Cruiser and Aircraft Cost

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 276, 11 February 1928, Page 1

Cruiser and Aircraft Cost

EIGHT HUNDRED MILLIONS U.S. Estimate Increased Five-Fold —r By Cable.- Press Association Copyright. Kecd. 9.40 a.m. WASHINGTON, Friday. ACCORDING to the official Navy Department estimate submitted to the House of Representatives Naval Committee, the proposed five-year naval programme, with the construction already begun, would cost £835,285,200. Seventy-one new ships would be laid down in the five years beginning 1929, and would be completed by 1937. The expenditure would be spread over the period from 1929 to 1937.

gOME members of the committee claim that these figures prove their contention that the programme would cost far more than the £160,000,000 originally submitted. The total estimate includes an annual outlay of approximately £29,400,000 for nine years, plus g maintenance appropriation of between £60,000,000 and £70,000,000 yearly. The grand total includes airplanes and personnel necessary to man five aircraft carriers and 25 cruisers. A total of 1,490 new planes would be necessary, and an increase of 20,000 men would be required to man all the proposed additional ships. ONE-SIDED SUGGESTION NEW YORK, Thursday. The president of Columbia University, Dr. N. M. JJutler, in an address

to the Pilgrim Society on the occasion of its 25th anniversary, suggested that a reduction of naval armaments would result if the United States adhered to Article 16 of the covenant of the League of Nations, imposing a blockade upon aggressor nations, with the reservation that the blockade shall not be directed against the nations in the Western Hemisphere. -—A. and N.Z.