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To September 30, 1942
United States........................................................................................................................ 1622
The Yorklown—Shot-Resistant Glass—Various Notes
Great Britain......................................................................................................................... 1627
Prize Money—High Direction of Air Power—H.M.A.C. Eagle— Battle Dress for the Navy—Various Notes
Germany...................................................................................................................................... 1635
R.A.F. Targets
Merchant Shipping
U.S.S.R.................................................................................................... 1639
Citadel of the Caucasus
Other Countries......................................................................................... 1642
Brazil—Ceylon—India
Aviation................................................................................................................................. • •
Air Fortresses vs. Spitfires—Wright Single-Cylinder Aircraft-Engine Test Stand—Various Notes
1647
1647
Merchant Marine Arctic Convoy
Miscellaneous.........................
Naval Developments
1621
UNITED STATES The “Yorktown”
Washington Post, September 20, by Comdr. Irving Day Wiltsie, U.S.N.,[1] as told to Gerold Frank (copyright, 1942, by the New York Journal-American. Distributed by International News Service). —Let me pay tribute, first of all, to the gallant men of the Yorktown. They were a tough, hardened bunch of fighting men, who shot well, fought hard, and abandoned their ship only when they were personally commanded to do so. They had taken part in the successful Marshall-Gilbert Islands raid. They had raided Salamau and Lae, on the north coast of New Guinea. For 104 consecutive days they had kept the Yorktown at sea. They had continuously attacked Tulagi, capital of a group of the Solomon Islands, from before dawn to dark; on the day following, they sank a Japanese carrier; and on the day after that, they took part with the carrier Lexington in the great Coral Sea Battle—that first time a Japanese invasion fleet had been forced to turn tail without carrying out its objective. During that Tuesday, June 2, and Wednesday, June 3, we found ourselves north of Midway and our planes located the Japanese fleet. By their position, it seemed evident the Japanese would attack some time Thursday. Thursday dawned bright and sunny. We followed our usual routine. The men, each wearing steel helmets, took their places at their battle stations. The gunnery officer, Commander Ernest Davis, a big slow-speaking Southerner, took his usual position with a huge megaphone—we called it “the bull horn”—and drawled, as he did every morning. “This ... is ... a .. . drill.” Then he and the men went through their gunnery exercises.
At 11:30 a.m. we launched our planes. At noon we were given reason to believe that a Jap plane had located part of our fleet, but had not yet located us. We waited. The men at their battle stations were on the alert to repel attack. Suddenly, far off, about 10 miles away, small puff balls of smoke appeared in the sky. That was our first inkling of the attack. What we were seeing were Japanese planes bursting into flame as our planes attacked them. They were enemy bombers bound for us—20 in all, we learned later. Commander Davis was up there now with his bull horn. That Georgia drawl was as calm as ever. But he had added a word: “This ... is .. . not... a ... drill,” he was saying, “train on enemy, bearing .”
Now it was one o’clock and we could see what had happened in the dog fight 10 miles off. Eleven of the 20 Japanese planes were shot down, but 9 managed to break through, and they were making for us with everything they had, and our fighter planes hot on their tail. Now over the bull horn came Commander Davis’ lazy drawl: “Commence firin’.” Then we were in the thick of it, for those Japs were really lugging the mail. They would wait until they were on top of us before they’d let go. Our gunnery was excellent. We hit one Jap plane, I remember, knocked a wing and part of his tail off, and the windshield from the pilot’s cockpit fell on our forward port anti-aircraft platform—that’s how close he was. And even then, headed for death, he managed to drop his bomb and get one of three hits they managed to score on us. The entire encounter took about 10 minutes, but they were 10 of the busiest minutes we had ever known. Men stood at their battle stations, blood streaming down their faces, fires breaking out all about them, and fired with amazing skill. Of nine Japanese planes that had come through, five were shot down by our guns before they could do an ounce of damage.
The remaining four dropped bombs and were shot down either while dropping them or before they could get away. During that time Captain Buckmaster was snapping directions at me as he hurried from one side of the bridge to the other.
“Hard right rudder! Hard left rudderl” and we were doing our best to dodge the bombs. Everyone was working like hell, all the guns were shooting, we were making all the speed possible, zigzagging and maneuvering radically to make the Japs’ point of aim as difficult as possible. The Japs went into the sea. Not only had they started fires everywhere, but they had put the engineering plant partly out of commission. While fire-fighters under Commander Dixie Kiefer, the executive officer, many in asbestos suits, hurried into the depths of the ship armed with foam extinguishers, water and chemicals, the boiler crew achieved a real chapter of heroism. One boiler had a split casing. These boilers, you know, sit just above the keel, far under the water line. That room was full of fumes, smoke from the fuel oil, mixed with pungent fumes of explosives in the Jap bomb. But the crew donned gas masks and worked like fury down there, so that the engineers were able to get the engineering plant into commission. We had lost a great deal of speed. If they’d left their stations then, we’d never have got going. They kept up enough steam from that one boiler to keep the auxiliary machinery going and so allow repairs to be made speedily. Within 30 minutes, we’d gotten up fair headway. We were pushing that speed up every minute, too. We knew the attack would continue. We remained at our stations, and presently our bomber and torpedo planes started returning. But we still had fires on deck, smoke was still pouring up, our speed was still dangerously slow and we thought it better not to take them on at that time. So they were directed by radio to proceed to Midway or to land on another carrier. It was now 1:45 p.m. I was in the conning tower. My talker suddenly turned to me: “Enemy planes sighted about 15 miles northwest.” There were about 18 planes. These planes came in very rapidly, and very low, and they were immediately attacked by our anti-torpedo patrol, planes. One young fighter pilot took off, and 40 seconds later he turned to find a Jap plane on his tail. He turned and shot him down. At the same time our A.A. guns and those on every other ship in the vicinity went after the Japs.
In the midst of this, we felt a terrific jar. The entire ship shook. My talker at my side was knocked off his feet. I staggered for a second—then came another terrific jar—and I put out my hand to steady myself against the bulkhead. We had been hit twice, within 30 seconds, by two torpedoes. Smoke billowed up into the sky. We began to list badly. I stepped out on the bridge. Commander Kiefer, the executive officer, was still down directing the fire fighting. I heard the captain’s talker say, “damage control officer reports the ship cannot be prevented from capsizing, sir.” A few seconds passed. Then the talker looked up. “Telephone’s gone dead, sir.” The entire telephonic system was out of commission. The ship began to list even more badly. Captain Buckmaster ordered all those below decks to “lay top side”— come up on the upper decks—lest they be trapped below if the ship capsized. By now the ship was listing so badly that walking on the deck was like walking on a shingled roof. You could not take a step unless you held on to a guide rope.
Captain Buckmaster continued to get reports. We had no power available; the list was now so great the guns could not be served with ammunition; we believed that at any moment the attack would be resumed and we could protect neither the ship nor the men. Captain Buckmaster turned to me and said in a resigned voice: “Pass the word to abandon ship.”
I turned and shouted it, and it was taken up on every side, and from every side the words were repeated back, and echoed about me:
“Abandon ship . . . Abandon ship . . . Abandon ship . . .
Let me say this: None of the men wanted to go. We actually had to command them, personally, almost force them, to leave. I went down to the flight deck and made my way aft to the after-boat pocket to supervise removal of the wounded. Meanwhile, lines and nets were lowered over the side. We lowered no boats because of the list: It was impossible to do so. We tossed overboard about 100 Corley rafts, which are huge, doughnutlike cork rafts, each carrying from 40 to 50 men. Then, over the side went the men, the whole complement, into water covered with muck and fuel oil, but thank God, not with burning oil. We ran up the “I-am- abandoning-ship” flag. Our colors still flew.
Though the men were reluctant to leave the ship, they were in the best of spirits in the water—cheering, wisecracking, helping each other all the time.
The problem of the wounded was a pressing one. Some were fearfully hurt. We tried lowering them to the men already in the rafts, but this proved awkward. The men in the rafts would do their best to keep the wounded above the oily, muck- filled water, so their wounds would not become infected, but they could not do that for long. And while boats from our other ships were coming to our aid, they invariably filled up with the men they picked up in the water and turned back before they reached us.
I stood there and waved my hand and shouted at the top of my voice and finally a boat came to us and we lowered the wounded into that. Commander Kiefer, who was now in charge forward, nearly lost his life because of his unselfish heroism. He couldn’t prevail on one man, who couldn’t swim, to get over the side. So he put a rope around the man and began to lower him over the side into a raft. The rope got away from him and in trying to grab it again, to save the man from injury, he burned his hands terribly. When the time came for him to go over the side down a rope, his hands were so painful he could not keep his grasp of the rope, and had to let go. He fell about 40 feet, cracked his ankle, broke it against the side of the ship, and landed in the water. Nonetheless, he refused to be pulled into a near-by raft, lest he overload it, but insisted upon swimming alongside of it until he was picked up by a destroyer. I slid down the ropes into the boat with the wounded. They were all in bad shape, for those who could possibly walk had been helped by the other members of the crew. I was picked up by the same destroyer that picked up Commander Kiefer, and since he was disabled, I took over the duties of executive officer and second in command. It was now shortly after 4 o’clock. By 5:30 all the men had been picked up. On the destroyer’s deck we stood for a moment and watched the Yorklown closely. She was listing badly. It seemed likely that she would turn over any minute. She was down to the hangar deck on the port side and at least one fire was blazing furiously. It was dark then, and there was nothing we could do, for lights anywhere would betray our position to the enemy. We spent our time caring for the wounded. Two of our men died during the night. We buried them there. But the dead on the Yorklown had to lie where they fell. That night and the rest of the next day— Friday, June 5—our destroyer joined others of a task force and went after the Japs. Then we learned that they had pulled up stakes and gone away. We returned to the vicinity of the Yorklown. A fire still burned down below. She was still afloat. It was decided then that we would go aboard her at dawn with a salvage crew—Captain Buckmaster, myself, and a group of 100 key men and officers— to see what what we could do. By this time Admiral Nimitz had ordered salvage tugs to come in and take the Yorktown in tow.
Our first duty that Saturday morning, however, was to the dead. For an hour and a half our men went through all parts of the ship, to find the dead, and carefully carried their bodies to one spot on the deck. There, one after another, we sewed them into weighted canvas bags, placed them on a board, under an American flag; Captain Buckmaster read the funeral service, and one by one we buried them at sea. Now the destroyer Hammann came alongside to help us. She almost touched us on the starboard, or high side. She gave us water pressure so we could put out the fire. We all set to work. About five o’clock that Saturday afternoon I was on the port side watching the men cut away heavy weights with acetelyne torches when suddenly the A.A. gun sounded. We all dashed to the other side to see what it was. As I turned, I caught a glimpse of a torpedo whizzing by. It was the first of four launched by a Japanese submarine. A second later the ship was jarred terrifically three times in succession. She jumped like a stung man each time. We learned later that the men manning the A.A. gun actually had seen the submarine launch her torpedoes. We had been hit by two of the torpedoes. The Hammann had been struck directly amidships by the third. She began to go down almost at once. Her men started jumping over the side. Our ropes were still down our sides; we began pulling her men up on deck. At that moment the Hammann's depth bombs, set to explode at a certain point below water, went off. Many men were injured then. The Hammann's captain was blown far from the ship. When they picked him up later, he had a dead man on each arm. Apparently, swimming along in a dazed condition, he had instinctively sought to rescue the dead men he found. Men went down the ropes again into rafts and were picked up by a tug. Meanwhile, three of our destroyers went after the submarine. They chased her for the remaining daylight hours, finally forced her to the surface—I suppose by depth bombs—and then engaged the sub with gunfire. It was an unforgettable scene, as the sun was sinking, to see those three destroyers catch up with the submarine, force her to the surface and then pounce on her. She went down very quickly. She may have simply submerged; but we think she was badly damaged and may be presumed to be lost. We listened for her but did not hear her again.
