The Evening Star SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 1942. BRITAIN’S NAVY.

Evening Star, Issue 24280, 22 August 1942, Page 4

The Evening Star SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 1942. BRITAIN’S NAVY.

Days when Nelson, Blake, Hawke, and other great sea captains protected Britain’s shores are recalled by the statement that wooden ships are once more taking an active .part in naval warfare off the British coasts. They have been built to meet the existing conditions, and boar no resemblance to the old three-deckers that made history in the past. This is another example of thb way in which Britain’s naval directors and industrialists rise to meet an emergency. Coincidently with the announcement of this development, a London message announces that since the outbreak of war Britain has lost 415 warships of all types, yet it is declared that “ feverish building has kept the Navy at a point where it is still the most formidable sea force in the world.” As in the last war, Germany hoped and expected that unrestricted U-boat warfare would bring Britain to her knees, but reliance may be placed on Anglo-Ameri-can co-operation to defeat that ambition. Official figures of the tonnage lost in July show a marked improvement on those for May and J une, especially in respect of losses in the Atlantic. The proportion of ships lost in convoy during the -month, exclusive of those sunk in the North Russian convoy operation, was less than 1 per cent. According to the new edition of ‘ Jane’s Fighting Ships,’ more than 400 warships have been added to the naval fleets of the British Empire since the war began. The list includes nine battleships, six aircraft carriers, twenty-two cruisers, twenty-two submarines, and sixty-two destroyers. ‘Jane’s Fighting Ships ’ also calls attention to the surprising development of warship building in the British dominions, especially Canada, where sloops, corvettes, N and mine-sweepers have been coming off the stocks in numbers undreamt of before the war. Several dtestroyers, it is also recorded, are in hand in Empire shipyards. No less impressive are the particulars of enemy losses. Since the war_ began Germany has lost the battleship Bismarck, the armoured ship Admiral Graf Spec, the cruisers Blucher, Karlsruhe, Konigsberg, Koln, Leipzig, twenty-one destroyers, eighteen torpedo boats, nearly all the seventy submarines built before the war, and about eighty other warships. Add to these the Italian and Japanese naval losses, and a total illustrating the British Navy’s enterprise and daring appears. Italy’s losses of “fighting ships” would bo much greater but for their skill in evading battle. All things considered, the Empire can continue to repose confidence in the Navy and its highly-important auxiliary, the air arm.