MERCHANT SHIPPING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 May 1941, Page 6

MERCHANT SHIPPING

ENEMY LOSSES SINCE WAR BEGAN NEARLY THREE MILLION TONS. ATTEMPTS TO USE COASTAL TRAFFIC. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 11.45 a.m.) RUGBY, May 29. Nearly three million tons of enemy merchant shipping have been__ disposed of between the beginning of the war and the middle of May, it is stated in authoritative circles in London. The figures are: German ships captured or seized. 61. totalling 274,000 tons; sunk or scuttled. 285 ships, totalling 1.499,000 tons. Italian ships captured or seized. 39, totalling 183,000 tons; sunk or scuttled, 176 ships, totalling 899,000 tons. Germany therefore has lost 346 ships, totalling i,773,000 tons, and Italy 215 ships, totalling 1.082,000 tons. In addition, 38 ships of other countries, in Axis service, totalling 67000 tons, have been disposed of. Bomber and Coastal Command aircraft alone sank, or certainly hit, between March 13 and May 14, 61 ships off enemy-occupied " coasts —a great deal of this shipping being coastal traffic. The latter figure provides telling evidence of enemy efforts to use coastal traffic to a maximum to solve transport problems wherever possible. That the enemy is still trying to circumvent the British blockade by sea is shown by the- fact that in a recent week, April 23 to April 30. fourteen German and nineteen Italian ships were accounted for. mostly sunk. In addition evidence has reached this country of the extreme unwillingness of Norwegian crews to sail, and of intense efforts to recruit Scandinavian crews for the German service.