After that was over, the destroyers came alongside and took us off. Now it was night of June 6. Somewhere out in the darkness lay the Yorktown, still afloat. And we decided that night, that if she still floated when dawn came again, we would again go out to her, and again try our best to salvage her. But when the sun rose the Yorktown was completely over on her side. Two planes still clung to her deck. As day broke fair and clear, the Yorktown was hard over on her beam ends on the port side with just the turn of the bilge showing above water. From that position, as we watched, she gradually submerged by the stern and sank very quietly.
Shot-Resistant Glass
New York Herald Tribune, September 2.—Men turning an inferno of flame into flawless glass, alongside women making glass “sandwiches” in refrigerated rooms, are erecting a bulletproof wall around America’s Air Forces and giving eyes to its tank drivers. In the heart of Toledo’s cauldron of war industry, these things and many more are being contributed to the nation’s war power by the Libbey-Owens-
Ford Glass Company. “The glass industry is a war casualty,” John D. Biggers, president of the company, said today in introducing the group of newspaper women who have been touring war industries from coast to coast for three weeks through arrangements made by the National Association of Manufacturers. This is their last stop. “With the stoppage of the production of automobiles, the curtailment of construction of buildings and the dropping off of sundry other markets the glass industry enjoys in peace time,” Mr. Biggers explained, “we have lost many of our normal reasons for existence and have taken the opportunity offered by the lull to turn our efforts and energies toward contributing what we can to America at war.”
Out of this switch of purpose are coming some of the country’s most vital war weapons. Libbey-Owens-Ford has three plants in Toledo which together produce more varieties of special glass than a layman could dream up. They include windshields for all jeeps turned out by Willys- Overland Motors, Inc., designer of this war’s most miraculous little vehicle and producer of half of them; prism glass and prisms themselves for tank periscopes, bullet-resistant glass for airplane windshields, heat-strengthened glass for airfield landing lights, and bits of crystal, called “precision” glass, for fine instruments supplied to the Navy under prime contract.
“War needs are teaching us to do things that technicians once thought impossible,” said Mr. Biggers. Curved glass, for instance, designed and fabricated to meet the needs of airports, is one of countless examples. Today it takes its place in airplane noses.
Precision glass for Army and Navy use, one of the most pinched bottle-necks in war production, is being supplied to the Navy by Libbey-Owens-Ford in amounts that are gradually relieving the pressure. A bit of precision glass for the bomb-sight of a battle plane turned out by the Vultee Aircraft Corporation is extracted from a sheet of plate glass through a highly scientific process of detection.
Not more than 7 or 8 inches will usually be found in a sheet of plate glass that measures 12 by 18 feet. It takes hours for detection and extraction. Libbey-Owens- Ford makes some 50,000 square feet of plate glass a day, however, so the supply of precision glass going to the Navy is considerable.
Women cannot handle the job of manning the giant machines that turn seas of liquid fire, burning at 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit, into acres of plate glass. They are, however, doing all the work of producing towering bolts of plastic material that looks like oiled white silk but, when laid between sheets of flat or curved glass and pressed into transparency, toughens the glass into a war weapon.
Various Notes
A 360 per cent increase in naval ship construction over a year ago was reported July 23 by the House Naval Committee. In a progress summation of the Navy’s construction program, the committee said American industry was sending vessels down the ways far sooner than anticipated.
The report said that 3,230 naval ships, in the classifications of combatant and auxiliary ships and patrol and mine craft, were building as of June 30,1942, as compared with 697 a year ago. In a breakdown of the scheduled program for ship completion during the fiscal year of 1941, the committee said that 60 combatant vessels were actually completed as compared with 48 expected. Ten auxiliaries were completed as compared with 9 predicted, and 143 patrol craft as compared with 133. Only construction of mine and district craft fell short of the goal, with 280 completed as compared with a schedule of 394. Delay in that category was ascribed to design difficulties, inexperience of many of the building yards, and inadequate productive capacity of the sources of supply for propelling machinery. So sharp has been the speed-up in' ship construction that the time for completing a battleship has been cut from the pre-emergency average of 42 months to 36 months, aircraft carriers from 45 months to 17.3 months, heavy cruisers from 36.4 to 22.7, light
cruisers, 22.3 to 8.8, destroyers, 27.2 to 11.6 and submarines, 21.2 to 11.5.
For the protection of shipping and water-front properties in the harbors of the nation the Coast Guard is building a fleet of 101 small fireboats, the contract for which has been awarded to the Handley Engineering Service of Prospect, Ohio. This contract, which was negotiated on a cost-plus- fixed-fee basis, provides for the completion of the boats by the end of September, 1942.
The new all-steel fireboats will have a length over-all of 30 feet 6 inches, a molded beam of 10 feet 6 inches, a draft of 18 inches, and a displacement of 18,500 pounds. Each of the boats will be equipped with 4 gasoline engines. The hull will be of simple straight-line construction consisting of a flat bottom, straight-flared sides, and a deck with cockpit forward and amidship trunk. Fire-fighting equipment aboard the new boats will include 4 pumping units, supplying two monitors forward, and 4 hose outlets. The new boats will be officially numbered CG-7600 to CG-7700, inclusive.—Marine Progress, August.
The Navy announced today that a new training station for the Seabees, the Navy’s construction battalions, will begin operation about October 15 on a 4,500-acre tract near Williamsburg, Va., and will accommodate 26,000 officers and men. The installation will be the largest naval-construction training station yet established. The Navy added that “it is necessitated by the growing importance of the construction battalions.” On the rough terrain of hills, fields, woods, dense brush, swamp and beach, the Seabees will practice construction methods which later they will use at advance bases of American naval forces all over the world. However, the Navy said that construction of the station itself is being done by private companies. It has been named the Naval Construction Station Peary, after Rear Admiral Robert E. Peary, discoverer of the North Pole, who was one of the most distinguished officers of the Navy’s Civil Engineer Corps, of which the Seabees are a part.—New York Herald Tribune, September 23.
GREAT BRITAIN Prize Money
The Navy (England), August.—In its origin the navy was inclined to be piratical, and in its earliest days the fighting seamen looked for booty to repay them for their hazards and hardships.
Prize money in one form or another seems to have been as ancient as the
English Navy itself. The official recognition of prize money—or, in legal phraseology, “Prize”—appears first in the reign of King John, when in 1205 the King granted “to the crews of the galleys, which Thomas of Galwey has sent to us, one- half of the gains” made from captures at sea. In 1337 Edward III gave “his well- beloved William of Goseford” the ship and “all her apparel to keep as a gift,” when the said William captured the Cog of Flanders while carrying the “Bishop of Glasgow and other Scottish enemies.”
The mounting of guns on board ship— a brilliant inspiration credited to King Henry VIII—not unnaturally led to an increase in the destruction, or capture, of enemy vessels, and to the swelling of the number of those who hoped to amass wealth at sea without risking their necks through piracy.
A Royal Proclamation by Henry VIII licensed “all his subjects to esquipp as manie ships & other vessels to the sea against his enemies, Scotts, & Frenchmen, as they shall thinke good, with certain priviledges graunted for the same.” This same year we find the first licenses given to privateers. Before placing their ships at the disposal of the Sovereign, the adventurers and seamen bargained for a half share in those spoils which came their way, by land or sea. Privateers must not be confused with those pirates who preyed on all vessels, irrespective of nationality, for illegal personal gain. Privateering was a legal and wholesome trade until its abolition in 1856.
In some cases Prize Money brought a fortune to senior officer and affluence to seamen of the Royal Navy. A captain’s share of the capture of specie from Am- boyne in the Moluccas, in 1796, was £15,000, and the treasure on board two Spanish frigates captured in 1799 put £40,730 into the captain’s pocket, whereas a seaman received only £182, or less than one-half per cent of the captain’s share— a very unfair distribution which, in later years, was improved to the extent that in 1918 a seaman received 5 per cent of the share of a captain. Prize money was allimportant to Privateers, because they risked their ship, their property, their capital; if their ship was lost they lost their all.
All prize was the property of the Crown; the captors receiving what the Crown chose to give them. Proclamations issued early in the eighteenth century granted to the captors, whether ships of the Royal Navy or Privateers, the value of the ship and cargo, provided always the capture was made at sea. If the enemy goods were seized by the Revenue or Port authorities, the proceeds went to the Lord High Admiral. These “Droits of Admiralty” were, in 1707, surrendered to the Crown by the then Lord High Admiral, Prince George of Denmark. They remained perquisites of the Crown until William IV surrendered them to the Exchequer. Thus we find Droits, or Rights, of the Crown (captures at sea) benefiting the captors, while Droits of Admiralty (captures in port) go to the Exchequer. All money due to officers and men had to be claimed through an Agent in the Admiralty Court, and any shares which remained unclaimed for three years were paid to Greenwich Hospital. The costs in the Courts were so enormous that much of the gains were swallowed up. This was partly due to corruption, especially in the Courts situated abroad; in addition to which the captors had to contend against dishonest agents. It is easy to visualize the difficulties experienced by the captain of a warship arriving at a strange port with his prize and ordered to leave again in a few days. An agent had to be found and a bargain struck; the prize would then be sold by the agent, and if all went well in the Courts some money might eventually reach the captors. It is not surprising that these difficulties tempted some officers to evade the letter of the law by privately disposing of captured goods. In 1705 Captain Thomas Elkins of the Woolwich seized a Dutch merchant ship in Plymouth Sound. The High Court decreed that the seizure was just; but that contrary to the “known rules and practices of the sea, he did instead of securing the hatches of the said shipp, and delivering her with her cargo entire . . . seize on a very considerable quantity of gold dust and other things; the which he conveyed away, some to Exeter, other parts into his own scrittoire.” His conduct being “very unjustifiable,” Captain Elkins was not given further employment in the Royal Navy.
Prize bounty was paid for the destruction of enemy armed ships in battle. In 1694 a system was introduced whereby, if the foe had fought gamely and preferred to sink before surrender, the victors received a sum equal to £20 for each gun carried by the sunken enemy. In more modern times the amount of this bounty was calculated on tonnage, or the number of the crew. This bounty applied also to those engaged in suppressing the slave trade; a per capita grant being made for each slave rescued, or, alternatively, a sum calculated on the tonnage of the slave dhow, whichever was the greater.
In the latter part of the nineteenth century it frequently happened that only a few slaves were carried, so the claim was made on tonnage calculated on measurements made after the dhow had, perhaps, been run aground and before she was destroyed by the armed boat’s crew. Those who had never seen a dhow, who dealt with the claim in an office in London, did not notice anything peculiar in the gradual increase in a dhow’s tonnage. They had never seen a “simple” sailor, standing up to his waist in water on a coral reef, surreptitiously taking a few turns of the tape round his hand when the measurements were being taken!
