PRODUCTION OF AMERICA

Southland Times, Issue 24887, 29 October 1942, Page 5

PRODUCTION OF AMERICA

Shipping Position Improved

(Rec. 9 p.m.) NEW YORK, Oct. 27. “The Navy has hit the enemy some savage blows. We have just begun to fight,” said the Secretary of the Navy, Colonel Frank Knox, broadcasting. “We are producing merchantmen fasterthan the enemy can sink them and he is not sinking them so fast any more either.

“We are producing aircraft, bombs and trained crews in such quantity that Germany no longer has unchallenged mastery of the air. Ships, aircraft and trained men are coming faster now, but still not fast enough. We have a long way. to go to do properly a world-wide job of patrolling, escorting and fighting all the seas.

“Bit by bit American men and material are piling up in front of the enemy, but the distances are enormous and the problems infinite. There has never been enough anywhere. Submarines have taken an awful toll of previous ships and men and the enemy has pushed us back to the waters of Australia and the bank of the Volga, but the picture is changing now. “The United States has paid an awful price for its negligence after the last war. We must not make the same mistake twice, but must insist on the maintenance of American naval power, at least during the transition period at the end of the present war.” “TOUGH, STIFF FIGHT” Frenzied Japanese Drive (Rec. 7 p.m.) WASHINGTON, Oct. 27. The' Secretary of the Navy, Colonel Frank Knox, at a Press conference, was asked whether in view of the losses

this was the United States’s blackest Navy Day celebration yet. "In some respects it is the most notable Navy Day in all history, because the Navy has never put up a gamer fight,” he replied. “All the indications are that the Japanese, goaded by continual bombing and realization that their march of conquest has been stalled, are throwing in everything in a frenzied drive to crack the Allied front in the Pacific. The situation is about the same as before. It is a darned, tough, stiff fight.” ROYAL NAVY PRAISED SUCCESSES AGAINST AXIS (Rec. 11.55 p.m.) WASHINGTON, October 27. “The British Navy has carried on a magnificent fight against the Axis throughout the war,” said Rear-Admiral William D. Leahy, President Roosevelt’s Chief of Staff, speaking at an American Navy Day dinner. “It has sunk 65 Axis warships, not counting a large number of submarines and smaller craft. Assisted by the Fleet Air Arm, it has sunk, captured or damaged nearly 7,000,000 tons of German and Italian merchant shipping.”