Evening star., 1925-03-19

THE battleship is still lord of the
waters" says the general board of
| our Navy. The battleship is pass
ing" says Rear Admiral Sims, retired.
The battleship is already a back
| number" says Gen. Mitchell of the
Air Service. And there you are-the
experts disagreeing on a question
| which none can decide except eX-
perts-or the issue of battle. Even
before the great war naval men
were debating this issue; a faction
questioned whether the submarine,
imperfect as it was in those days,
could not master any surface vessel
The war seemed to prove that the
battleship remained monarch of the
seas; comparatively speaking, the
submarine was powerless against her.
STILL the radicals submit undersea
craft did not have a fair showing in
the battle of Jutland, the one square
stand-up naval fight of the war. Ger
many was using her submarines as
commerce destroyers. Had she massed
them against the British fleet in this
action no one knows what might have
| happened. And the lessons of Jut-
land were no sooner diGested than
the navies paid tribute to the assassin
Of the sea depths by reinforcing the
hulls of their capital ships with spe-
Cial wa ter-tight compartments and
"blisters." Toward the end of the
war, too, the Germans carried under
sea construction one stride forward
with their submarine cruisers"
British constructors. since the war,
have gone further still. Their latest
submarines have sea-going range
of 5000 miles, passable surface speed
and eightinch guns.
Vicious Commerce Raiders.
In one feature, perhaps more i'm
portant than fleet action, the sub
marine proved its usefulness to the
new warfare. 1t was altogether the
most vicious commerce destroyer
known to history. The Germans
never kept in action at any time more
than 80 commerce destroying subma-
rines; and those of a type now con-
sidered archaic. Yet in the Spring
of 1917 they all but starved out the
British Isles. SO far as concerned
war on merchantmen, they had the
British and French navieS, somew hat
reinforced by Italian and Japanese
units, thoroughly beaten. Only the
arrival of the Americans and the
the scale. Even at that the sinking
went on, handicap and a deadly
menace.
Admiral Won Tirpitz came out OF
the war Cassandra with a double
twist. His government listened to
him when he advocated a policy
which would bring the United States
into the struggle-and thereby lost
the war. Had they listened when he
cried. Submarines. submarines and
yet more submarines" they might
have won the war.
Now comes a new peril to the
h2 10 n cd ha
face of the seas and from under the
seas, 1t is attacked from the air.
Bombing planes have increased in
range, bombing devices in power.
bombing fire in accuracy. Tests in
Great Britain and the United States
have proved that the airplane, even
If it has not rendered the battleship
obsolete. can complicate the task of a
commander in action. Regarding the
extent of the menace, there is viru
lent difference of opinion. I will re-
serve consideration of that compli-
Gated question for another Install
ment.
Need Planes on Ships.
One thing stands proved-the ne
cessity for putting on capital ships
airplanes of the observation and
scouting type. The one will direct
the fire in action: the other will spy
out the enemy. When this proposal
was first made, certain conservative
seadogs swore they would never have
those contraptions on their ships.
They have yielded since not only to
superior authority, but to the logic
of the situation.
An airplane lowering over the
objective, informing the gunner by
wireless where each shot is falling,
will be just as useful and necessary
to sea artillery as to land artillery.
And the scouting plane has become
indispensable to naval plans of
strategy. In old times, as in our
Spanish war, the admiral looking for
an enemy could see only as far from
his own ship as the curve of the
horizon permitted; a range of 90 or
80 miles. Now, with the airplane
securing the air above the seas, he
can, in practical effect, see hundreds
of miles.
Every battleship of our fleet now
carries three airplanes. By way of
launching them with economy of
space we have of late perfected
after one sad failure-a type of
catapult superior to anything else of
it's kind. Reasonably conservative
naval authorities say that in naval
airplane equipment we are at least
equal and perhaps superior to the