To overcome the difficulty of the Court settling disputes caused by joint claims, especially when several ships were employed in making a capture, it was decided to divide the prize money between all ships which were in sight at the time. The introduction of steam; improved system of communications; organized intelligence departments, and other considerations, made the old regulations work unfairly. Other ships not actually in sight might have done better work than the actual captor. This led, in 1914, to the institution of a naval prize fund. A special tribunal decided whether the proceeds of the sale of enemy ships and goods were Droits of the Crown, or Droits of Admiralty. The latter benefited the Exchequer; the former were paid into the naval prize fund, and this was distributed to each officer and man of the R.N., R.N.R., R.N.V.R., and R.N.A.S. borne on the books of H.M. ships, according to his allotted share and the number of months served afloat during the war. The total value of prize during the Great War was about £23,000,000, of which about £7,000,000 went to the naval prize fund.
What of this war? Much enemy property and many ships have been destroyed from aircraft manned by the R.A.F., which are not borne on the books of H.M. ships. Many captures by the Royal Navy have been made possible only because of the assistance given by the R.A.F. We also recall the actual capture of a U-boat, on August 27, 1941, by a Coastal Command Hudson.
It is certain that the former method of distributing prize money will require drastic revision, or it may be that the present and future generations will know naught of “Prize.”
High Direction of Air Power
The Navy, September, by Admiral Sir Sydney R. Freemantle, G.C.B., M.V.O.— The three years of war have afforded ample opportunities for the doctrine, on which the higher strategical direction of the use of air power has been based, to be tested in practice. It is evident that this doctrine is based on the principle that air power, acting independently of the two other fighting forces, will be a decisive factor in war, and in pursuance of this principle our strength in the air is organized under a control independent of that of the Navy and Army.
Accordingly the policy of the Air Ministry has been to prepare and operate a force consisting mainly of long distance heavy bombers which will effect a decision by so impairing the morale of the enemy, through the destruction of war factories, transport, communications, industries, means of life, and life itself, that he will not feel capable of continuing the war. Having made this provision as the principal object of their policy, such strength as the Air Force Authorities have thought fit, and as the irresistible demands of the Admiralty and War Office have made inevitable, has been allotted to the Navy and Army to enable them to fulfil their tasks in endeavoring to win the war in the normal and historical fashion. These allocations may be altered from time to time (except in the case of the Fleet Air Arm) as the Air Authorities think fit, and it is they alone who are the final judges of how the available air strength can best be utilized.
The fundamental functions to be fulfilled by the Navy and Army in order that they may play their parts in winning a war are very clear. That of the Navy is to secure the sea routes for ourselves and to deny them to the enemy, so that he may be deprived of the sustenance which can be derived across the sea, and of all the means of transporting his troops and their supplies oversea, and that we may have the full advantages of the sea communications. Included in these functions is that of defense of this country, and its allies and dependencies, against attack, whether sea-borne or air-borne, from oversea. The function of the Army is to overcome the resistance of the enemy on land and to conquer his territory. Included in this function is the land protection of our territory, and especially of our naval bases, against such raiding attacks by the enemy, whether sea-borne or air-borne, as may elude our sea power. These fundamental functions are so distinct from one another, and are executed by such very different means, that it is not practicable, except in the region of the highest strategy, that they shall be under one head. Nevertheless, once the main strategical objects are decided upon, and the dispositions and measures necessary for their execution have been put into practice, most naval and military operations are still combined from the strategical aspect. This is especially the case of an island nation with widely dispersed possessions.
The co-operation necessary is achieved in practice, (1) by the main object having been laid down by the highest authority, and (2) by the exercise of good feeling and loyalty between the commanders of all grades in the two Forces, assisted by an understanding of the potentialities and difficulties of each other’s arms and of the conditions under which they are maintained and fight. In practice, although past wars present many instances of the failure of operations through lack of cooperation, it is the case that, thanks to the realization of the necessity and to the pains taken in peace training to render it effective, naval and military co-operation both in this war and in the last has left little to be desired. It is in the highest field of strategical direction that the most intimate co-operation is required. It must regulate the utilization of our armed strength, bearing in mind the factors of economic and diplomatic warfare, and of our resources in industry and man power. In defense, it may have to decide whether we must accept the risk of capture of some of our possessions by the enemy, or what sections of our sea communications must be left wholly or partly unprotected in favor of the greater security of others. In offense, given the available strength, which will eventually have to be used for a land campaign, it must decide upon whether the purely military object shall be at once undertaken or whether it shall be preceded by campaigns with the object of capturing naval bases for our own use, and denying his naval bases to the enemy, and so substantiating our sea power. It is on the decisions as to such subjects as these that the policy regarding the use of our resources in industry and man power must depend.
In the sphere of tactical co-operation not much is required, except in the embarkation and disembarkation of large forces on a hostile coast, a subject which has been intensively studied in cur Staff Colleges and on which we have little to learn. As far as can be judged, our present system of co-operation between Navy and Army works well, and the great requirements of effective joint action, economy of force, mutual understanding, and the overcoming of difficulties are being adequately dealt with. Co-operation of the Navy and Army with the Air Force is, however, on a very different basis, owing to the fact that the Air Force believes that, unaided by the other Forces, it can secure a decision, and that it has consequently concentrated its energies on the home-based bomber force. Holding this doctrine, and having it in their power to allocate the available air strength between the three forces, there is, of course, every temptation to stint the numbers allotted to co-operation with the Navy and Army, and to give naval and military requirements a very much lower priority than those of the requirements of the great bombing force. This low priority applies not only in the allocation of the numbers of planes, but in their nature, in design of suitable planes, in research for improved types, in training, and in appointments of officers. Not only have naval and military forces received the bare minimum strength in the air which the Air Force authorities considered requisite, but it has not always consisted of the most suitable types of machine, and until they have had the benefit of considerable and costly experience in practice, the personnel has shown that the subject of co-operation has received little attention in their training.
Admirals and Generals Commanding in Chief Naval and Military Forces, as well as their subordinate leaders, do not know, when forming their tactical plans, what air strength they will be able to rely upon. Even when they assume that the Air Forces present in their commands will cooperate, they have to deal with an Air Officer Commanding, who is independent of their authority, and who does not himself know whether his own command may be depleted by the Air Ministry, who reserve to themselves the right to reinforce or reduce strength according to their judgment.
In war, the ideal is that the Commander in Chief who is responsible for the planning and conduct of a campaign or an operation shall have the whole of the forces engaged under his direct command, and that these forces shall be dealt with by means of subordination rather than cooperation.
As between Navy and Army, however, this ideal cannot well be realized, and it must be accepted that those forces must act under their own commanders, but we have seen how the means which have been taken over many years to ensure unity of effort have been succesful. As regards the Air Force, however, with the exception of long distance bombing, the whole of their operations must be in support of either naval or military objects, and there is every reason why these operations should be conducted through the medium of subordination to the Naval or Military Commander, rather than by co-operation between authorities independent of one another.
The circumstances of the present war have produced abundant evidence of the lack of effective co-operation between the Air Force on the one hand, and the Navy and Army on the other, and let it be said here that no reflection whatever is intended to be cast upon the spirit and loyalty to the main object of Air Commanders and the officers and men serving under them. On the contrary, wherever time and circumstances have favored the continued services of an air contingent with the same naval and military force, the service rendered by the Air Force has proved to be most zealous and competent and, subject to limitations of strength, essential to the success of the operations. Striking instances of this are to be found in the co-operation of the Air Force with General Auchinleck’s Army in Egypt, of the Coastal Command with the Navy in the Battle of the Atlantic. But, unfortunately, there are many cases where either time, or rapidly changing circumstances, have prevented the building up of a system of co-operation based on mutual confidence and understanding.
Prominent instances in which, from such evidence as is available to the public, the air co-operation has proved unsatisfactory (bearing in mind that it is the system, and not the men who work it, which is being criticized) are:
Selection of targets for bombers during the Allied retreat in France.
Insufficient air strength in our expedition to Norway.
The attempt to defend Crete with grossly inadequate air strength.
Insufficient air strength, also siting of airdromes in Malaya.
The escape up Channel of the Scharnhorst, Gnciscnau, and Prim Eugen, undiscovered by reconnaissance and attacked with a very insufficient Air Force.
The disastrous sortie of Sir Tom Phillips who, though fully conscious of the necessity for an air escort, appears not to have known whether one could be provided or not.
The necessity for a special order having to be given by the Prime Minister himself to ensure complete unity of effort between Army and Air Force in Egypt.
Failure to produce, until very recently, a land- based torpedo bomber, or transport aircraft, to overcome the difficulties of the transport of maintenance requirements for bombing forces oversea and to study the possibilities of air-borne land attack.
The complex system of a dual charge and responsibility for the land protection of airdromes.
It is submitted that the present system of the higher direction of our air power is based on a fallacy. The effectiveness of the campaign of our great bombing force is now being subjected to the test. There is, as yet, no proof that results have been obtained commensurate with the great effort which has been made. More time and more expenditure of the Allied resources will have to be devoted to this object before the test can be said to be complete, and in the meanwhile naval and military requirements must suffer. While the wisdom of the present policy is, at best, doubtful, the drawbacks to it are certain, and have been proved by events.
The whole subject seems to be of such cardinal importance that it should be reviewed and action taken even in the course of the war. The principles to be observed should be:
(1) Air power cannot win the war by its unaided effort.
(2) Strength in the air is a most important and indeed invaluable constituent part of all naval and military forces, and should be afforded to them in the highest possible degree.
(3) Air force employed in conjunction with naval and military forces should be in a subordinate and not co-operative capacity, as are other elements which compose these forces.
The following long-distance policy is suggested.
Retention of the Air Ministry as a separate Government Department, but to retain administrative and operational control only over a moderate-sized longdistance bombing force, the principal objects of which should be to enforce the retention of as much A.A. strength, both of Air and Artillery, as possible, and to attack such targets as the circumstances of the war render expedient.
The Air Ministry to retain responsibility for research, experiment, and design; also for production and supply.
The Navy and Army to provide themselves with the requisite air strength looked upon and administered as a constituent element of their forces, much as are the tanks and the artillery, and destroyers and the submarines. Officers and men should be soldiers and sailors, belonging to and wearing the uniform of the Army and Navy, respectively. Such a policy obviously cannot be adopted immediately, but there seems no reason why it should not be approved in principle, and worked to gradually. The Coastal Command, for instance, might forthwith be taken over by the Royal Navy, and existing air components of Army Commands by the Army, in the same way as the Fleet Air Arm was taken over from the R.A.F.
In principle, the policy advocated is that in force in the Japanese and U. S. Navies. It is believed that the logic of circumstances must lead to its adoption, in whole or in part, by ourselves, and the earlier some action is taken in that direction the better will be our means of utilizing the vast production of air strength which is now in progress. It is as well to meet in advance two misconceptions which may arise.
The first is that the proposals are the result of underrating the value of air power. The very. contrary is the case. They proceed from the desire to make more and more effective use of air power.
The second is that the proposals, if adopted, would adversely affect combination when necessary for the furtherance of a common object, of the three elements of air strength. The communiques from the Middle East are sufficient to disprove this—almost every communique gives instances of the bombers of the R.A.F. (working under the Army), and of the Fleet Air Arm, attacking such targets, whether naval or military, as the circumstances demanded.
