NAVAL CONTROVERSY.

Hokitika Guardian, 21 September 1926, Page 3

NAVAL CONTROVERSY.

A NEW HOOK. WILSON’S “NAKED TRUTH." [“Sydney Sun” Cables.] (Received tin's day at 8 a.m.) LONDON, Sept, 20. Newspapers predict rival naval controversies as a result of a book by H. W. Wilson, honorary editor of the Navy League Journiil in “Battleships in Action,” which is to be published to-morrow, telling the naked truth regarding the Navy in. war time. The “Daily News” describes it as a startling indictment of the Admiralty for its siipineiicss, and lack of foresight and emphasises the statement tWat if the Admiralty had examined earlier actions of the war before the Battle of Jutland and had given protection against gun flashes before, instead of after that, battle, very different results might have ensued. Wilson discussing Admiral Jellicoe's famous turn away at Jutland, declares if the Admiral had burned to starboard be would have been in a far more powerful position. This is one of the cases where determination to tnko the offensive with the exti'emest vigour might have yielded precious results. The British scheme of tactics was not equal to the occasion. Wilson gives a grim picture of the sinking of the Queen Mary, stating masses of stool and incredible quantities of paper were blown in the air, accompanied by a boat upside down. The room of the turrets was projected up-' wards one hundred feet, and a mushroom shaped intensely black column of smoke rose fourteen hundred feet. The following battleships had to steer through a dreadful shower of all kinds of wreckage. The Queen Mary vanished with a final explosion, the stern disappearing with the propeller revolving and men crawling from the after turret.