NAVAL STRENGTH

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 August 1938, Page 6

NAVAL STRENGTH

BRITAIN’S BIG BUILDING INCREASE NEW DISPOSITIONS MADE POSSIBLE TALK OF FAR EASTERN BATTLE FLEET By Telegraph—Press Association. Copyright. (Recd This Day, 12.15 p.m.) LONDON, August 12. “Far-reaching changes in the distribution of the British and Dominion navies are foreshadowed as a result of the immense British building programme, enabling a reorganisation of squadrons of all foreign stations,” says Mr Hector Bywater, in the “Daily Telegraph.” “The 114 ships entering service before the end of 1941 include seven battleships, of which five are,of 35,000 tons, and two of 40.000 tons, twenty-four cruisers, six aircraft carriers, forty destroyers and twenty-one submarines. It is understood that the distribution of this new fleet, aggregating half the tonnage of the whole British Navy in 1935, will conform to prevailing political conditions, but the Home and Mediterranean Fleets will be stiffened by modern high-speed battleships. Meanwhile the formation of a' Far Eastern Battle Fleet is being considered.