1917 and 1940

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 87, 21 February 1941, Page 3

1917 and 1940

Germany’s War on Shipping ‘AR. GREENWOOD’S statement in the House of Commons recently that in the matter of shipping losses the position to-day is very much like that of April, 1917, was immediately qualified when he said that the position was not as bad as it might have been. The resemblance between the conditions of 1917 and those of to-day is indeed one of kind rather than of degree. The position in April, 1917, was not only one of great danger, but there were then no means of reducing that danger in sight. Admiral Sims, of the American Navy, recorded a conversation with Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, then First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, in which Jellicoe told him that he could see no means at the moment of reducing the losses of merchant shipping. More Destroyers Needed There is no such gloomy outlook today. So far as the losses to-day are the result of U-boat attack, the high rate is due solely to shortage of anti-submarine craft for convoy escorts. The causes of that shortage are perfectly well known-the defection of the French Navy, the addition of Italy to our enemies, and the necessity for taking special measures against the danger of invasion — and the shortage is in process of being steadily made good. Destroyers, both from British shipyards and from the American Navy, are steadily coming into service, and, thanks to the present efficiency of the Asdic and depth charge, it only needs a sufficiency of destroyers to restore the rate of destruction of U-boats to what it was in the early months of the present war. So far as losses are the result of the new methods of air attack the position is not quite so simple. A new technique of counter action has to be devised to deal with the new form of attack, but that problem, it is to be hoped, is already on the way to solution. In any case, the air threat to shipping is nothing like so great as was the threat of the U-boat in 1917. High Seas Raider There is a third method. of destruction in use by the enemy — the raider on the high seas, either a disguised merchant ship or a solitary man-of-war of more formidable strength. The threat of the raider, however, is not on the level of that of the U-boat or the aircraft. If he acts so as to do a substantial amount of destruction of shipping his career is certain to be short, for he will soon be located and destroyed by superior force. If, on the other hand, he seeks to prolong his survival by evading the defenders, he will do little execution. The Admiral Graf Spee preferred the second alternative, with the result that her bag was no more than nine ships in three months. Other raiders seem to have acted and to be acting on the same principle; that menace should soon be well in -hand.

Actual Figures Finally, a glance at the actual figures of sinkings shows the matter in true perspective. In April, 1917, the peak month of the last war, Germany succeeded in sinking very nearly 900,000 tons of shipping, of which some 550,000 was British. From that peak the losses were steadily brought dewn, and by the end of 1917 they were about 400,000 tons per month, of which nearly 300,000 were British. In the present war, losses of merchant shipping were brought down to a very

iow figure in March last, in which month the whole of the German Navy appears to have been engaged in preparation for the Norwegian campaign of April. Since then, owing to the causes already noted, they have steadily mounted but they have only now reached about the level to which they were brought down by the end of 1917. That level, as Mr. Greenwood said, is far higher than it should be; but the position, as he went on to explain, is not one of imminent danger.