TORPEDOED BY BRITISH SUBMARINE
German Battle-Cruisers and Prinz Eugen Probably All Damaged FIRST LORD SURVEYS WAR AT SEA WORK OF THE NAVY AND FLEET AIR ARM LONDON, February 26. On Monday the British submarine Trident torpedoed a 10,000-ton German cruiser of the Prinz Eugen class oil the Norwegian coast, Mr A. V. Alexander, First Lord of the Admiralty, announced in the House of Commons today. An air reconnaissance showed that a warship of this type was at Trondheim and was down by the stern. One of the cruiser’s escorting destroyers may also have been hit. HITS ON ENEMY SUPPLY SHIPS Another British submarine, operating in the Mediterranean, scored hits with three torpedoes on an enemy convoy of supply ships. Mr Alexander stated that photographs indicated that both the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau had been badly damaged in their dash from Brest. One of them is in dry dock at Kiel and the other is docked at Wilhelmshaven. If, as was probable, it was the Prinz Eugen that was torpedoed off Norway, all the warships which escaped from Brest had been damaged. Since the beginning of the war, said Mr Alexander, British submarines had sunk or damaged 326 ships, including 64 warships. The Fleet Air Arm had made 121 attacks on enemy ships at sea, 200 attacks on enemy ships in harbour, and 200 raids on shore objectives. The Fleet Air Arm had fought 600 air combats, had shot down or severely damaged 260 enemy planes at sea, and had sunk or severely damaged 45 warships and 335,000 tons of enemy shipping. MERCHANT SHIPS HIT BACK Seventy-six enemy planes had been shot down for certain by merchant ships and fishing vessels, besides 40 probably destroyed and 89 damaged. Last year 13,000 anti-craft guns had been fitted to merchant ships and 4800 ships given other antiaircraft devices. THE NAVY AND ITS TASK The Navy, said Mr Alexander, had expanded to three or four times its pre-war strength. The Battle of the Atlantic had developed into the Battle of the Seven Seas. U-boats were being constructed on an unprecedented scale, Though the number of ships convoyed was larger than ever the losses were still under .5 per cent. Shipping losses began to fall last May and continued until December, when a new phase of the war at sea began. The reasons for the decrease were American assistance and improved methods of dealing with the U-boat menace. The R.A.F. was also giving valuable aid by providing shipborne fighter escort. The entry of Japan had opened up vast new danger areas for our shipping. Losses in the Pacific had been considerable, but the Allied Navies were recovering from the heavy blows in the Far East and a great programme of construction was being pressed forward. A proportion of the ships lost in the Pacific was designed solely for local trade on the Chinese coast,
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 February 1942, Page 3
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479TORPEDOED BY BRITISH SUBMARINE Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 February 1942, Page 3
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