BIG SHIPS OR SMALL

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 26, 28 December 1932, Page 10

BIG SHIPS OR SMALL

LESSONS FROM HISTORY. NO SECURITY IN SIZE. As part of their disarmament proposals the British Government u 2 /® put forward 2t Gene-2 z scheme for a common reduction i- the size o. fighting ships. Thev have advocated a maximum tonnage for battle s-i-pa o* 22,000 tons, instead of 35, 000. 22 - for cruisers of 7003. instead of lO.XfzIn the following article which appears a in the London Times Admire! _ Richmond develops his case against the opsession of mere fcnik as an element in naval security.

The long drHwii out controverr.es concerning the sire of naval armaments have been brought sharply to a bead fcv Germany. She has presented her claim for "equality of status. ' a plain issue has been put forward for determination. The Treaty of \ ersallies limited the types of vessel composing her fighting Seers to armoured ships cf 10.0 CO tons, "cruisers." so called, or 9100, and a small surface flotilla. She was permitted to hwM neither aircraft carriers nor submarines. The other nations of the wor.d are free to build armoured ship? or 3oY*~o tons, cruisers of 10.000 tons, large aircraft carriers, and submanaee. The need for a long view is obvious; and one question which forces itself to the front is: is it more to the general advantage of the world that the fighting ships of the Powers shall stand at, their present sizes and retrain at their present tyr-es. those cf Germany increased to those sizes and include tuos= types, or that all should he reduced to the size and type? of those of Germany? FIGHTING STRENGTH.

It c-an hardly be open to dispute

that the object of a navy is, in its ultimate analysis, to defend its country against invasion by sea and to prevent strangulation by the arrest of the now of commerce. In the determination of size there are therefore two factors, the one absolute, the other relative. The only means by _ which either troops or trade are carried are merchant vessels. If the fighting ship has sufficient sea-endurance, speed and fighting power to go wherever her presence is needed, to intercept or—within reasonable limit? of circumstance — overhaul her quarry, and to overcome whatever resistance can be offered to arrest, she is strong enough to perform, her duties!

Fee superiority of a ship built specifieail}- for fighting purposes over one built for trade and extemporised as a fighting ship is familiar to all seamen. Against a ship designed fer the purpose of war she is helpless. We have thus an absolute and fixed criterion in the ascertainable and calcculable strength of a merchant ship by which to determine the strength, and therefore the size, of the fighting ship.

The other factor is the relative one —the size of the opponent. Bat inasmuch as the same factor governs her size, since the rule applies to both, and as in fighting between two opponents of equal size there is no advantage or disadvantage to either, the absolute size of both is immaterial. Forty years age the navies of the world were composed of armoured vessels, very few of which exceeded 10,000 tens burdens: of cruisers, the largest of which were in the neighbourhood of 7003 tons, but the great majority far mailer; and of comparatively mall flotillas of very small craft, whose influence was limited to restricted areas in the vicinity of their bases. For all practical purposes the only vessels which affected ! the security of the various nations at sea were the 10,000 ions or so bartJeshiDs and the cruisers of between 5000 and 2000 tons. Were the nations then securer If not, what nation was insecure on account of the small size of all its ships r j Insecurity there was in this country, tut it was not qualitative: it was quantitative. The successive Governments had failed to provide the country with' ! the numbers its security demanded, i Feat, however, has no relation to the size cf the world’s ships. ARBITRARY SIZES. I have said that the only dangers from the sea forces of other Powers to i which nations are exposed are invasion j and isolation. This is no modem cis- ] covery, nor has it ever been contra- j dieted since Raleigh said, "There are : two ways by which England may be afflicted; the one by invasion . . . the other by impeachment of our Trades, by which 1 races ell Commonwealths jourish and are enriched.” It is, I contend, for those who assert tie I necessity, with all its consequent ex- ] pense, for great ships and for those! types which are forbidden to Germany, j to prove to the hilt that their countries! would be exposed to either of those j ‘’afflictions” if the navies of the world " —not their own only, hut also those of all other Powers—were composed of nothing except the two types allowed to Germany, and of no greater size. The danger, therefore, which we must suppose is feared by the opponents of general reduction and the advocates of the retention of great size j and of other novelties is the danger! of the loss of their trade. But why is trade more secure when it is, defended by great ships against great ships than it was when it was defended by small ships against sum]]—alwavs provided those small ships were able, as they were in the nineties, notwithstanding their smallness, to go where they were required to go r ” THE RACE OF SIZE. What we have been witnessing in recent years is an obsession for size |and speed. It began -with the lelief i that advantage was to be gained, on j our part, by our having larger battleships than other Powers: and l on the part of other Powers that advantage , was to be gained by their having larger cruisers than ourselves. Size, initiallv the result of extrinsic impulses, became in the end an object in itself. Men whose life had been spent in producing bigger and better ships unconsciously came to believe that there was something intrinsic in size: that a “battleship” could not fight a "battle” unless she had guns whose shell could reach an enemy below the horizon, or unless she was unsinkable, oblivious to the fact that the enemy’s gun would reach just as far, that his ships would be equally unsmkable. Oblivious not only to these facts, but that the greater the ship, the less damage she could stand; for hitting power increased out of proportion to defensive power Oblivious finally to the simple and ’ plain fact, worth ail the theorv in the world that a succession of wars, operations’ and battles have demonstrated that wbe_ ther the ultimate aim of controlling sea communications or the immediate aim or disabling the enemy s fiuhting forces in order to obtain control is concerned, these aims have, in actual practice been attained by ships no larger but considerably smaller, than those allotted to Germany to-dav.