NAVAL REPAIRS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 October 1943, Page 3

NAVAL REPAIRS

- « WELL AND CAPABLY HANDLED IN AUSTRALIA. 'SOME NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS. SOMEWHERE IN AUSTRALIA, October 26. Australia’s naval repair shipyards have made an important but little publicised contribution to the war effort of the United Nations in the Pacific. Damaged ships have been sent back to naval operations within three weeks. To build such ships, even in America, would require nine months. Making seaworthy a heavy cruiser with her bow blown off, and anothei with a quarter of her length chopped away have been among the major achievements of the Commonwealth s naval repair yards. At the same time, numbers of United Nations warships have been refitted and their armament brought up to date. . “One morning in 1942, people living near the shores of a Commonwealth port witnessed what looked like a strange spectacle of half a heavy cruiser coming in from the open sea under its own steam,” writes an Australian correspondent. “Her decks and a tuiret had been cut off, and fuel tanks ruptured, and dead men and ammunition lay scattered about. Under the water-line the vessel had been shored up with timber buttresses to preven the collapse of the bulkheads during the voyage. Her architect would find the reconstruction of a five-stoiy building after it had suffered a direct hit with a high-explosive bomb child s play compared with the task of making this vessel seaworthy. “A false snub bow had to be built and fitted on to the body by a huge job of ship’s plastic surgery. Repaired, the cruiser was considerably shorter than its original design, but it is again serving in the battle area. “When an American cruiser arrived at the shipyard with her bow and three decks blown off, a new straight bow instead of the previous bulbous bow was built into the vessel, which steamed to America. Though intended only as a temporary measure, the work was sufficiently robust to be accepted by the United States Navy?’ Employees at Australian naval shipyards have been increased to five times their pre-war number, and only the strain on Australia’s manpower resources has prevented their further increase.