U-BOAT MENACE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 May 1943, Page 3

U-BOAT MENACE

ELIMINATION IN FOUR TO SIX MONTHS

PREDICTED BY AMERICAN MINISTER.

NAZI SPOKESMAN ADMITS TEMPORARY SETBACK.

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) NEW YORK, May 30. "The scoreboard for U-boat destruction in the last four weeks shows that the Atlantic menace will be eliminated within four to six months," declared Mr James Forrestal, Under-Secretary for the Navy, when christening six destroyer escorts at Philadelphia. Mr Forrestal revealed that half the fighting ships completed in May will be such vessels. “Next year this will become the largest single class of warships in the American Navy. Escort vessels are built in half the time for half the cost of destroyers, and are designed for the single purpose of smashing the submarine blockade.” The dogged British-American efforts to destroy U-boats by using new defensive devices and increasing naval ana air escorts may succeed temporarily in keeping down, the sinkings, or even baffling U-boats for a time, but they cannot affect the total result, said the German naval spokesman, LieutenantCommander Rudolf Krohne, at Berlin. The German leaders had deliberately concentrated on U-boat warfare. Üboat attacks were now being carried out throughout the vastness of the oceans according to a single plan.