British fleets .engaged in ,the war against Japan, the military editor of the "New York Times," Mr. Hanson Baldwin, says that the participation of the British Fleet in the great naval attack on the Japanese homeland presents a psychologiI cal as well- as military blow to the enemy. "The enemy's own propaganda, which too many, people in this country used to parrot, that Britain never would help in the Pacific war has nowbeen emphatically belied,"'Mr. Baldwin says; "Japan's tactics of. division have obviously failed, and the Japanese civilians can see that the might of the world's two biggest sea and air Powers is now arrayed against them."

Mr. Baldwin adds that it is known that tiie British Fleet in the Pacific includes five or six fleet carriers, the decks of which are made of rather thick armour, whereas the American carriers in the Pacific have wooden flight decks. ' Three British carriers have been hit by suicide planes, which caused considerable fires on the flight deck, but the flames did not reach the hangar decks, and the damage was considerably less than that suffered by some American Essex-class carriers.

The British carriers are probably superior defensively to the Essex class, but-the latter are faster and stronger offensively.