1940-10-29 — Page 19

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October 29, 1940.**

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DESTROYERS

FROM AMERICA FUNNY SIDE UP

The news that fifty American destroyers are being disposed of to Britain will come with unfeigned relief and satisfaction to those who

By TAFFRAIL

know something of the work of the British des-famous British Naval

troyers since the beginning of the war.

Ships of round about. 1,200 tons and 35 knots speed, armed with 4-inch guns, the for destroyers transferred service under the White En- sign are no longer new. They form part of the United States building programme of the Inst war, most of them having been completed between 1918 and 1920,

After serving with the United States fleet, they were later relegated to the reserve and kept in full running con- dition and ready for any emer- gency. Their age does not matter. Many British des troyers of similar date have done yeoman service as con- voy escorts and in many other directions during the last few months.

The names of not a few of these older craft have cropped up in connection with

the

operations in Norway, and Holland, and during the now historic withdrawal of the British and Allied troops from Boulogue and Dunkirk,

Between 1914 and 1918 there was hardly a purpose for which des -Troyers-were-not employed_at_one_ time or another. They were used, as anti-submarine screens with th heavy ships of the fleet whenever they went to sea, for beating off hosille destroyer attacks with their guns, for attacking the German feet with their torpedoes, as well as for making protective smoke- screens. They escorted minelayers aircraft-carriers, and towed and

kile balloons.

4

Provided with listening devices, charges, they rams and depth formed hunting flotillas for. harry- ing the U-boats. They were used for coastal patrols, and for voying transports and merchant- men far out at sea in every sort of weather.

con-

In the Dardanelles' they landed and embarked troops, while in the Bane campaign, in the Suez Canal and on the Flanders coast, they bombarded troops and gua tions ashore, They were utilized for minelaying and for minesweep- lug, as well as for raiding harbours in the islands of the Aegean.

posi-

It has been much the same in this war, except that their work and has been more varied still, much more onerous, with the nd- vent of aircraft und such things us magnetic mines.

*

'Their work nt Boulogne and Dunkirk is known all over the world; but who at the beginning

would have thought of this war! ocean-going destroyers chasing the Germans through a two-hundred yard gap in a Norwegian ford ten miles long well beyond the Arctle Circle, and varying in

in width be tween three-quarters and a quarter ter-of-a-mile," Yet this they did at the second battle of Narvik on April 13, to see their sirleken ad- versarles hard up against the lee at the very end of the narrow wnter- way.

*

When this war started the British Empire possessed 185 destroyers of all ages, count- ing those in the Royal Austro- lian and Canadian Navies. Some thirty-eight others were under construction or project- ed, of which the greater num ber must now be completed or nonring completion.

It can be assumed, too, that the building programme in ships of the destroyer: typo has been greatly enhanced since 'the outbreak of (war, as they are needed · for

many different purposes.

Bo

Their losses, thirty at the time of writing, have not been light.

It is unwise to estimate the num- ber of British destroyers now In service; but with those required with the fleets in Home waters, the Eastern and Western Mediterran- can, the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, besides others working with the convoys of merchantmen, In sub- martre hunting and a variety of other purposes, it cannot be said that Britain has over-sufficient for her manifold needs.

In the last war, when, during the unrestricted submaring campaign of 1917, Britain had more than 400 vessels of the destroyer class in operation, they were spoken of by the naval historian, Sir Julian Cor- bett, as being "run off their legs." He went on to say that no praise could be too high for the men who endured the strain, or for those who built the no-less-sorely-tried hulls and engines.

-03

Six American destroyers sailed from the United States "la operate on April 24, 1017, and by July 5, there were thirty-four American destroyers working from Queenstown. some inccting the American

from re-inforcements France far out at sea, others the ordinary convoys of merchantmen coming to the British Isles.

Some 400 American vessels-of- war and 81,000 officers and men of the United States Navy saw ser- vice in Euopean waters before the armistice in November, 1918. the eighty-five were destroy-

ships ers, most of them modern; but six. old and under 500 tons displace ment, made the long journey of 12,000 miles from the Philippines to Gibraltar.

The value of the services of the Americans can hardly be their Before exaggerated. arrival, in an area of about 26,000 square miles in the. western approaches to the English Channel, through which flowed volume of trade, there were few as four sometimes as British destroyers available for patrol work: Never were there more than fifteen.

an

enormous

The American building program- me, embarked upon immediately after her rupture with Germany, was almost without precedent. It included 275 destroyers, 447 sub- marine chasers, 90 submarines. 112 "Eagle boats" intended for constal patrol work, and 54 minesweepers, not all of which were completed by November, 1918.

The speed with which some of the destroyers were bulli consiitul- ed a world's record. The pre-war time for completion was between twenty months and two years, but 1017 one, the "Ward," was launch- ed 17 days after her keel had been laid, and commissioned in was seventy days. The "Reld" commissioned in 45% working days from the time she was laid down.

As already indicated, the British destroyers have been hard driven since the beginning of this war. One of them steamed 82,240 miles In the first nine months; another. 25,840 miles from September 3 to December 31, 1939, during which she was at sen for 101 days out of 110.

in

Oni escort destroyer which I was on board, for more than a week had done a thirteen-day trip at sea, followed by thirty-six hours harbour for refuelling, storing and provisioning, and then another eleven days at sea. As a general rule, worse the weather or the fog- gler, the longer the sea trips.

