80 New Ships

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 48, 12 March 1937, Page 5

80 New Ships

(Brifish Official Wireless.)

BRITAIN'S NEEDS Expenditure of £100,000,000 Asked For CURING DEFICIENCIES

(Eeceived 12, 12.45 p.m.) EUGBY, March 11. Asking the Hoqse pf Cpmmons to approve the expenditure of mora than £100,000,000 for the naval prpgrauime of 8Q new §bips, Sir Samuel Hoare, First Lord of thq Adnilraity, said that tliq demand meant that at the end of thq year Britain would havq under construcrion the remarkablq number of 148 new ships, includiug five capital Ships, four aircraft carriers and 17 cruisers. The size of the programme, said Sir Samuel, was a measuic of our past dericiencion. Since 1919 there had beeD a continuous effort both at the Admiralty and in the Fleets to learn the iessons of war and keep abreast of subsequent developments and, which was even more important, without giving details of our defence against new forms of attaek, Sir Samuel Hoare stated that these included the fullest use of air power

itself and the production of anti-air-craft weapons on a scale and of a precision undreamt pf in 1918, with the result of making the Fleet in general and the battleskip in particular the least atferactive target for an enemy air force. He regarded the surface raider as still the greatest danger to trade routes, so that an adequate number pf warsbips remained a first esseutial for tbeir protection. The First. Lord dealt iu particular with thq questisn ef trade communications thrqugh narrew seas and said that if that threat developed they were ready to meet it.