INVULNERABLE SHIPS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 215, 11 August 1937, Page 11

INVULNERABLE SHIPS

NEW BUILDING METHODS. PIERCING OP ARMOUR. Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, Aug. 10. Tlie oft-repeated contention that aircraft have nullified the use of battleships finds no echo in Major R. R.* Seward, a well-known figure in ship and motoring engineering circles m Great Britain, who is a through passenger for Canada by the liner Aorangi from Sydneyr Someone, he said, would bring out an armour plate which would resist any shell. 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 circle went on. “But,” he added, “they are building battleships to-day with the vulnerable parts so protected that the biggest bomb could be 'dropped on them with very little effect.” Regarding the boom in shipbuilding, he said that a steel shortage had been experienced, especially since the trouble 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 full since the emergence from the depression. All the dockyards were 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 in the north of England and from the Midlands.

Commenting on the Spanish war lie 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 bo more than that; it will be a world war,” he said. The Sino-Japanese clash he dispatched in a few words: “With Russia occupied elsewhere, Japan is in for another slice of China.”