H.M.A.C. “Eagle”
The Aeroplane (London) August 21.— His Majesty’s aircraft carrier Eagle was sunk by submarine torpedoes in the Mediterranean in the early stages of last week’s great convoy battle. The Eagle, as the battleship Almiranle Cochrane, was originally intended for Chile, and was laid down in 1913. She remained on the stocks until 1917, when the Admiralty bought her for conversion into an aircraft carrier. Not until 1924 did she receive commission for service in the Mediterranean. Before the present war she served in the Mediterranean from 1924 to 1931, in the South Atlantic, 1931, was refitted during 1931-34, returned to the Mediterranean in 1935, was on reserve from 1935 to 1937, and then went to China. Her tonnage was 22,600 and her speed 25 knots. The present war service of the Eagle was very similar to that of the Ark Royal. She hunted surface raiders in the Indian Ocean; then joined the Ark Royal in the Mediterranean and flew the flag of Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, with Captain A. R. M. Bridge in command. From June, 1940, the Eagle helped to harry the Italians, fulfilling Admiral Cunningham’s “aggressive policy.” She took part in the battle of Calabria when “Italy won the boat race” and her fleet fled ignominiously before a much inferior British force. At this time the Eagle was carrying few fighters, but what there were rendered a good account of themselves. In the autumn of 1940, the Eagle’s aircraft raided the Italian airdrome at Maritza, and followed it by attacks on the Dodecanese and airdromes in Tripoli.
During a period in Alexandria harbor the Eagle’s aircraft did sterling service with the Royal Air Force in North Africa. On one occasion three of her torpedo- bombers destroyed two enemy submarines, one destroyer, and one depot ship with three torpedoes.
The Italian Air Force made repeated attempts to sink the Eagle and twice at least boasted that the deed had been done; Colonel Enrico Grandi was reported to have been decorated for one of these ersatz sinkings. In April, 1941, the carrier left the Mediterranean and her aircraft flew to Port Sudan and operated from there against the Italians. Then, under Captain E. G. N. Rushbrooke, she sailed to the South Atlantic and rounded up supply ships and submarines. In 1942, the Eagle returned to the Mediterranean and played no small part in the defense of Malta. It is, perhaps, fitting that she should have met her end while protecting one of the largest convoys ever to reach that island.
The indomitable trio of carriers, the Ark Royal, Eagle, and the “Fighting” Furious have performed wonders since the war began. Only the Furious remains to hand on the old carrier tradition to the six modem carriers of the Illustrious class. The shouts of “Up Eagles!” mingling with those of “Good old Ark!” will resound over the waters of the Mediterranean as long as there is a Mediterranean and a British Navy to keep watch over it.
Battle Dress for the Navy
Nautical Magazine, September.—The essential thing about the British sailor’s uniform is that it is very easy to work in, yet combines the advantages of being smart in appearance and pleasing to the eye, and it is surprising therefore to find suggestions being made that it should be discarded in favor of battle dress. Yet in quite a few circles the suggestion has been thrown out, and the adoption of battle dress by H.M. Coast Guard Service is already an accomplished fact.
The threat that the traditional garb of sailors may disappear naturally turns attention to the story of naval uniforms throughout the centuries, but unless some outstanding work has escaped the writer’s attention, very little has been written on the subject, certainly very very little in comparison to the works which have been published dealing with the history of military uniforms. The bald truth appears to be that it is only within the past 100 years or so that there has been a regulation standardized uniform amongst naval seamen. Not that they did not have uniforms before that time; in the centuries gone by, however, there was no insistence on uniformity, and at one time, the sailor’s dress was frequently just whatever the captain of the ships decided upon. Thus, for example, we have the origin of the word “blazer” in the fact that the captain of H.M.S. Blazer at one time had his boat’s crews dressed in little jackets which were nicknamed “blazers.” There was, however, a standard set by some parts of the country but these were not always closely followed, and were by no means universally adopted. In 1513, for example, a description of the dress of sailors manning vessels leaving the Cinque Ports stated “Every person that goeth into the Navie of the Portis shall have a cote of white cotyn with a red crouse and the arms of the Portis underneath; that is to say, the halfe lyon and the halfe shipp.” Later there was an attempt by Sir Richard Hawkins to introduce armor-dress into the Navy, but the men would have none of it. Thirty years after, “slop” clothing (perhaps it is hardly necessary to say here that “slop” is a derivation of “slip” or originally “slyppe” meaning a loose garment) was issued by the Crown (in 1623) to “avoide hastie beastliness by disease and unwholesome ill smells in every ship.”
The bluejacket, that Eton jacket-like garment from which the term “bluejacket” was actually derived, was abolished by Britain in 1891 when the blouse which was worn with it was replaced by the present jumper. There are still some navies, however, and we can include the German Navy among them, who have retained the bluejacket.
On the other hand, we have retained many associations with the garb of sailors who went down to the sea in the old wooden walls. There is the black silk handkerchief, for instance, which the Jack Tar still wears. This article has led to both discussions and disputes, for against the traditional story that it is a sign of mourning over the death of Nelson, naval history shows that it was worn before that period, a common practice being to tie a handkerchief or scarf around the head to stop the dripping perspiration from finding its way down the face. The circumstance surrounding the three rows of tape around the collar are somewhat similar in that they are supposed to mark the three big victories of Nelson. Here again, naval writings do not bear this out as the actual origin, although it is not denied that they may today be used as reminders of these three occasions. It is believed, however, that two tapes were chosen as the best suitable design, and that the third one got in by error, which somehow or other is hardly a convincing explanation and certainly not as romantic as the Nelson “touch.”
In 1725 regulations concerning the clothing of seamen specified gray jackets lined with red, brass buttons and gold buttonholes, waistcoasts of striped ticking with brass buttons, and breeches of striped ticking, checkered blue and white shirts, gray gloves and stockings, double-soled shoes with brass buckles and headgear of leather caps. Officers’ uniforms about this period showed many splashes of color, but finally some uniformity was achieved when
—up to this time England was about the only remaining European country without a set uniform for officers—a group of officers successfully petitioned for a standard dress, this being achieved in 1745, and three years later the government laid down regulations governing the dress for Admirals, Captains, Commanders, and Lieutenants. A uniform regulation was issued in 1825 for officers which prescribed that cocked hats should be worn fore and aft for full and undress uniform (readers will recall pictures of Nelson with his hat “athwartships”).
But we have to come right down to less than 100 years ago to find regulations for the first official uniform of seamen, which was followed three years later by the regulations governing gold braid on the sleeves of officers, followed three years later by more regulations on the subject of gold braid—four rows for Captains, three for Commanders, two for Lieutenants and one for Sub-lieutenants. Midshipmen still have the buttons on their sleeves and this recalls their nickname “Snotties.” It was not the practice always for gentlemen to carry handkerchiefs—some of them in bygone days used their sleeves and to prevent midshipmen from doing so, says tradition, buttons were put on their sleeves.
We have now arrived almost at contemporary times, when readers will have been able to follow the various changes such as the introduction of colors to denote the branch of the service, i.e., purple for engineering, red for medical, white for writing, and so on, the whole making a very interesting study.
Space has prevented more than a mere sketchy outline of the subject, and many matters of interest could have been referred to had it not been for the limitations which must necessarily be imposed in these days of paper shortage, but sufficient has been said to show that the Navy has a great deal which it would desire to retain. And the thought that it should all go “overboard” in favor of battle dress is not a little disturbing.
Various Notes
The British Army is being equipped with a new rifle, which is lighter and much more accurate than the old pattern. During an inspection last Friday of troops in the Eastern Command the King examined the new weapon and talked to the crack shot of a battalion about it. The sniper told the King: “The rifle is so accurate that when I first handled it it seemed as though I could not miss.”—Manchester (England) Guardian, August 14.
GERMANY R.A.F. Targets
London Times, August 26.—The accompanying map showing the industrial areas of Germany is published at the suggestion of a number of readers in view of the resumption of bombing activity in those regions by the R.A.F. It may not be realized generally that the broad lines of the bombing policy of the R.A.F. are laid down by the War Cabinet after its members have received the advice of the Chiefs of Staffs; the final choice rests with the Air Officer Commanding in Chief, Bomber Command, after he has considered all tactical, operational, and economic factors. The predominance of the Ruhr and the adjacent district of the Rhineland in Germany’s heavy industry is well known. With Essen as its heart, it contains a concentration of manufacture which is without parallel elsewhere on the Continent or in any of the most highly industrialized areas in Britain. There is no reason to believe that the relatively important economic position of this area has been materially reduced by transfers to less dangerous zones. The coal field of the Ruhr basin produces about two-thirds of the total hard coal output of the whole of Germany. As it contains the finest deposit of coking coal in Europe, it is the seat of the greater part of the country’s iron and steel works. The numerous coke ovens feed the Ruhr gas grid—the most extensive system of its kind in the world. Electric power is widely available and cheap. Coal, coke, and steel are sent to other factories all over Germany, while within the Ruhr and the adjacent Rhineland some of the enemy’s most important armament, engineering, chemical, and synthetic oil plants are situated. A vast and carefully planned network of railways and waterways serves this great area, which contains 3,250,000 inhabitants.
Hamburg, with a population of 1,700,000, is the second largest city in Germany, and among European ports is second only to London. Of its many shipyards the best known is Blohm and Voss, which builds submarines, and constructed the Bismarck and the Admiral Hip per. It has the leading European metal refinery, together with chemical and explosives works, oil storage plants and refineries, and flour mills.
Emden is Germany’s naval and submarine base nearest the British Isles. Its harbor can shelter a substantial part of the German Fleet. Submarines are built there, and it is a traffic junction for Swedish ore.
Wilhelmshaven is a leading naval base, with a dockyard where the Tirpilevf a.s built.
Bremen is the largest port in Germany after Hamburg, and is an important industrial center, with two large shipyards, three aircraft factories, oil refineries, engineering works, and textile mills.
Kiel is a concentration point for naval forces and is of outstanding importance on account of its shipyards and submarine works, with numerous ancillary factories. The battleship Gneisenau and the pocket battleship Deutschland arc among the naval craft built there.
Hanover, with a population of over
500,0, houses huge locomotive and tank works, two rubber manufacturing plants, oil refineries and storage, and textile mills.
The well-known Henschel locomotive works at Cassel is also building army vehicles, and in the neighborhood are air- engine builders, aircraft assembly shops, and the leading maker of tents.
Frankfort on Main, with over half a million inhabitants, makes chemicals, motor-vehicles, aircraft, airscrews, undercarriages, components, special instruments and gear. It is a vital railway junction and leading inland port.
Mannheim is mainly concerned with general and electro-engineering and chemicals, together with cellulose products. Airengines and submarine Diesels are made there.
Farther south, Stuttgart (500,000 inhabitants) is one of the most important war industrial centers in the Reich, particularly for air engine, submarine engine, and other components. It is a busy transport center with large railway wagon and locomotive repair shops.
Berlin possesses great power stations and electrical engineering works, armament works, aircraft factories, and oil storage. .
Leipzig has airplane and munition factories; and Leuna synthetic oil and rubber plants.
Between the effects of the intensified air raids of the R.A.F. on Germany recently and those of the Luftwaffe on Britain in 1940-41 there is an important difference. Consumer goods such as food and clothes were then plentiful in England. Today in the Reich they are barely adequate to normal current needs. Housing too is short. Dislocation and delay, entailing transfer of effort and labor from war work to civilian tasks, have therefore been much greater in Germany than they were in Britain, and have possibly done more harm than the direct damage done to individual works.
JAPAN
Merchant Shipping
Journal of the Royal United Service Institution (London) August.—Japan has always been a nation of fishermen who ventured far from their native islands. It is, therefore, little surprising that once contact with the outside world was made the importance of shipping was soon recognized. The first shipyard was built in 1854. Foreign shipbuilders were enticed by high salaries to come to Japan, and within a very short period she possessed an important shipbuilding industry. As Japanese had continuously been sent abroad to study shipbuilding in Europe and America, foreign instructors at home could gradually be dispensed with. Shipbuilding and shipping enterprises were favored and protected by legislation as early as 1895, such legislation being revised from time to time according to what was considered to be in the national interest, until both industries became entirely government- controlled in 1939-40.
