A MYSTERY SHIP IN CHINA

Hokitika Guardian, 31 January 1927, Page 4

A MYSTERY SHIP IN CHINA

(By a Naval correspondent.) Should any military action be necessary to protect British subjects at Hankow, one vessel which should be particularly useful is that hornets’ nest the Hermes. I’he Hermes is the only vessel in our fleet built specially as an airemft earner. A quaint, ungainly-looking craft, ■she is the most mysterious of the Navy s mystery ships. Nobody serving in her is allowed to have a camera in his kit, and no unauthorised person is allowed aboard her. The secrets of the vessel are most carefully guarded.

The Hermes mpy be generally described as a sea-going aerodrome. All that the war taught us about the most efficient way of constructing this type of ship has been incorporated in her design. She curries twenty machines, which go up and down from hangars to the flying deck by electric lifts, and ■she is equipped with all workshops.

Everybody knows that aircraft carriers exist. Wlmt comparatively few understand i,s the revolution the coming of these strange ships has wrought in the conduct- of warfare, especially in places like the Ynngtse. The best capitip! ship afloat has her effectiveness limited by the range of her guns. The aircraft carrier is free of such restrictions. All she need to do is to appear off Hankow or any other port, send up her ’planes, and the whole place lies at her mercy. Nor need the carrier, run much risk herself, for she is able to lie so far away from her target that the best of shore defences cannot touch her. If it be necessary she is as easily able to send ’planes to bomb (any army inland as she is to bomb a town near

the shore. One cannot better illnst riitu Ihe power of these trait tlnui h\ pointin'; mil the fact, unpleasant as it he to contemplate, that a few .carders lying at different points oil our coasts ‘could raid flic whole United Kingdom from tlio air.