WORLD’S BIGGEST.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 211, 6 August 1937, Page 7

WORLD’S BIGGEST.

ALERCHANT FLEET. BRITAIN STARTS TRAINING AND ARMING. LONDON, July 28. Britain’s reserve fleet—the world’s biggest Alerchant Navy—is beginning training and arming for .any future emergency. An immense reserve of guns and defensive equipment is being accumulated. gun-mountings are being prepared, and the Alerchant Navy officers are to train immediately. Should war break out, the enemy on any sea would be confronted with convoys of merchantmen trained, equipped and officered for gunfire and the special tactics of sea trade protection.

Captain Euan Wallace, Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, in announcing the plans, said: “It is of vital importance that masters and officers of merchant ships should understand the best tactics to pursue if attacked and how to make the most effective use of equipment. The shipowners and the Officers’ Association have been approached with the scheme for putting the Merchant Navy officers through a defence course. “It has been decided to open instructional centres in London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Tyne, Southampton, Cardiff and Hull. There the officers will be given a course of instruction in the principles of trade protection, convoy work, signalling, anti-submarine measures, protection against mines and gas, gun control and firing control. '

LESSONS OF THE AVAR. “Among the lessons of the war we learned that there was a necessity for earmarking material for defensive equipment of the Merchant Navy. It may be assumed that as far as both plans and equipment are concerned,” he added, “we are much better prepared at present than we were in 1914.”

The naval authorities point out that war knowledge required by merchant officers falls under two heads. Tbe first is that of the general principles on which the Royal Navy bases its system of trade defence and the part merchant ships must play in this system in order to minimise the probability of attack, tho important aspect of which is the knowledge required for sailing in convoy. The second is a knowledge of the defensive equipment with which merchantmen are provided in wartime and everything connected with the use of that equipment. BRITAIN KEEPS TO 14IN. GUNS. Britain does not intend to be dragged at the heels of Japan and the United States by changing over to 16 in. naval guns for her new battleships, because those nations have given a lead- Her five new battleships of the King George V type will, therefore, be armed with 14in. guns, as originally planned. Mr Hector Bywater, writing in the London Daily Telegraph, says that tbe adoption of tbe bigger guns would entail an increase of 40 per cent, in the total weight of armaments, and this would have to be subtracted from the weight allotted to protection and speed. The result would be an unbalanced ship, either inadequately protected, like the British battle-cruisers at Jutland, or too slow for strategic and tactical functions. By accepting 16in. guns, the United States designers had to reduce speed to 27 knots. Japan’s tendency is to over-gun all her ships at the expense of protection. Tbe rate of fire of 14in. guns is superior to that of the bigger type. A maximum of nine 16in. guns can be mounted on a 35.000-ton ship without grave sacrifice of protection and speed. A laTger number of 14-in. could be installed without forfeiting either.