DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE NAVY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 502, 4 February 1949, Page 6

DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE NAVY

announced that many capital ships would be scrapped [ OST of us do worry. We have worried ever since it was and others indefinitely laid up. So when Commander

Thomas

Woodroofte

R.N. (Ret.), walked last week into "The

Listener’ office we remembered that he had been attached to Naval Intelligence during the war, and asked him if our worries were justified. Here is his answer.

HE function of the Royal Navy in peacetime is to be ready at a moment’s notice to go wherever its services are needed-and this can be anywhere in the world. It may be required to further the diplomatic policy of the Government or to race with food and medical supplies to a famine area; to protect life and property by landing parties of armed men or improve our good relations with a foreign country by visits of courtesy. Within the space -of a few weeks a warship may be called upon to act as a diplomat, as a policeman, to give first aid and even to set up as a temporary orphanage. The Navy has performed all these duties for so long without any fuss or advertisement that the average Englishman has come to take it for granted that whatever happened his Navy was always there in the background. It came as a bit of a shock, therefore, when he opened his paper one day last year to read that, as far as he could make out, he hadn’t a Navy at all; that in Home waters only one cruiser and four destroyers were ready for sea, while the squadrons on foreign stations were all under strength. And because he had been given a fright and did not understand what was happening he got angry. Public Not Told Why For some reason which has never been explained the Government. had not seen fit to take the ordinary citizen into

its confidence and tell him what was occurring. It was no less than this: the Navy was in the process of transforming itself from the huge concern-man-ned largely by men who were in it for a short time-which it had become during the war, to the highly efficient and specialised service-manned by those who had signed on for continuous service -which it had been before the war. And instead of taking months over the business the Navy was doing it at one swoop by drastic reductions. As the numbers dwindled with general demobilisation so ships were paid off into reserve, But as new crews were trained so these ships would be recommissioned with men who had chosen the Navy as their life’s career. We were able to make this decision because the Navy was getting all the new, recruits jit needed aud we should be able to do without the men who under the National Service Act would serve only for a vear. Secret of Efficiency A warship can be efficient only when her company has been. welded into a team and has become a happy family. This she could never be if a large pro- Portion of her ratings were serving only for a twelvemonth; by the time a ship arrived on a foreign station, say out in China, she would have to send half her ship’s company home again: because their time was up. . She would lose the most valuable quality of a warship, her mobility, not counting the fact that these short-service men would never have a chance of being fully trained. By the end of the war the scientific and

material side of the Navy had grown so complex that a sailor could not be trained in a matter of weeks. The ramifications of radar, the advances in flying, the technique of gunnery and control had all changed so radically as a result of the war that the sailor of to-day has to be a highly qualified technician who must have been through various training schools before he can be advanced to a higher rating. By the autumn of last year enough long-service men had been trained for the Home Fleet to undertake a cruise to the West Indies, despatching some ships down to the Cape, and if the Vanguard had arrived in March as expected, she would have had a crew composed entirely of long-service ratings. Gradually as more men are trained, because it all takes time, more ships will be commissioned with longservice crews-by men who have chosen the Navy as"a career and not by men who have been pitchforked into it for

a year against their will. Within the year the Navy should once more_ be a compact and highly efficient service, manned entirely by those who have chosen it in preference to any other walk of life. It is significant that before the war the only Navy in the world manned by continuous service ratings was our own, and no Navy on either side was asked to do more or did it better than the Royal Navy. In this process of reorganisation a number of fine ships have had to be scrapped because they are out-of-date. This was unavoidable if the Navy as a whole is to function properly. Suppose we had kept a number of these old

ships on witout reconditioning them at a cost of millions. A man might serve a couple of years in, say, the Nelson with her out-of-date equipment and then be sent to the King George V. bristling with every latest device. He would be quite useless. One is always learning in the Navy and his time in the Nelson would have been a wasted couple of years.. You would not expect a man accustomed to driving a cart and horses suddenly to be able to drive and maintain a motor lorry.

Men More Important Than Ships The men of the Fleet are more important than the ships they sail in or the machines they opefate and the Navy is losing none of its essential spirit during this transition. After a recent visit to the Training Squadron at Portland, I came away with the feeling that there was nothing very much wrong with the Navy of to-day. The ships were clean, the brasswork winked in what sun there was, their decks were snowy white, while the men under training were keen, alert and smartly dressed. The discipline was extremely strict, but intelligently so and only good discipline can make happy ships-which the ships’ of the Training Squadron undoubtedly were, These keen young sailors with a pride in themselves and their Service are the nucleus of the Navy of to-mor-row, which will be the smart efficient fleet worthy of the great traditions handed down to it, as the Englishman expects his Navy to be. 4 "The Royal Navy is the common security of the whole Empire. If it ever fails to be that, then it will be useless for us to discuss any other subjects, and the maintenance of the Navy* in that position must therefore be the first care, not only of us at home, but of the self-governing Dominions beyond the seas." Sir Edward Grey said those words in the House of Commons 40 years ago, in 1909, when Germany was beginning to threaten our position. They have Jost none of their truth with the passage of time. Upon the Fleet the whole structure of our country’s life and future ultimately depend. Never yet has the Navy let the country down; under God’s ‘guidance it never will.