Already in 1914, Japan possessed the sixth largest merchant fleet in the world (about 1,700,000 gross tons), after the British Empire (20,500,000 tons), Germany, U.S.A., Norway, and France. Since then she has reached third place (in 1939,
5,630,0 gross tons), after the Empire with 21,000,000 and the U.S.A. with about 9,000,000 ocean-going gross tonnage. These figures relate to registered steamers and motorships only. To them must be added about 1,560,000 gross tons of registered and unregistered sailing and
40.0 tons of unregistered steam vessels; furthermore, in order to come to a total figure for the date of Japan’s entry into the war, new tonnage built or acquired since 1939, accounting probably for another 350,000 gross tons, has to be added. Altogether, the Japanese merchant navy on the eve of the outbreak of the Far- Eastern war was probably about 7,500,000 gross tons. Since then she must have suffered not inconsiderable losses which, however, for a large part may have been offset by seizures, requisitions, and purchases in French Indo-China, Thailand, and Chinese waters. Some Axis shipping, previously tied up in Eastern ports, may also be operated now by the Japanese. From the point of view of age the state of the Japanese commercial fleet is not bad. In 1938, out of a total of about 4,600,000 tons of steamships of over 1,000 tons,
1.200.0 tons, or 27.5 per cent, were less than 5 years old, while another 500,000 tons, or 10.6 per cent, were 5-9 years old.[2] In speed, too, Japan’s merchant navy compares not unfavorably with the other seafaring nations. Of 4,000,000 tons of steamships of over 1,000 tons displacement, in 1937, 361 vessels of 1,050,000 tons had a speed of 10-13 knots, 353 of
1.700.0 tons 13-16 knots, and 144 of
1.025.0 tons 16-20 knots. Since 1937, Japan has turned out some very fast ships, among which are big liners destined for the American and European services which are now probably used as troop transport ships and auxiliary cruisers.
According to the Frankfurter Zcitung of
February 4, 1941, Japan possessed in June, 1940, 38 ships of over 10,000 tons (against only 28 in 1938), 885 ships between 2,000 and 10,000 tons, whereof about 25 per cent were over 6,000 tons, 50 per cent between 3,000 and 6,000 tons, and the remaining 25 per cent between
2,0 and 3,000 tons. Of smaller ships, she possessed between 400 and 500 of 500
2,0 tons, 700 and 800 between 100-500 tons, and approximately 2,000 below 100 tons. In addition to these steam and motor vessels, she possessed nearly 17,000 sailing vessels, of which 14,000 were between 20 and 100 tons.
At the beginning of 1940, about 9.6 per cent of all Japanese steam and motor vessels were tankers of an average capacity of 10-12,000 tons and a speed of 16-20 knots. From the point of view of their adaptability to naval purposes, the large whaling depot ships are important, as they can easily be converted into tankers or seaplane tenders. Cargo ships were, since 1939, mainly built according to standard types of 4,470, 6,200 or 6,300 gross tons for ocean transportation, and 490, 850, 1,990 and 2,750 gross tons for Near Sea transportation.
In this connection, it might be interesting to note something about the navigation zones which were defined in Japan by law. There are four different zones to which the corresponding classes of ships are being assigned; they are:
Zone Corresponding class of ships
Overseas.............................. First-class ships
Near Sea.............................. Second-class ships
Coastwise............................. Third-class ships
Calm water.......................... Fourth-class ships
Over 75 per cent of the total Japanese shipping space was assigned to the Oversea zone, about 20 per cent to the Near Sea zone, and only about 3 per cent to the Coastwise and Calm water zones. Thus, by far the largest proportion is suitable for external transport. It can be assumed
that, theoretically, 5,500,000 tons can be used for that purpose. From this figure should be deducted about 500,000 tons in repair at any given time, leaving roughly 5,000,000 tons. Trade requirements inside the area which forms the enlarged “co-prosperity sphere” (including Manchukuo, China, Indo-China, Thailand, the Philippines, N.E.I. and Malaya) were in December, 1940, about 3,400,000 tons, and may be now some 3,000,000 tons. This would mean that about 2,000,000 tons can be employed for actual war transport purposes.
What are Japan’s resources for new construction? Can she replace her losses? Can she increase her shipping space? New construction amounted in 1937 to 450,000 tons, in 1938 to 470,000 tons, and in 1939 to 400,000 tons. The net increase in tonnage (as old ships have to be broken up) was however much less, and amounted to only about 160,000 tons (motor and steam vessels) between June, 1939, and June, 1940. Therefore, even if Japan’s building capacity should be a little higher—say half a million tons, which is very doubtful, and even if she can build some vessels at Hongkong and at Singapore, it does not seem likely that she can replace the losses she is suffering through allied action, while allied attacks upon her shipping will increase as time goes on. Apart from such factors as naval requirements, which are bound to increase after the recent severe losses suffered by the Japanese Navy and which will have priority above all other claims on shipbuilding yards, the shortage of raw materials needed for the construction of ships, already stringent when Japan became a belligerent, must make itself more and more felt. It is, therefore, not surprising that the building of wooden ships is under consideration. It looks as if the Japanese under no circumstances will be able to raise the average tonnage available for military transportation beyond
2,0, 000 gross tons, and with the Allied
attacks becoming fiercer it may soon be less.
Although it is extremely difficult to assess Japan’s present commercial shipping needs correctly,[3][4] it can safely be said that her internal needs will not allow any reduction of imports as she continues to need sugar from Formosa, and other foodstuffs, such as rice, beans and peas, from other parts of the “larger co-prosperity sphere,” oil from Borneo and Dutch East India (provided she can get the wells working again), tin and rubber from Malaya, Thailand, French Indo-China, and the Dutch East Indies; copper from the Philippines, iron ore, bauxite and other raw materials wherever she can lay hands on them. Even if she can transport some of these commodities in vessels which return from the carrying of troops and war materials to the theaters of war, this will not alleviate her position sufficiently to allow her to divert cargo ships from trade to military purposes without endangering the supply of her war industries and her most urgent civilian requirements. Japan will certainly be in no position to make use to a larger extent of the natural riches of the newly conquered territories, which means that she will not be able to increase her production of war materials. Her production of such materials will, at its best, remain stationary at pre-war level as long as neither her shipping, nor her ports, nor her industrial plants, are really hard hit by the Allies. Large scale destruction of any one of these facilities would mean, in view of their irreplaceability during the war, a decisive decrease of her industrial output.
Shipping is the most vulnerable point of
Japan, as long as large-scale attacks on the country itself cannot be executed. Her vessels can be attacked in the waters of Malaya and in the Pacific archipelagos. A large part of Dutch East India, the Philippines, and the Palau archipelagos are within a range of about 1,000 miles from Port Darwin and, therefore, well within the reach of Australia-based bombers and submarines. An attack upon shipping between Japan and the mainland of Asia is more difficult, but does not seem impossible for bombers based on China and the Aleutians, and for submarines hunting from places as distant as Australia and Dutch Harbor. If the Allies can destroy only one million tons of Japanese ships this year, the Japanese octopus must relax its hold on the South Eastern Pacific never to regain it. Attack on Japan herself will follow.
U.S.S.R.
Citadel of the Caucasus
London Times, August 19.—Once again the future of Russia is being decided in the Cossack country, the green and open stretch of land from the Volga mouth to the Black Sea. Here for centuries were the southern marches of Russia, and the Cossacks were the wardens, repelling invasion after invasion from the south and the east. Now the invasion comes from the west, but the enemy’s objectives are fundamentally the same—to control the Volga and split the Russians. The land of the Kuban Cossacks, on the shore of the Black Sea, and most of the land of the Don Cossacks have had to be given up. Rather than risk losing both the Volga and the North Caucasus in an attempt to hold both, the Red Annies took a painful and courageous decision and dropped quickly back from the North Caucasus. The Volga, the Caspian shore, and the Caucasian ramparts are now the areas of defense. So long as these areas can be held, Russia holds together. The rich wheat fields of the North Caucasus have had to be yielded like the wheat fields of the Ukraine and Central Black Earth regions; their loss will be felt by hundreds of thousands of hungry people during the coming winter and spring. But oil can be brought from Baku—producing at least
24,0, 000 tons a year—across the Caspian and up the Volga to feed the tanks, airplanes, and tractors. Clearly the Germans will try to cut these Volga-borne oil supplies either by reaching Stalingrad, Astrakhan, or the Caspian shore, or by seizing Baku itself.
During the past week they have been driving hard down the old Cossack Line, the chain of forts and garrison villages on the northern fringe of the Caucasus. Here until a century ago was the border between Russia and the restless peoples of Asia; here the invaders and raiders were thrown back. The mountain gorges which threatened the Russians in the old days are their refuge now when the German Army holds part of the line. Will the Germans try to go on, try to complete the occupation of the line and to bring themselves to the Caspian Sea at Makhach Kala? From there they might try to repeat Peter the Great’s advance on Baku by the narrow coastal plain between the mountains and the sea. This is the obvious route to Baku. But there arc two considerations against it. It runs through the Derbent Gate, a narrow shelf on the shore under the hills no more than 6 miles wide—a place almost ideal for defense. Secondly, the Germans will know that this route—by far the easiest if only the gate could be forced—has been heavily fortified by the Russians. The Germans will therefore be exploring the possibilities of a sudden attempt on the mountain passes. So long as the citadel remains intact, the Russians and the peoples of the Caucasus can always play the old game of highlander against lowlander; sweeping out from the high fastnesses, killing and robbing, and retiring again. Guerrillas have harried the Germans in the plains of the Ukraine; how much more formidable would they be with the mountains behind them. Even if the Germans doubt whether they could cross the whole range into Transcaucasia, they must already be reckoning on having to make “punitive raids” into the passes and valleys. Reports that they are bringing up regiments trained in mountain warfare suggest that they intend to challenge the Caucasus in earnest.
What, then, is the nature of this range, higher than the Alps, longer than the length of Great Britain, and about a hundred miles wide? Except for the Derbent Gate in the east, it forms an unbroken barrier from Baku to Novorossiisk; and over it are only four main roads—hardly to be called passes, for a pass suggests a moderately deep valley, whereas three of these roads go climbing and cork-screwing up through the mountains as though intended for a train on cogs. Two of the roads lead over to the Black Sea; the first, the easiest, runs from Armavir to Tuapse; the second runs up the valley of the Kuban, tops a difficult ridge, and comes twisting down to Sukhum, which could be used as a naval base if Novorossiisk, farther north up the coast, were to fall. Both these routes will probably be attempted by the Germans as part of their plan to control the Black Sea. Farther east, over the Central Caucasus, are the two military roads, the Ossetian and the Georgian, both beginning at Ordzhono- kidze and climbing to twice the height of Ben Nevis before dropping into the rich green uplands of Georgia. To follow these two roads—or, better still, to go riding or walking among the mountains from them —is to see the Caucasus at its strongest and most splendid. None who has been there can think of it merely in terms of military anatomy: this land of sunlight and shining colors, the high pastures as smooth and as green as Lord’s, with belts of blue pines like grandstands round them, and then—above the pastures and above the pines—the snow on the peaks. There is the
Daryal gorge, which has room for the River Terek and the Georgian road and for nothing else; a great split through the mountains, 6,000 ft. deep, and 5 miles long; nothing in it but gray shadowed rocks, dank even in the heat of summer. Here in the gorge the road has often been defended from southern invaders, and it could as easily be defended from the northern hordes.
