THE MEDITERRANEAN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 November 1940, Page 6

THE MEDITERRANEAN

BRITISH STILL IN COMMAND. POSITION OF FRENCH FLEET. It was recently reported from'Germany that the French fleet had concluded successful manoeuvres off the south coast of France. Since the operations at Oran, Alexandria, and Dakar, France possesses only a fragment of her former fleet. She retains .only three of her eight battleships. The most modern and formidable of those is the 36,000-ton Strassburg, which was launched only in 1936, and which has powerful 13inch guns. She was the only battleship to escape from Oran and reach Toulon, where she has since lain.

The Vichy Government is also said to have control of two of the five prewar 22,000-ton battleships, of the Provence class; but, if it is true, as has been reported, that three of these were caught in British ports and another was sunk at Oran, the real number must be only one.

Of the nineteen cruisers, seven were of the new 10,000-ton type. At least three of these are now in British hands, while of the remainder one has probably been sunk. The French may also still have four light cruisers of varying size, but some of these are probably in distant parts of the colonial empire. About forty-five of these vessels must still be under the control of Vichy, and the fate of sixty out of France’s seventy torpedo-craft is not known. In view of the pressure which Hitler is believed to be applying in order to gain the possession, or at least the active co-operation of what remains of the French fleet, Britain’s immediate concern is how this may be used to threaten her control of the Western Mediterranean. The very small French craft, of which Britain managed to take over more than two hundred vessels, are not especially important; nor need the battleship and heavy cruiser position give any cause for concern. It is' the light cruisers and destroyers that constitute the main problem. At the very least, an alignment of French vessels of this type with the Axis navies will offset the advantage the British gained by the acquisition of fifty American destroyers. While the situation created would be in no way unmanageable. it cannot be denied that the handing-over of the French fleet to our enemies would greatly add to our immediate difficulties. A detailed quantitative analysis of the available information, however, docs not suggest that, in such a contingency, Britain would lose hei superiority even in the Western Mediterranean. much less her commanding position in the outer seas.