ARMED CRUISER SUNK.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 163, 10 June 1940, Page 7

ARMED CRUISER SUNK.

VICTIM OF A U-BOAT. NAVY’S GROWING POWER. LONDON, June 8. A U-boat torpedoed' and sank His Majesty’s armed merchant cruiser Carinthia. Two officers and two ratings were killed and the remainder were saved. . ■ More than 200 members of the crew of the Carinthia were landed from a warship in Britain. Another warship is bringing 100 men. The Carinthia was afloat for some time after she was hitThe warships went alongside, took off the crew and towed the Carinthia, which sank before reaching port . The Carinthia was a Cunard-U lute Star liner of 20,277 tonS and is the second British armed merchant cruiser to be lost during the war. The other was the Rawalpindi, which went down last December with colours flying and guns blazing in a one-sided battle with the “pocket” battleship Deutschland. The German High Command announces that a U-boat sank an enemy auxiliary cruiser of 4000 tons northwest of Ireland. Apparently this is a reference to the Carinthia. Thirty-four survivors of the Swedish motor-ship Erik Frisell, which was sunlc by a submarine in the Atlantic, have been landed in Scotland. ADDITIONS TO FLEET.

. The Admiralty states that during the next few months the Royal Navy will receive a further large increase in strength, comprising every category of warship from battleships to motor tor-pedo-boats and also a very large number of auxiliary aircraft. The balance of naval strength in favour of the Allies is now i far greater than at the outbreak of war.

The strength at the outbreak of the war was 15 capital ships, seven air-craft-carriers, 62 cruisers, 185 destroyers, 58 submarines, and 103 minesweepers, sloops, patrol vessels, and gunboats. . All British losses .have been and will be announced without .delay. The losses to date are one capital ship, one aircraft-carrier, two cruisers, twenty destroyers, eight submarines, and six of the minesweeping, sloop and patrol vessel types. The Navy has been strengthened by more than 50 armed merchant cruisers, of which one has been lost (the communique .was presumably issued before the loss of the Carinthia was announced), and by more than 1500 minor auxiliary craft, of which 58 have been lost. . ' BUILDING PROGRESS.

The French.. Navy, already very powerful, is rapidly growing, and the Allied fleets have been reinforced by the active co-operation of Polish, Norwegian, and Dutch naval forces. The acceleration of work in the naval shipyards is progressively increasing. Nearly a million tons of warships are building in British shipyards. The contrast between the German naval weakness and the . Allies’ great and growing strength has apparently alarmed the, German HighCommand, as is shown by its efforts to convince neutral opinion that German air power has achieved a spectacular ascendancy over British naval power. Nine months of war experience enables a balance to be struck. Coneentrated air power in close proximity to its ow T n aerodromes can inflict losses on less strongly armoured 'naval units. However, it lias signally failed to annul the decisive 'advantages conferred by sea power. A recent striking example was the sucecssful withdrawal of the Allied armies from Flanders.