Evening star., 1942-06-16

The school of thought which de-
fends the battleship is still vehe-
mently urging that the capital ship
strength Of the United States be not
ignored while the proponents of
greater and greater air power are
conceding that the present type of
aircraft carrier is by no means the
answer to the problem of protecting
the surface feet from air attacks.
That both the American and
Japanese fleets made violent con-
centrations on the aircraft carriers
of the other is now a matter of rec
ord rather than theory, for until the
battles in the Pacific there had
been no such large forces engaged
with so little actual combat by the
guns of the surface feet except
to repel air attack.
One set of experts says that in
given engagement, with aircraft
carriers put out of commission, the
remaining ships must fight it out
and that unless feet possesses
large capital warships, there is
danger of an inferior force being
annihilated in precisely the same
way that naval battles used to
materialize. Another set of experts
says that since aircraft carriers are
being constantly put out of COM
mission because the planes of the
one or the other have relatively the
same range, the aircraft carrier of
the future will have to be built in
such a way as to be able to launch
planes of greater range than here
tofore known.
Smaller Carriers Suggested.
In other words, aircraft carriers
may have to stay many hundreds of
miles behind the fleet formation and
yet furnish the planes for attack.
Still another group of experts thinks
the solution lies in building much
smaller aircraft carriers in such
large numbers that each task force
will have maybe a dozen or more
craft, each capable of launching
planes for wide range action.
None of these theories can be put
into effect right away but it is a
safe bet that in Toxic as well as in
Washington, the lessons of the Coral
Sea and Midway are being hotly
debated as the technical informa-
ton comes back through detailed
reports never made available to the
public
In the last two Pacific battles, of
course, land-based planes played a
major part. Where American or
japanese planes can have the ad-
vantage Of land bases for refueling,
the conditions are simple to evalu-
ate. Superior reconnaissance and
the element Of surprise, together
with longer range bombers, will
bring victory to the side that has
such advantages. For the battles,
however, that may sweep across
the broad Pacific, far out of reach
of land bases, provision must be,
made to detect the enemy's ap-
proach, to send into the air a
powerful force to take the offense
and enough floating bases to be
able to refuel the hundreds of
planes that must accompany every
task force.
Battleship's Place Argued.
The place Of the battleship is
still undetermined. Its champions
insist that it is a mistake to abandon
the battleship just because in most
instances in the present war there
has been a bad use made of that
kind of ship.
1t is argued that America needs
battleship strength for contingencies
of offense when enemy aircraft
and the aircraft of the defending
navy have either been mutually
destroyed or their opportunities for
continued action halted. The argu-
ment is made that overemphasis
on any one form of naval or air
unit is unwise and that the battles
of the future will be fought by large
wel-balanced navies consisting of
more of every kind of surface
vessel, protected by an unprecedent-
ed number of small aircraft carriers
that can be constructed in a rela-
lively short space of time.
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