ARK ROYAL AGAIN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 89, 7 March 1941, Page 3

ARK ROYAL AGAIN

Still Attacking Italians HE Nazis took a strong dislike to ‘" Britain’s °25,000-ton aircraft-carrier Ark Royal, soon after the war began, and sank her many times by ®*radio, Italy, on entering the war, joined in the story and. her wireless, too, sank the Ark Royal on its own. Unfortunately for the Italians-as those at Cagliari and Genoa know too well-the Ark Royal is very much afloat. Her recent exploits in the Mediterranean were described by Lieut.Commander Thomas Woodrooffe recently from the BBC. On October 10, 1939, a Nazi airman called Francke was promoted to First Lieutenant in the Luftwaffe and decorated with the Iron Cross, First Class, by Marshal Goering. There was a ceremony, doubtless healths were drunk, and Field-Marshal Goering made a bombastic speech. This all occurred be~ cause Francke had sunk the Ark Royal with a thousand-pound bomb. The Ark Royal at this time was one of our latest aircraft-carriers, some 25,000 tons displacement, a complement of something like 1,500 men, and she carried 60 aircraft, You remember how after that the German wireless went on and on with their claims that the Ark Royal had been sunk. Then one day the American Attache, Captain Kirk, on a visit to a northern port, had lunch on board an aircraftcarrier, the Ark Royal. He reported to the Naval authorities in Washington that he had lunched on board the Ark Royal, but still Lord Haw-Haw claimed almost nightly that the aircraft-carrier had been sunk. ’ The next thing we heard about her was that she turned up at Rio de Janeiro about the time the Graf Spee was sunk, She was in there oiling, After that she berthed at Cape Town in December, and although she arrived unexpectedly, Cape Town, as usual, entertained her officers and ship’s company with the hospitality that anyone who has been on the Cape Station ‘will know was almost as strenuous for the guests as the war at sea. During the time she was operating in the Atlantic she steamed 75,000 milesthat is as far as three times round the earth at the Equator. In December of last year alone she steamed 11,000 miles. Her aeroplanes searched an area of five million square miles-that is an area one-and-a-half times the size of the whole of Europe. During this period she captured one of the most valuable prizes of the war, and when Mr, Churchill announced this fact he said: ‘We should be quite content to engage the entire German Navy using only the vessels which at one time and another they have declared they have destroyed." Her movements from the beginning of 1940 until Italy entered the war are still hidden from us, but you can take it that she was not idle, and the Italian broadcasts in March spoke openly of "the Ark Royal-a modern ship of the British Navy which was bombed and sunk by German propaganda." When Italy entered the war, this atti‘tude on the part of the Italians did not last long because, copying the fashion of their masters, their wireless started sinking the Ark Royal on its own.

On July 10 the Hood and the Ark Royal carried out a sweep on the Western Mediterranean; they met no surface craft but they were continually bombed. | There were no casualties to our person--nel and there was no danger to this force, but four of the enemy aircraft which attacked it were destroyed and seven others damaged. In spite of that the Italians claimed direct hits on both ships; they said ‘that fire had broken out on board the Hood and the Ark Royal had been severely damaged. And now the Ark Royal has popped up again, About the middle of November she carried out a successful reconnaissance eastwards along the Mediterranean | without encountering any enemy surface craft. She and her escorts cruised for a long time in waters which the Italians claim no’ enemy ship can sail. In the course of this sweep they carried out a heavy air raid on Cagliari airfield in Sardinia. If you look at the map and see how close and tucked in to the mainland Sardinia is, you would think that any force venturing anywhere near it would be immediately overwhelmed by not only bombers from the mainland but the main body of the Italian Fleet itself. Finally, the Ark Royal was reported to be part of the squadron which cuss cael Genoa on February 9.