NAVIES IN TWO WARS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 December 1939, Page 6

NAVIES IN TWO WARS

CHANGE IN TACTICS. The fact that a German admiral has been urging the reinforcement of the submarine campaign by the use of surface ships stresses the difference between this war and the last. Twenty-five years ago the Germans were not reluctant to use their surface craft. Within four weeks of the outbreak of the Great War the Battle of Heligoland had been fought and the Germans had lost three cruisers and two destroyers. The hesitation about at once employing the Admiral Scheer and the Deutschland as raiders is all the more remarkable because, in the British view, these ships were built expressly lor that purpose. There are a number of ways in which the naval war of today differs from that of a generation ago. In three months during the last war Britain had lost a battleship, the Audacious, by a mine, eight cruisers, and a gunboat, and an armed merchant cruiser had run ashore. In this war. apart from the Royal Oak, the Reserve Fleet aircraft carrier Courageous, and a former Australian submarine, the Fleet has suffered no losses, apart from a couple of destroyers and the small patrol vessel Kittiwake sunk by mines. Except for the submarine campaign and a few air-raids, none of them made in force, there has been no attempt io dispute the British command of '.he sea. The use of aircraft against convoys, which was considered to be a main weapon in the German hand, has been barely seen. Even the two big ships the Germans sank were torpedoed in exceptional circumstances. The Courageous was operating 500 i miles from her base, two of her escort, destroyers were drawn oil to attack a submarin'd, mid another submarine i happened to be in just the right no- [ sition io make a "sitting shot. I lie U-boat which sank the Royal Oak penelralcd (he defences of Scapa Flow, •i feat which il is mil likely will bo possible again.