Aim of New Votes For America’s Navy

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 306, 28 December 1939, Page 4

Aim of New Votes For America’s Navy

•‘MIGHTIEST FORCE AFLOAT’* NEW YOBK, Nov. 8. Within a few hours of President Roosevelt proclaiming the amended neutrality law, last Saturday at noon—“a high noon for freedom/* said Lloyd George—we learned of the intention to aslc the New Year sitting of Congress to vote the United States “the mightiest naval force afloat and the world's greatest naval air tteet.** The plan, said to have a hearty backing of President Roosevelt, is the subject of legislation, drafted by the chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee, Mr. \ in son, of Georgia. “It embodies realistic naval expansion, as distinguished from a policy based on hysteria,** he observed. Designed to forestall the two-ocean* Navy advocate?, the measure seeks to authorise 95 combatant and 31 auxiliary warships, 2395 additional aeroplanes and 36 lighter-than-air ships, mostly blimps. Envisaging a combined! Army-Navy air force of nearly 12,900 aeroplanes, the bill sets the maximum serviceable naval air units to 6000, the Army has appropriations for 5520 aero-1 planes. The cost of the programme is. estimated at 1300 million dollars. Tho

bulk of the naval tonnage can be laid down and completed in three of four years. In the combatant warship category, Mr. Yinson provides for three aircraft carriers, eight cruisers, 53 destroyers, and submarines, representing a 25 per cent increase on existing appropriations, voted last year, which were 20 per cent in advance of tho previous Navy Budget. Auxiliary types, such as tankers, tenders and repair ships, would aggregate 120,000 tons. Completion of the programme in 1914, said Mr. Vinson, would find the composition of the fleet, in under-age fighting craft as follows:—Fifteen battleships, 59 cruisers, 11 aircraftcarriers, 173 destroyers, 87 submatines, 5400 aeroplanes, and 36 airships. This programme includes eight battleships, one of 45,000 tons, which are now on the stocks, and eight others, which will have become over-ago in *944. The latter, with six cruisers, 32 submarines and 120 destroyers, also to be outdated and decommissioned by 1944, “will still be useful in emergency, ’* says Mr, Vinson, whose proposals have the support of the Navy General Board. Some of the new cruisers may displace 12,000 tons and mount. ll*inch guns, with speed and fighting power greater than Germany’s “pocket battleships.*’ Tho new Navy, Mr. Vinson expects, “will be strong enough to cope with any singlo aggressor.*’ SuppIe-

mentary legislation will provide for Navy loans, up to one-third of the total cost of now or enlarged ways, which private shipyards will require, to handle their share o* the programme. Navy shipyards will be expanded.