WAR ON SHIPPING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 March 1941, Page 5

WAR ON SHIPPING

- THE ATLANTIC PASSAGE VIEW OF AMERICAN EXPERTS SUBSTITUTE FOR CONVOY SYSTEM. EXTENSION OF DESTROYER PATROLS. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) NEW YORK, March 19. Shipping circles reported today that American experts had advised abandonment of the convoy system and recommend instead a lane of destroyers across the Atlantic in an effort to thwart the increasing German threat to vital war supplies from the United States of America. American shipping experts told British that the convoy system must be revised if the steadily mounting toll of shipping losses was to be checked. Criticism of the convoy-system is based on two points: First, it bunches groups of inadequately-protected ships into a mass target for Axis air, surface and undersea raiders; secondly, it reduces the efficient use of badlyneeded bottoms, since fast merchantmen lose days while waiting for convoys to assemble and then must reduce their speed to that of the slowest unit. The new plan- would call for a constant patrol of some 50 destroyers along the 2000-mile great circle route from Labrador to the British Isles. Each of 40 destroyers would patrol a 50-mile sector of the Atlantic 10 times daily, establishing a lane across the Atlantic, every inch of which would be policed by a warship every two to three hours. At no time, shipping experts pointed out, would a destroyer be more than an hour’s distance from any merchantman in the lane.

TWO U=BOATS SUNK TWO HUNDRED SHIPS SAFELY CONVOYED. LATEST NEWS OF CRUCIAL BATTLE. LONDON, March 20. Two U-boats sunk and 200 ships safely convoyed is the latest news of the battle raging over the vast Atlantic wastes. U-boat and surface raiders are out ruthlessly prosecuting the counterblockade, menacing the north-western approaches to Britain. The battle will be veiled in official secrecy and thicker Atlantic fogs, but indubitably is crucial. These 200 ships passed through deadly waters in the last few days and alarms were plentiful.