NAVAL VISIT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 March 1941, Page 4

NAVAL VISIT

AMERICAN TRAINING DETACHMENT CRUISERS & DESTROYERS. ARRIVING AT AUCKLAND TODAY. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. A detachment of the United States fleet, consisting of two cruisers, Brooklyn and Savannah, and four destroyers, Case, Shaw, Cummings and Tucker. all under the command of Captain E. S. Stone, U.S.N., in the flagship Brooklyn, will arrive in Auckland on a training cruise today and depart on Thursday. This announcement was made last evening by the Prime Minister. Mr Fraser. Reference to the visit to New Zealand of ships of the United State Fleet was made by the Prime Minister at a meeting yesterday afternoon to express gratitude to the United States for the passing of the Lease and Lend Bill. On Mr Fraser’s motion a resolution was adopted extending a welcome to the officers and men to New Zealand. “It is fitting that today a section, of the American Fleet should be almost at our shores,” he said. “Tomorrow we will welcome into Waitemata harbour two cruisers of the American Navy and four destroyers. The officers and men will get a welcome from friends to friends from brothers to brothers. "We hope that we shall be able to see them in Wellington and welcome them to our capital city. They are here on exercises but are making a friendly call and those of us who remember the great welcome that the American Fleet got in every port visited in 1925, will agree that we will give them as great, or even greater, welcome, because today we are welcoming those representatives of a nation which will place—and has placed—the whole of its resources at the disposal of the cause of freedom and democracy."