SUBMARINE OBSOLETE

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 992, 7 June 1930, Page 31

SUBMARINE OBSOLETE

BEATEN BY “ANTI” DEVICES “As a naval weapon the submarine is much over-rated. In no future war will it be able to play the conspicuous part it did in the last one,” the naval correspondent of the London “Observer” wrote recently. “How to counter successfully a submarine offensive was one of the lessons learned in the war. And it was so well learned that the submarine has been reduced almost to impotence. Within the past 10 years it lias grown larger, and on paper more formidable. But the invention of anti-submarine devices of one sort or another has progressed also. Special schools exist for training sailors in the use of certain instruments which are able to detect the presence of a submarine and locate it with uncanny accuracy. Neither on the surface nor beneath it is she any longer a free rover of the seas. She cannot rove at all. The 'anti’ devices have her beaten. The argument that the submarine is the weapon of the weaker Power, and that it should be retained as a defensive weapon only, is based on fallacious premises. Inefficient weapons are of small use to the weaker Powers, and in war defensive weapons are employed offensively at every opportunity. From a purely utilitarian point of view all navies would benefit by the abolition of the submarine. Her day is practically over, and the money spent on maintaining under-water flotillas might well be devoted to more useful craft, or —better still —kept in the taxpayer's pocket.”