In an order to the fleet in March the Admiralty appreciated, "--the large expenditure of effort which the care and maintenance of machinery and equipment through- out the winter months has involved in circumstances of - continuous watchkeeping.

· writer

That this amount of steaming has been possible is a tribute to the designers and builders, but stili more to the personnel of all branches who have maintained the efflelency of their ships under the most difficult conditions, especially In view of the dilution of comple- ments which has of necessity taken place."

And what of the future?

*

☆

Britain hus been spoken of as a fortress, as indeed she is, armed at every point and her armaments constantly increas- ing. Germany holds 2,000 miles of the coast from Nor- way, through Denmark, Hol- land. Belgium and Franco to the Spanish frontier.

en-

The Royal Navy is busily gaged in home waters, on both basins of the Mediterranean, in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden -in any and every sea throughout the world where German or Halian activity may be manifest by sur- face ships, U-boats and aircraft. Never, since the beginning of its history has the British Empire been engaged in so gigantic a *atruggle against the forces

and for the benefit of all mankind.

However, it is idle to

Lalk

of Britain, the heart and nerve centre of the Empire, being in any sense beleaguered fortress. In spite of

merchant ship losses, new cons truction captures, and tonnage acquired through the German oc- cupation of Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and France, the mercantile tonnage working in the

DEAN

By Abner

SAN KLINK BU. PRISON

Care. 1960 by L'ailed Factori Syndientë, fai

"Hello again, Warden... wo got homesick!"

Allied cause is greater than at the beginning of the war.

Moreover, and what is more ira- portant still, neither German nor Italian merchantmen are at seu on the bread oceans, while the British merchant fleet continues its task of supplying the country with the essentials without which it cannot exist. This all comes about through the overwhelming strength of British Sea Power.

Britain may be hard pressed; but is successfully holding her own.

VETERANS

From RICHARD CAPELL

The green and plea-

sant counties compris- ed in the area of the Southern Command never looked more' beautiful.

But this time the reason for a tour of these pastoral valleys, these headlands and beaches, was not the charm of the country, but the defences, military and naval.

Compared with Eastern England, the South was al- ways a kind of Cinderella as An in- regards its defences. vasion of Enstern England was in '14-18 a possibility always taken into account," but the South was naturally considered to be practically safe.

When Inst June the whole face of things changed, there had been no land defences constructed in the South since the days of Napoleon III's Now, Palmerston's Empire. -mid-Victorian forts may, after

all, como in useful.

To see the South after the East and the North is to bot struck once again with the variety of landscape and sea. scape contained within our little England.

Tho South presents pre- blems to the Army Com- mander remarkably different

OF

from those of other areas, but it also puts trump cards in his hand.

In a tour of many hundred miles it was agreeable to think, as we made our steep und winding way through Southern England one day, of the plight in which hostile tanks would surely find them- selves between those high hedges, where the narrow and twisting road presents view.

no

In exalted positions in the Southern Command one meets men who won or enhanced their reputations this year in France, and they are concern- ed with the lessons not of '14-18. but of 1940,

The coro of the Southern Army consists of troops who have fought in France and Norway, and in the eyes of the rest they are voterans. "The now soldiers hang on their words"--this was an ex- pression I heard at one head- quarters.

Dean

Neither German U-boat nor al- cruft have prevented British war- ships from operating, or her mer- chantmen from sailing the "seas.

Nevertheless, ie acquisition of fifty most useful destroyers from the United States is a most hear- tening and timely addition to our naval strength,-and-a-token of the. sympathy and unity of feeling that animates the peoples of the two great Democracies of a troubled world.

1940

оп

bile. It is an army

wheels. Fifty, 60 and 70 miles a day are covered in murching exercises

The parrying of an invasion is the absorbing thought, as well it may be with the enemy in occupa- tion of Normandy and Brittany.

Invasion may come any night: that is a thought all are taught to bear in mind. And the watchword "If the invaders.can't be shot in their boats they must not bo allowed above high-water mark." HOME GUARD'S

VALUE

Again, as in the North so in the South, appreciation of the Home Guard was heard in the highest quarters.

The G.O.C.-in-C., Lt.-Gen, Au- echinleck, says that since June he has been compelled to change his mind about the Home Guard. He began by being a little scepticnl about their usefulness, but is gled now to allow that they may play a vital part.

The inen are getting more useful every day, and the more they are asked to extend their scope the beller they like it. To put it roughly: The task of the Home Guard is to hold pill-boxes and. road-blocks, leaving to the Army proper the job of counter-attacking and throwing the enemy back into

THREE SERVICES MEET the

There is a new collaboration bo tween the Navy, the Army and the Air Force in the defensive work in the South. "We meat," a general said to me, "at high-water mark on the beaches."

Close co-operation within the Army is a result of this year's cam- paign in France. The career

ot the British professional soldier is typically a business of guarding out- posts of Empire with small forces,

But now in the organisation of the defence of England all' arine are closely associated in exercises and preparation.

The Southern, like the Eastern and Northern armies, is very mo-

A morning was spent with the gunners who look out to sea from the__neighbourhood, of one of the southern ports. They will, one feels, be disappointed if the oppor tunity never comes for them to fing their missiles at an invading armada,

A day or two with the ` Royal Navy is a heartening `experience. Circumstances have brought into ihe Royal Navy, or into association with it, ships and men of more na- tionalities than it has over embraced in all the centuries. The admiral who commands at one centre has: half a League of Nations under him. He speaks in the highest terms of the Poles.

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