WARSHIPS V. PLANE

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 174, 10 August 1937, Page 7

WARSHIPS V. PLANE

-Press Association. j

Naval Vessels Now Invulnerable BRITAIN IS BUSY

(Bv Telesraph-

AUCKLAND, Last Night. The oft-repeated contention that aircraft have nullified the use of battleships, finds no eeho in Major E. E. Seward, a well-known figure ixi ship and motoring engineering circles in Great Britain, who i»s a through passenger for Canada by the liner Aorangi from •Gydney. * . Someone, he said, would bring out an armour plate which would reSist any ghell. Then a shell would be produced to penetrate the plating, The next move would be the manufacture of a stronger plate and then another shell, and so the ciicle went on. "But," he added, "they are building battleships to-day with the vulnerable parts so proteeted that the biggest bomb could be dropped on them with very little effect." Regarding the boom in shipbuil-ding, he said that a steel shcfjage had been experieneed, especially since the troublc in Spain from which Great Britain normally imports great quantities of that commodity, but in his opinion it was not so acute as to delay operations. The main concern was that the order books were too fell since the emergence from the depression. All tlie dockyards wei® working at high pressure constructing naval and merchant shipping in an endeavour to keep abreast of the orders, which were pouring in. A great amount of steel for building was being obtained from deposits ip. the north of England and from the Midlands. Commenting on the 'Spanish war, he said that Britain was trying to hold the balance and was favouring neither side. The attitude is that it is a family affair and so long as it remains a family affair, it is all right, but if France pits her strength against Italy and Germany, it will be more than that; it will be a world war," he said. The Sino-Japanese elash he dispatch* ed in a few words: "With Eussia occupied elsewhere, Japan is in for another slice of China,"