Higher up, past Mount Kazbek, the road is no more than a goat track, a ledge cut in the almost sheer face of the rock, easy to dynamite. Farther on still the traveler looks down through the clouds to a green patch which looks like a small-scale relief map of Georgia; it is Georgia itself, seen from a height of 8,000 ft.; and the white road descends to the plain in a series of hairpin bends so narrow and so numerous that, seen from above, it looks like a mighty flight of stairs. When last I crossed over the road much of it had been washed away on the Georgian side; the main stream of the swollen river ran for some miles on the road. Merely following the Georgian or the Ossetian road—which is still more difflcult than the Georgian: once in mid-May we were turned back by the weight of snow after climbing over 7,000 ft.—suggests that the Caucasus is hardly peopled at all. One sees stray riders or groups of little boys who, rising oddly from the midst of crags, offer glasses of spring water for sale. But settled life seems elusive, always round the comer. Writing in the time of Edward III our own Sir John Mandeville described this elusive quality of the Caucasus: “So that no man may sec ne here, ne no man dar entren in. And natheless thei of the Contree sey that som tyme men herene voys of folk and Hors nyzenge and Cokkcs crowinge.” Off the roads, in the half-hidden valleys, life becomes more substantial. Here are large villages—auls, they call them—built of rough stone cubes of houses, with tall, slender watch-towers like pointed pencils above most of the houses. I have approached such villages; at first, even when I was walking up the muddy track between the windowless houses, there would be a silence like the tomb. Then one or two men would saunter out, with rifles and brass-sheathed daggers, each man with a great bucket of black sheepskin on his head and a wide black cloak on his shoulders. They could speak no Russian; but no language was needed to convey the suspicion in their dark eyes. “Mullah?” I would say. One would fetch the mullah, dressed exactly like them, and he usually had a few words of Russian. Then the village would come to life—that is to say, the men relaxed to lounge in the shade while their wives pad- died mud to make a kind of mortar.
“Politically backward” was the comment passed on such villages by the Communist headquarters in Ordzhonokidze. Great changes have been made in many parts of the Caucasus, but there are still many valleys where the old highland life has been barely touched. These are the people who under their leaders, Kazi Mullah and Shalim, fought with fanatical courage against the Russians last century. Even after the Caucasus was officially subdued in 1864—after a 50 years’ war— many of the peoples rose in rebellion. They are still proud of their independence. The Germans proclaim that they come as their liberators, but the Russians and their own leaders will take care to remind them of what German liberation means. By any standard of measurement the Germans have a formidable task in front of them in the mountains of the Caucasus. The verdict of the Russian general of last century, Veliameenov, still stands:
The Caucasus may be likened to a mighty fortress, strong by nature, artificially protected by military works, and defended by a numerous garrison. Only thoughtless men would attempt to escalade such a fortress. A wise commander would see the necessity of having recourse to military art, and would lay his parallels, advance by sap and mine, and so master the place.
OTHER COUNTRIES
Brazil
One of the important developments of the war is the rapidly growing realistic interest in the Amazon River basin, which a few years ago meant little to most Americans except as a fever-ridden haunt of snakes, wild Indians, and lost explorers and as a source of lurid adventure tales.
In the United States the new interest is involved largely in the present earnest effort to develop new sources of rubber, quinine, and some of the essential vegetable oils previously obtained from the Far East. In South America, however, the interest is on a far broader basis. The educated Peruvian or Brazilian today views the basin’s vast wealth and potentialities as the heart of the South America of the future. In that attitude we see an indication of what is today an almost inevitable trend toward the large-scale opening of a new frontier region as large as the United States and possible vast human migrations into the heart of South America—a pioneer movement that well may play a tremendous part in the war effort and in post-war reconstruction—and that may do for the whole Western Hemisphere what the opening of our own west did for us. It is impossible, of course, to predict how far present trends will continue. But it is becoming apparent that even our one specific program for getting rubber out of the Amazonian forests may lead to serious disarrangements and possible failure unless it goes hand in hand with the kind of general development on many fronts that takes place in the processes of empire building and the conquest of wilderness.
And many of those who have been conditioned through early miseducation to regard the Amazon basin as one vast and terrifying “green hell,” unfit for integrated development and real colonization, are beginning to change their views for two excellent reasons. In the first place, a large part of the United States once was described as the Great American Desert and considered unfit for settlement; in the second place, men have shown before what they can accomplish under the pressure of desperate need. The trend toward large-scale permanent colonization is immediately apparent when one examines the difficulties encountered in any one such activity as our present Amazonian rubber program. The main difficulty is not a lack of rubber but a lack of men to tap that rubber and bring it out. That calls for the eventual importation of perhaps as many as 300,000 workers into the rubber regions. But the Amazon basin produces relatively little food, which in turn calls for the use of ships to import foodstuffs for the workers, to say nothing of clothing, tools, and everything else needed for life. And over that whole movement hangs the fear that the end of the war may see the collapse of the Amazonian rubber boom, in part because of the development of synthetics and in part because the British may get their Malayan plantations back intact from the Japanese, and that such a collapse may result in a large stranded population for which the United States would be held responsible. But it is beginning to be realized, too, that such difficulties would tend to disappear if the rubber program, instead of being handled as an isolated activity could be fitted into some broad general plan for the basin’s development. For if farmers and ranchers could be encouraged to produce such foods as rice at the river banks and beef on the vast Amazonian prairies, then the food problem would be solved and a new class of Amazonian settlers would be anchored to the soil to produce, among other things, labor for rubber, quinine, Brazil nuts, vegetable oils, timber and old and new drugs from the lowlands, and oil, gold, and iron from the highlands of that vast basin. If such new sources of wealth were developed side by side with rubber, then the envisaged new Amazonian economy probably could stand the shock of a possible post-war collapse of thepresent rubber boom.
Such thinking, starting with the difficulties encountered in our present rubber program, inevitably leads far afield. For instance, the handful of men who are beginning to think of the Amazon basin as a new pioneer region millions of square miles in size also are becoming aware of the fact that Puerto Rico and a number of other West Indian islands are vastly overpopulated, and that the end of the war will turn literally hundreds of thousands of refugees loose on the world.
Some of the refugee organizations already have examined areas immediately contiguous to the Amazon basin and found them well suited for colonization by Europeans. Most of them are beginning to realize two pertinent fundamental facts: (1) That the Amazon basin, stretching from the crest of the Andes to the Atlantic, has all kinds of country, healthful and unhealthful, forested and open, highland and swampy lowlands, and (2) that the old concept of the debilitating effects of the tropical climate is disappearing with the modern knowledge that people who work hard and eat proper food can remain just about as healthy on the equator as here.
It is under the influence of such trends that the Amazon basin soon may become one of the world’s great pioneer regions, receiving what may become a human migration even larger than that of the Russians into the Arctic. Undoubtedly President Getulio Vargas of Brazil had some such possibility in mind when he recently talked about calling a conference of all the Amazonian nations—Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela —to discuss Amazonian problems.—New York Herald Tribune, September 27.
Ceylon
Ceylon is a vital link in the Allied Far Eastern strategy; for Ceylon means naval harbors from which not only the Bay of Bengal but the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean can be controlled. The harbors in question are those of Colombo and Trincomalee, the latter a natural basin divided into several bays by the configuration of the land, its entrance flanked by a most impressive bluff and a lighthouse; the former an artificial harbor formed by two breakwaters and a “mole,” in shape not unlike that of Dover Harbor. Of the two, Colombo, with its close association with prewar tourist days and pre-war Far Eastern trade, is the best known. Speak of Colombo to any one of the millions who have passed through its harbor and instantly the word “Gallface” is mentioned. The “Gallface Hotel,” one learns, is comerlcss, i.e., its rooms have rounded corners; and sooner or later one is told that Adam descended from heaven by way of the “Peak,” the mountain which bears testimony to the gymnastics of our first male ancestor in the form of a footprint. To me, the word “Colombo” conjures up a picture of native “boys” pestering one to buy cases of gorgeously colored butterflies while their showman brothers and cousins cause seeds to grow into palms even while one watches. But then I remember Colombo in its pre-war days, in the days when Britain’s dominance in the Far East was undisputed by the “Monkey Men,” when civilian life was a round of entertainment. Today, Colombo must be very different, for it is a focal point in naval strategy in the Far East. Obviously one must not discuss the base’s fortifications. There can be little doubt that by keeping “mum” about the fortress’s power, the Jap bombers which sought to “Pearl Harbor” Ceylon’s bases got an awful surprise. They ran into a hornet’s nest; and those machines which touched down on the flight decks of the Imperial Japanese aircraft carriers in the Indian Ocean brought a sorry tale of defeat wth them.
For the purposes of this article the censor will not permit me to give more than a general picture of Ceylon’s major offensive bases. The reader will have to fill in the gaps as the details are released for public consumption. As one entered Colombo Harbor (the Graving Dock is to the left, flanked by Nutwal Point and the Coaling Depot) ships were tied up to the Northwest breakwater and the Southwest breakwater, the latter carrying lights on its Y-shaped extremities, one of which is the Pilot Station.
Follow the Southwest breakwater and you come to the Custom’s House and the Passenger Jetty (shades of the past). Step off the Pier and you come to the undeniably, well-laid-out city with its impressive G.P.O. and Government Offices. Turn leftwards, and you come to the Canal, linking the Harbor with “The Lake,” to the left of which is the Fort, or the business quarter. To the landward of the Lake is the residential quarter, snuggling under the lea of the hills topped by the Peak. Skinner’s Road, and the railway to Kandy (with its historical associations with ancient Ceylon) lead inland from the residential district. Colombo’s water supply appears to be more suited to defense than that of Singapore. In the good old days a host of wealth flowed from the Crown Colony’s 25,431 square miles through Colombo—tea, rice, rubber, spices, coconuts.
The fundamental difference between Colombo and Trincomalee is plain for all to see at first glance. Trincomalee is a natural harbor comprising several bays. The base is not nearly as developed as Colombo, though it offers considerable scope from a naval aspect. One enters the main bay—China Bay—between the Bluff and the Lighthouse on Fore Point. The Mahaweli River enters China Bay, off which open Tampalakaman Bay, and the particularly deep waters of the four square miles of the inner harbor.
Trincomalee straddles the narrow isthmus linking the Bluff and the main coastal district. Facing the inner harbor, as though protecting it from seawards, is a large island. I forget its name, but doubtless it plays or could play a military purpose in the defense of the harbor. Trincomalee lends itself to defense. But as I see it the Ferry crossing the narrow mouth of Tampalakaman Bay is a weak point.
The base plays a big part in the defense of Ceylon. Situated on the East Coast, on the opposite side of the island to Colombo, Trincomalee is said to have been reconditioned as a naval station. Perhaps this explains why Jap bombers have vented their spleen against this base. Trincomalee and Colombo sit on the edge of the sea lanes from Africa and Suez which sweep round Ceylon to Madras and Calcutta. They counter the value of Rangoon to Japan. They are the southern key points to India. We will hear more of Colombo and her smaller but perhaps more beautiful sister, Trincomalee.—The Nautical Magazine, August.
