PLANES v. BATTLESHIPS.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 March 1921, Page 6

PLANES v. BATTLESHIPS.

FRENCH NAVAL EXPERIMENT. naval circles are tremendously interested in experiments soon to be carried out by the French navy as *to what effect aeroplane bombs will have when dropped on the deck of a fullyprotected battleship. The British navy was equally interested in the tests recently made in Chesapeake Bay on the old battleship Indiana, but the French experiments are to be along lines which will J>e more indicative of what constructional 'course Grkat Britain will follow if it is finally decided that big ships must continue to be built, despite improvements in both submarines and aeroplanes. The long discussion in connection with the big ship controversy now going on has developed a general belief that the submarines have been conquered. Even the foremost protagonists of capital ships, however, admit that aeroplanes are still an unknown factor in naval warfare.

During the waj* there was but little direct experience which is now of value. One British airman scored a direct hit the deck of a German torpedo boat, the A-40, lying at a dock. The A-40 was sunk. She was ->a small torpedo boht, and of course her decks were of the lightest steel plates. It was shortly afterwards observed that the A-40 was salved without much difficulty, and recommissioned as good as new. The records also show one or two merchantmen sunk by air bombs, but it took more than one to finish them. It is now reported that the French navy is determined to sett! 3 the point at the expense of some former enemy warships now in her possession. The first vessel chosen for the experiments is the former Austrian armored cruiser Prinz Eugene, which has a fairly heavy armored deck. Her decks are now being reinforced at the Toulon Navy Yard, and when everything valuable in the way of machinery has been taken off. the ship will be towed to Rea and the best French aviators called upon to drop their heaviest bombs to find out whether they can score hits under ordinary conditions of combat and what damage the hits will do. The test is also intimately connected with another natal problem , developed at the battle of Jutland and elsewhere. Naval armor has hitherto been the- heaviest about the belt. In the last .conflicts this fact has been met by the development of high angle fire, which brought down shells plunging vertically upon the lesser protected decks. Some of the severest casualties sustained upon either side in the Jutland fight were caused by shells piercing magazines, thus destroying the battle cruisers more effectively than by the use of torpedoes.