The United States Navy is engaged in the most ambitious shipbuilding programme ever undertaken by any nation at peace, writes George Barrett in the New York "Times: Huge hulls of fighting ships are shaping quickly in their skeleton cradles, even as finished dreadnoughts and destroyers and other men-of-war put to sea months ahead of schedule. After an almost 20-year lapse in naval construction, the country's goal in the development of a mighty Navy now comes fairly close to the combined construction programmes of all six of the world's other major naval powers.
But behind the scenes of warship construction, the Navy is also working quickly to organize a corps of trained officers to serve on the new men-of-war. For in 1947, when the United States is expected to have 32 battleships and a total of almost 700 major warships, the Navy will need 36,000 officers to operate the huge fleet. This is 16,000 men in excess of the total of officers now on active duty.
Annapolis, for years the traditional training academy for the Navy. cannot cope with this task, for the Naval Academy is graduating only about 300 ensigns a year. The R. O. T. C. units in colleges and universities, together with the Navy's aviation cadet programme, are not expected to supply more than 400 officers annually, or a' total, with the Naval Academy, of less than 5000 by 1947. Even allowing for the call to active duty of additional reservists and retired officers now in civil life, and also for the proposed change of the Naval Academy course from four to three or three and a half years, it will still be necessary for the Navy to train elsewhere at Jeast 10,000 new officers.
With the traditional efficiency and thoroughness that has made the service equal to the finest in the world, the Navy has quickly cleared the decks for action—action so speedy that within this year (some six to seven years before the three-ocean fleet will be completed) those 10,000 officers should be in uniform!
As from May some 7,000 college graduates between the ages of 20 and 27 are to be enrolled in a four-month intensive course, from which about 5,000 are expected to graduate and to receive commissions as ensigns. Last year about 6,600 young men were enrolled for the brief training, and almost 5,000 have been or will be commissioned as officers. The completion of the final phase, now under way, will make up most of the 10,000 officer shortage.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.