India
The foundation-stone of the Royal Indian Navy’s torpedo school was laid recently by the
Jam Saheb of Nawanagar, whose generosity it was stated has made it possible to acquire the land on which the school is built. Speaking at the ceremony, Vice-Admiral Sir Herbert Fitzherbert, flag officer commanding the R.I.N., referred to India’s continuing growth to full “navyhood.” With the establishment of this new branch of the service the R.I.N. was placed for the first time on a level with the Royal Navy and all the other portions of the Imperial Navy.—The London Times.
AVIATION
Air Fortresses Vs. Spitfires
New York Herald Tribune, September 1. —The remarkable success of America’s Flying Fortress bombers has caused many British air experts to change drastically their ideas of air warfare, it was learned today. Instead of the speedy, maneuverable, heavily armed fighter plane, exemplified by the Spitfire, retaining its unquestioned position as queen of the air, these experts now see it about ready to yield its place to the flying battleship, the huge metal monoplane with four or more motors, of at least 8,000 hp. and so heavily armed and armored that only an overwhelming force of fighters could hope to defeat it. Such a superdreadnought of the air could carry out daylight precision bombings of the type done by the Fortresses many hundreds of miles from its base, without fighter protection and yet without excessive losses from enemy defenses, particularly fighters, it was pointed out.
In the two weeks they have been in operation in this theater the United States Army Flying Fortresses have bombed with extreme accuracy a total of seven vital targets in German-occupied Europe and carried out one unescorted action against an overwhelming force of Luftwaffe fighters. They lost not a single ship in any of these operations, but succeeded in shooting down at least four enemy planes and so severely damaged nine others that it is probable they were unable to reach their bases. The Fortresses have made more than 100 sorties (a sortie representing a single plane in action), including the bombing of railway yards at Rouen on August 17, the German airfield at Abbeville during the Dieppe attack on August 19, railway yards at Amiens, on August 20, shipyards at Le Trait, near Rouen, on August 24, shipyards and harbor at Rotterdam on August 27, aircraft factory at Mealute, between Amiens and Arras, on August 28, and the Nazi airport at Wevelghem, Belgium, last Saturday. In all these operations the Fortresses were escorted by British fighter planes. On August 21, however, eleven Fortresses, flying unescorted over the North Sea, were attacked by 20 to 25 German fighters, including a number of Focke- Wulfe 190’s, Germany’s best fighter plane, and shot down three of them while virtually destroying nine others. The remaining Luftwaffe fighter to fall to the guns of a Fortress was another Focke-Wulfe, shot down in the first raid two weeks ago. As yet no Fortress has failed to return to its base.
No other bomber has such a record in Europe. It cannot be expected that the Fortresses will continue to operate without losses for long, despite their twelve .50-caliber and one .303-caliber machine guns, particularly as they certainly will be used on more distant and therefore more dangerous raids before many days. The crews already are begging for a chance to “bomb Berlin.” Their proportion of losses over a long period in the Pacific theater against the Japanese air forces is extremely small, however. Over the Dutch East Indies the Fortresses are believed to have been used in the role of “aerial battleships” already going out with the express object of meeting and destroying enemy fighters. To date it has been generally accepted in both Great Britain and Germany—though some air experts in America have forecast the development of such air battleships—that no multi-engine plane could withstand the attacks of fighters. As a result, heavy bombers have been resigned to operate high and to carry huge bomb loads at such speed that they could get out of range of enemy fighters in the shortest possible space of time. The record of the Fortresses and the deadly accuracy of their daylight bombing, however, is “likely to lead to a drastic resorting of basic ideas on air warfare which have stood firm since the infancy of flying,” as the London Daily Mail will say in a front-page story tomorrow.
Wright Single-Cylinder Test Stand
Aero Digest, September.—Single-cylinder, aircraft-engine test stands are being used by Wright Aeronautical to speed production, at the same time assisting in the steady improvement of parts and accessories as well as engine performance. These stands duplicate the regular, full-sized Cyclone 9 test apparatus in every respect, except that eight of the engine’s nine cylinders have been removed. With these single cylinders, tests are conducted on pistons, spark plugs, valves, piston rings, piston pins, intake and exhaust ports, and cooling fins. Tests of hundreds of variations and combinations of these items are run in a short time, saving not only the expense of operating a complete engine, but saving valuable days of test time and releasing for production use on full-sized engines the regular test cells of the company. In addition, a test on a specific part can be run to the point of failure on the singlecylinder stands, without the danger of ruining a complete engine needed for flight use in a bomber or fighter. Design features in the cylinder and its component parts can be tested, modified, rejected, improved or approved without change before an entire experimental engine is constructed for extensive ground and flight tests, while “bugs” that crop up in service engines may be relentlessly pursued on a 24-hour schedule.
In operation, the single-cylinder set-up usually consists of a crankcase for a Cyclone 9, with supercharger housings and nose section attached, but stripped of all gears except those necessary to run the magnetos and oil pump. Eight of the nine cylinder openings in the crankcase are covered with solid plates, leaving one opening on top of the crankcase for mounting a regular Cyclone cylinder, complete with piston valves, etc. The piston drives a master connecting rod, which in turn drives a crankshaft fitted with a modified counterweight to compensate for the fact that only one instead of nine power impulses have to be counterbalanced. An electric blower system sweeps a continuous current of air back over the cooling fins, since the engine uses no propeller. Likewise, since there is no supercharger to mix gasoline and air and pack the mixture under pressure into the combustion chamber, a special blower or compression system for the fuel and air is connected to the single intake port. The exhaust is connected to a water-cooled muffler which absorbs engine heat and a considerable amount of the noise. Thus rigged, the one-cylinder engine is capable of running for thousands of hours. New cylinders can be replaced in entirety, or individual parts, such as spark plugs or valves, can be substituted in short time. The main unit of crankcase and crankshaft is seldom touched, only being overhauled at intervals to remove oil sludge.
With engine speeds, cylinder compression ratio and horsepower output per cylinder increasing sharply in recent years, new and improved types of spark plugs were a necessary development and the single-cylinder stands were consequently put to use testing new plugs as they were produced. In fact, a considerable part of the total test time has been on spark plugs. The necessity for such tests can be seen by a comparison of cylinder output in the first and present Cyclones. When first introduced, the Cyclone 9 developed approximately 60 hp. per cylinder. Now, each cylinder in today’s Cyclone 9 produces 134 hp. The “one lunger” helped make such power possible.
As power per cylinder increases, the problem of cooling also increases. Research engineers find the single-cylinder engine a fast and effective means of testing different arrangements of cooling fins. The present connecting points for taking temperature readings on the cylinder base and head, important for fuel economy and engine safety, were determined by running tests on all parts of a cylinder to determine the hottest areas. Heretofore, the chief advantages of the one-cylinder test engines were their economy and convenience. Most significant fact about the stands now, say the engineers, is the time saved on tests. Before any engine part can be used in production, it must be completely tested in a complete model. The one-cylinder units, however, eliminate waste motion, for if a new idea doesn’t work on one cylinder, it certainly will never work on 9 or 14 or 18 cylinders. The radial, air-cooled engine is peculiarly fitted for single-cylinder tests. In regular operations, each cylinder is approximately equi-distant from the carburetor and supercharger, tinned areas are the same and cooling problems are the same, so that test problems worked out on one type of cylinder apply equally well to all others of the same type. This is true regardless of whether the engine is a single or double-row radial.
One-cylinder test stands have been used on a limited scale for some years, since their advantages quickly became apparent when the radial air-cooled engine moved into the production stages. Their application on such a large scale, however, is now the trend in the aircraft engine industry. The single-cylinder units now are running 24 hr. a day. They will never get off the ground, never carry passengers, troops or cargo, and never take part in combat, yet they are playing an important part in building the tremendous power, without massive weight, needed to enable today’s planes to complete their missions.
Various Notes
The following official figures for Axis and British aircraft losses in the three years of war were announced last night. These show that 8,985 Axis machines have been destroyed for the loss of 6,231 British airplanes. The figures include losses sustained by air combat and ground defenses, but not machines destroyed on the ground, nor do they include 725 aircraft shot down by naval ships or the Fleet Air Arm.
Over Great Britain and British waters:
| Axis | British |
First year..................... | 1,549 | 383 |
Second year................. | 2,080 | 501 |
Third year.................... | 286 | 7 |
| 3,915 | 891 |
Over Germany and German-occupied territory, including the first year of the Scandinavian and Battle of France campaigns, and the third year by the R.A.F. wing in Russia:
| Axis | British |
First year..................... | 1,082 | 671 |
Second year................. | 662 | 1,173 |
Third year.................... | 744 | 1,993 |
| 2,488 | 3,837 |
Middle East. All losses to the enemy on the ground are excluded.
| Axis | British |
First year..................... | 125 | 29 |
Second year................. | 1,040 | 360 |
Third year.................... | 1,417 | 1,114 |
| 2,582 | 1,503 |
—London Times, September 3.
Details of Germany’s newest and best fighter aircraft, the F.W. 190, are no longer a secret to the Air Ministry and the Ministry of Aircraft Production. It may now be disclosed that some weeks ago one of these aircraft was captured practically intact in this country, and that since that time it has been subjected to expert examination, has been dismantled and reassembled, and has been flown by R.A.F. test pilots to ascertain its capabilities.
The Focke-Wulf- 190 was damaged over the Channel and driven down when short of fuel and ammunition. It landed on the south coast. Before the pilot could set fire to his machine or smash up the engine he was taken prisoner, and the fighter was handed over to the R.A.F.
British pilots regard the F.W. 190 as the best fighter aircraft Germany has produced. It has an extraordinary rate of climb, is fast and maneuverable, well armed, and has a high ceiling. The secret of its success is an excellent radial engine, the B.M.W. 801, which develops 1,600 hp. Further details will become available shortly, as aeronautical correspondents are to be allowed to see the captured machine.—London Times, August 5.
MERCHANT MARINE Arctic Convoy
Chicago Tribune, September 25.—The terrible fury of continuous day and night German air attacks on a Russia-bound convoy in the icy Arctic, was described today by Second Mate John Cassin Dyer, U.S.N.R., home on leave. The convoy was his first assignment after his previous ship was torpedoed and sunk in the Caribbean. It was a big convoy, Dyer said, “and just off the coast on the other side thick fog set in.” Whenever the fog cleared slightly they could see they were under observation by German Dornier planes. Finally after several days the sun broke out. Immediately Stuka dive bombers and submarines struck simultaneously. Within a minute, two ships had been put out of the fight but in the ensuing 40-minute battle the convoy guns had sunk one sub and downed five planes. The next day there was another battle and the enemy was driven off.
The third day found the convoy under the midnight sun. “From 9:30 that morning to 10:30 p.m.,” the mariner asserted, “the waves of Focke-Wulf high altitude bombers and torpedo planes came over hourly. . . . God, it was awful—ships going down, men swimming in icy water, ships burning and exploding. We had 18 hours at the guns without rest.” For the next three days there was more of the same. Just off the Russian coast, “a stick of bombs exploded right against the starboard side, below the water line. The dynamos went out of commission and the engineers in the blackness of the engine-room were frantically trying to stay the inrush of water from several holes in the engine-room bulges.” The planes meanwhile had been beaten off, and finally the crew made such temporary repairs as enabled the ship to take its place with the convoy.
They made port, and had hopes of some peace and quiet. But, Dyer stated, during the 20 days the convoy was at anchor in the Russian port the city underwent 87 air raids. On the homeward voyage there was an almost continuous general alarm.
