The American Navy is indeed ready, within the limits of Mr. Stiinson's meaning. He meant Atlantic convoy, ant the Navy has the ships for that duty in itself. But he did not mean that the U.S. Navy was ready to take on all the Axis powers in two oceans, states "Time. If it were, the US. would not now be des-berately building a second-ocean Navy which is four to six years from completion.
"Under construction" in the Navy's programme—biggest, costliest ($4,000,000,000) ever undertaken—&re 17 beman, 54 gus, a destroyers, 78 submarines, rerat 175 auxiliaries. Two of the battleships (Washington, North Carolina, both ordered in 1937) will go into service this year; the last, not until 1945 or 1948 at best. Actually under construction in shipyards are 69 of the 362 naval vessels on order. Technically under construction {i plans are being drawn, parts manufactured. are 260 more of the 362.
The Navy's programme is going fairly well because it got started in peacetime. but naval constructors now see harder days ahead. Competing for limited U.S. ship-ways are 661 seagoing commercial vessels. The machine-tool bottleneck caused by aircraft and ordnance speed-up is beginning to tighten on the Navy. Naval shipbuilders are expanding 50 per cent, 100 per cent. 200 per cent. Said a worried admiral: "It won't be enough, I'm afraid." In moral, in guts and ability to fight with what they have, the Navy's officers and men cannot be excelled. The quality of its command. the planning and execution of the construction programme are all high—by the Navy's accepted standards. Whether those standards have been high enough for modern war, only such a war can fell.
The Navy's one big admitted blunder has been its long time failure to provide protection for anti-aircraft gun crews on the decks of its vessels, Col. Frank Knox said last month: "Our officers appreciated the possibility of air attack, but their failure to translate the appreciation into protection for the ships is the one real miscalculation they made during the 20 years of peace." This miscalculation of the effectiveness of aircraft also was mirrored in the failure of the High Command to provide as much aircraft equipment as a modern navy should have.
The Marines are expanding from a force of 35000 to 80,000men. They are well fixed for seasoned, ranking officers, will soon be short of quali+ fied junior officers. Rated first though they are for fighting now, they need more automatic and semi-automatic weapons, pack artillery transport vessels. Said a ranking Marine recently: "We are going to have an amphibious war, and damn soon. I wish we had another year to train our people. I don't think we'll get it."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.