Evening star., 1923-09-27
Capital Ships Still Backbone
Ut U.S $. Defense, Says McNanee

Noneeding the value OF aircraft,
capt. Luke McNamee, director of
naval intelligence, Navy Department.
hectares nnequfvocally that "the
oattieship still stands as the back
Done OF every countrys naval de-
tense" During his tfirty Ave years
1 service he. said he had seen the bat
tieship put out Of business, on paper.
many times.
80 First" said he, there was the
! ram. Small steamers with huge rams
were going to surround the battle
2 Ehip like SO many hornets and sting
" 10 death. Then came the torpedo
poat. the destroyer and the submarine
, ehat were to sink it with a torpedo
costing only a few thousand dollars.
Next came the Zeppelin and now the
sirplane bombers that are to shower
uesruction upon it from the sky. But
the old battleship, like the old flag,
Is still there. Every new form Of at
tack has developed corresponding
uetense and the battleship remains
the backbone of naval defense"
Avfators HelRiess Alone.
Aviation is an additional means of
making war-it is powerful auxil-
iary-but, after all, only an auxiliary.
The aviator unassisted can never
hoiq anything. He is essentially a
raider. He sails over a town and
drops his bonds and sails away. He
might do that every day, as the Ger
mans did over Paris. Protective
measures are found and people get
accustomed to 1t. Sieges have endured
Ior months as was the case at
Rheims. Aviation must be supported
and operated from bases
III its base is at sea, on aircraft
carriers, there must be fleets to guard
the carriers. If its base is on land
mere must be armies with all the
parsphernalia of war to hold these
Iahe nases. Aircraft need constant
tney can fight only in pleasant
weather and during daylight, and the
enemy may want to fight all the
time, We speak Of defending tbs
country with aircraft No country
ever won war by sitting at home
on the defensive. That is the Chi
nese wall idea. The way to win wars
rs 10 go after the other fellow and
mt him where he lives. Let US
imagine US at war with any great
put are equipped with a huge air
force. We would lose Panama, Porto
Elco, the Virgin Islands. HawaA
Iuam, Samoa, the Philippines and
my otCduSe tN6 enemy
would sink every transport that we
sent out with reinforcements for any
OF these places and no defense that
cannot be reinforced can exist in
dennltely. 1t is conceivable that we
might protect our own continental
shores. but we could bring no mill
tary pressure to bear against the
enemy to compel him to accept peace
or give up our possessions.
Economy OF Ships.
There has been much misconcep-
tion in regard to economy in using
aircraft instead of battleships. In
spite OF an expenditure on aircraft
OF over one billion eight hundred mil
lion dollars since 1917, we have not
today one-tenth of the aircraft we
would need to enter wer tomorrow
This is due to the short life of air
craft, the high cost Of development
and the frequency of crashes and
operating casualties. Two-thtrds of
that cost would build Navy bigger
than our present one-a Navy that
would be good for twenty years. So
much for the economy argument.
The press has given much notice
ship, abandoned, helpless and staked
out like a lame bull in pasture. This
experiment is held by some cranks to
prove that battleships are useless
The same conclusion would be just
as logical if an obsolete. afrplane were
hung up in the sky and shot down by
battleships to prove that aviation is
valueless. Or, if the Army moved it's
troops out of one of the forts of New
York and the Atlantic fleet would
knock the abandoned fort to pieces