“The night before we were to make a land fall,” he said, “there was a high wind and a heavy sea running. Terrific concussions shook our ship from stem to stern. Ships were being blown clear from the water by the explosions, often breaking into two or three pieces. Vessels were traveling in all directions to avoid collision with stricken ships. . . . The water was so cold that a man could expect to live only half an hour in it. There was a terrific explosion under our stern. Our gun, loaded and ready to fire, went off with the force of the explosion and was irreparably damaged. We got ready to abandon ship but found that, although taking water, we were not in a desperate condition, so we put on full steam and got clear away in the fog. ... I do not know what it was that we ran into. Personally I think it was a mine, perhaps laid from German subs ahead of us.”
Dyer’s ship limped home at last, after three months of adversity.
MISCELLANEOUS Naval Developments
The Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, August, by Maurice Prender- gast.—In June last the Chairman of the House of Representatives Naval Committee announced that the building of the five new U. S. battleships of the Montana class had been “temporarily deferred.” The reason given for this change of policy was the necessity for concentrating constructional energy and resources on the rapid production of new aircraft carriers.
From the pages of Fighting Ships for 1941 we can learn that the Montanas were intended to be the greatest, most powerful, and most costly group of battleships ever planned. With a length of 903 feet and breadth of 123 feet in a seagoing state they would certainly have displaced 60,000 tons. The projected armament, speed, and protection are not given. The “Two-Ocean Navy” Program provided for the building of seven battleships, of which the Montanas were five; the remaining two were the Illinois and Kentucky, which are reputed to be the fifth and sixth units of the 45,000- ton “Iowa class.” The keel of the Kentucky was laid on February 16, 1942; no exact date has been reported for the commencement of the Illinois. Whether one or both ships have been begun, little progress can have been made, and it is therefore likely that these two vessels will join the five leviathans of the “Montana class” on the list of ships intended, but suspended. Two ships of the 45,000-ton design (Iowa and New Jersey) were begun in 1940; two more, the Missouri and Wisconsin, were commenced in the middle of 1941, and work on all four is to proceed until they are launched. When the building slips are cleared of all four hulls, the situation will be reviewed and decision made as to whether they shall be worked on any further or not. It is possible that they may be finished off as four very big aircraft carriers. By March 1, 1942, four battleships of the 35,000-ton type—the South Dakota, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Alabama, were all afloat and well advanced towards completion. They have a high priority in the schedule of naval construction, and are being hurried on with the utmost zeal, so that all four may be in service by the autumn of the present year. No new design or details of any battleship types appear in the latest issue of Fighting Ships. From its pages we can, however, ascertain that the American North Carolina and Washington, the German Tirpitz and the Japanese Nissin were all completed in 1941. A Japanese battleship of uncertain name is also mentioned as being due for delivery during 1942.
This war has provided costly proof that the large battleship is quite unsuitable for operations in narrow waters; indeed, that lesson might have been learnt long ago from the toll taken of old battleships in the Dardanelles during the last war, even before aircraft had become such formidable opponents as they are today. The need for small, tough, heavily armed Coast Attack ships—successors to the invaluable monitors of the last war—has been frequently advocated in the pages of this Journal. It is interesting, therefore, to see in Fighting Ships the design for a vessel of this type prepared for a neutral power—Sweden, whose naval activities and experience are essentially related to narrow waters and coastal operations. The details given of this design show that these ships are intended to displace 8,000 tons, and to have an armament of four 10-in., six 4.7-in. A.A., and eight 40-mm. A.A. guns. They are to be given 10-in. side armor, and have a speed of 23 knots. It is worth comparing this design with the old monitor, II.M.S. Terror, which did such valuable service on the North African coast in this war before she was sunk. The Terror on a displacement of 7,200 tons carried two 15-in., two 3-in. A.A., and a dozen smaller guns. While she had an 8-in. barbette and a 13-in. gun- house for her main armament, her hull armor nowhere exceeded 4 in. Her speed, when new, was only 12 knots.
According to recent reports, the six 27,000-ton U. S. “large cruisers” of the Alaska class are to be completed as aircraft carriers. Only one new aircraft carrier makes her first appearance amongst the illustrations in Fighting Ships. She is the U.S.S. Long Island. Originally she was intended to be a merchant vessel of 7,889 tons gross, and to be driven at a speed of 16 knots by Diesel machinery and a single screw, but she was converted into an escort aircraft carrier with a capacity for 30 fighters or 15 to 20 bombers. She has no funnel or “island” superstructure. Six or seven more ships have been transformed in the same way. Extemporized carriers such as these have their limitations, but they can be provided quickly and in quantity at a time when there is most urgent need for carrier- borne aircraft at sea. They can put up fighter protection over convoys, and they can offer safe landing space to aircraft catapulted from other vessels.
It has been declared that certain unfinished U. S. cruisers are to be completed as aircraft carriers, but which vessels exactly have been selected for treatment has not been revealed. Apart from the cruiser-battleships, already alluded to three different types of cruisers are in hand for the U.S. Navy. The first is the 13,000-ton Baltimore class of eight ships, of which only four were being worked on with activity last autumn. The second is the 10,000-ton Cleveland class composed of 32 vessels, and of these over half a dozen have been launched to date. The third group is made up by the eight members of the 7,000-ton Atlanta class, and of these about half are finished and the others are being hurried on to completion. The launched hulls of the 10,000- ton design—such as the Cleveland, Columbia and Montpelier—will probably be the first to be taken in hand for conversion into carriers, because they are the nearest to completion. It is not likely that the Atlan- las will be altered, because fast light cruisers are urgently wanted as escorts to carriers. Fighting Ships now contains photographs and plans of the completed Atlanta, whose main armament is composed of sixteen 5-in. D.P. guns, and not twelve as hitherto supposed. British cruiser types depicted for the first time are the Nigeria of the Fiji class and the Naiad and Her mi- one of the Dido class. There is also a large, full-broadside view of the German Prinz Eugen. The only really new cruiser design presented to us is that for the Swedish
Gola Lejon and Tre Kroner. Moderation in all things good seems to be the keynote of their design, for they are of medium size— 7,000 tons, of temperate armament—nine 6-in. guns, and of modest speed—30 knots.
It is perhaps a sign of the times that the main interest of the new edition of this Annual lies more in the small ships than in the big. Eighty-six new British destroyers have had their names recorded in it for the first time; of these 29 belong to the Onslow, Penn, Quilliam and Raider groups, and the remainder are “Repeat Hunts.” On September 1, 1939, we had about 170 completed destroyers. According to Fighting Ships, since then we have commissioned or commenced 210 more, inclusive of those acquired from the United States and Brazilian navies, making a total of 380; but from this we have to deduct the 70 vessels whose names are entered in the War Loss Lists. There is also the reservation that the book does not and cannot mention all the new destroyers that have been completed or begun for the fleets of the Empire. One gains the general impression, however, that despite the ravages of war, we have considerably enlarged our destroyer forces. High priority is given to destroyer construction in American shipyards, and rapid headway is being made with the output of nearly 200 new craft, of which some have already been delivered. At first it was intended that 193 ships should be built. Unofficial reports aver that the two boats of a special type are to be the first destroyers in the world driven entirely by Diesel engines.
No less than 189 corvettes are mentioned by their names for the first time. Some particulars are given for the Royal Canadian vessels, and from these we can gain an idea of what the corvette type is like. The displacement is given as 725 tons, and the complement as 58. Length (overall) is 193 feet and beam is 32 feet. The armament is one 4-in. A.A. and several smaller guns. With quadruple-expansion engines at full power, 17 knots should be made.
Attention must be called to the extraordinary number of mine sweepers now being built on the other side of the Atlantic for the U. S. Navy. One class alone—the Conqueror—is to muster more than 200 vessels. We notice with pleasure that a new series of British mine sweepers has inherited the names of famous old-time sloops—Cadmus, Rinaldo, Rosario, and so forth—some of which were the last ships of the Royal Navy to be fitted with sail and be embellished with figureheads.
Originally, the practice was to buy, hire or acquire the commercial pattern of steam trawler, as used with the fishing fleets, and adapt it to service needs. About five years ago, however, it was decided that a new type of vessel should be designed, built, and tested at sea, which, whilst retaining trawler characteristics, should be planned to service requirements and have a more naval appearance. The outcome was the Basset and Mastijf. The new edition of Fighting Ships gives an illustration of the Admiralty trawler Rowan of the new “Tree” class, which, in turn, is an advance on the Basset form. To call these vessels “trawlers” is rather inapposite now, for they bear little external resemblance to the typical trawler pattern: they are far more like small corvettes or patrol gunboats. Many more of these “super-trawlers” appear to be coming into service, some named after dances, others bearing the names of the heroes and heroines of the plays of Shakespeare.
Of new submarines we hear very little, and the few British craft alluded to in the Annual are apparently “repeats” of the pre-war Triton and Ursxda designs. After this, the broad stream of naval design diffuses itself into a delta of diversified types. There is the ever expanding “motorized” division—the motor gunboats, motor torpedo boats, motor anti-submarine craft, motor patrol boats and motor mine sweepers. Then there is the enormous “Maintenance” group, comprising depot ships for aircraft, destroyers, submarines, etc., oilers, transports, store and ammunition carriers, repair ships and so forth, down to little tugs and tenders. The United States is swiftly acquiring vast numbers of all these types by construction, purchase, and requisition. Of all the neutral navies, Sweden is the only one that is working actively on the creation of new war vessels or the rebuilding of old ones. The progressive development of the Swedish pattern of “flush-decked” destroyer is an interesting study in design.
War has begun to make its mark on the illustrations of Fighting Ships. Ships appear once again in camouflage tints or in “dazzle” painting. Of the latter form of polychromatic pigmentation H.M.S. Hesperus is an outstanding example. New photographs of the Sujfolk and Aurora suggest that our pre-war cruisers are being refitted with tripod masts. Alterations also figure in those destroyers which we built in the interval between the two World Wars. Their funnels have been cut down, the mainmast removed, and the after group of torpedo tubes has been replaced by a 4-in. A.A. gun. These changes have also been effected in the “flushdecker” destroyers that are now shared between the Royal and the United States Navies. Novelties akin to those which appeared in the last war are not to be found in the 1941 Fighting Ships. The combatants appear to be engaged on the rapid building of ships that are simply “repeats” of pre-war designs. Daring innovations may exist, but they are carefully withheld from public knowledge. A war that is tending more and more to become a conflict between ships and aircraft, instead of one between ships and ships, will certainly have a profound effect on the whole trend of naval design, and lead to the production of war vessels of unprecedented pattern.
[1] (Comdr. Irving Day Wiltsie was navigator of the aircraft carrier Yorktown and second in command at the time of her sinking. Ace aviator as well as naval officer, he is 43, a graduate of Annapolis, class of 1921. He has just rejoined his wife and two children in New York for a brief visit. The commander’s story, obtained by the New York./ournal-A mcrican, is published herewith by special permission of that newspaper.)
[2] For purposes of comparison: at the same time 19.8 per cent of the British Empire merchant fleet was below the age of 5 years and 14.1 per cent between 5-9 years, the corresponding figures for the U.S.A. being only 5.1 per cent below 5 years and 4.8 per cent between 5-9 years.
[3] Japanese Government circles indicate their merchant licet requirements for the greater “co-prosperity sphere” including India and Australia, at 15,000,000 gross tons, which amount forms the goal of a new construction plan made in 1941; and the President of the
N.Y.K.—the most important Japanese shipping company—even indicated the needs for post-war period at 20,000,000 gross tons.