Ship News

The U.S. Navy's newest battleship touched water last week. Twenty-three months after her keel was laid at Camden, N.J., four months ahead of contract schedule, the great hull of the U.S.S. South Dakota slid, smoking, down greased ways and smacked the Delaware River. In ordinary times, another year would pass before the hull became a ship with all her armor, engines, guns. Now the Navy hopes that New York Shipbuilding Corp. can have the South Dakota ready to commission next January.

That the South Dakota and her two 35,000-ton, $70,000,000 sisters are the world's finest, Secretary of the Navy Knox insisted last week. There were some formidable doubters. These critics of U.S. and British naval design included not only the New York Times's respected Hanson Baldwin but the British Admiralty itself. Boasting about the destruction of the German Bismarck, the Admiralty had said that she and her surviving sister ship, the Tirpitz, were the most powerful battleships in the world. Secretary Knox proudly compared the new U.S. ships' nine 16-in. guns with Bismarck's eight 15-in. guns, declared also that the Washington, North Carolina and South Dakota had better armor, could therefore take more punishment than even the Bismarck got.

No sooner had the South Dakota left the ways than, into the same space (see cut), a waiting crane swung the first keel section for the 10,000-ton cruiser Santa Fe. Already under construction on New York Shipbuilding ways were six more cruisers. And scheduled for later construction there are the first of a wholly new kind of U.S. warship--six of the coming Alaska class, which the Navy selfconsciously refuses to call battle cruisers. The Navy's untidy substitute: "large cruisers."

Reason for the Navy's touchiness was the antiquated design and consequent destruction of the British battle cruiser Hood. The U.S. Alaskas will be more than half as big as the Hood (24,000 to 25,000 tons), have about the same speed (30 knots). According to published reports and Washington naval gossip (long since picked up by German and Japanese attaches), the Alaskas will have nine 12-in. guns in their main batteries (the Hood had eight 15-in.). They will be 700 ft. long (the Hood was 860 ft. long; the South Dakota's overall length is 750 ft.).

The Alaskas will presumably be better armored than the obsolescent Hood, need not be damned because of superficial similarities. With their range (reportedly 13,000 miles), more punch and staying power than some of the Navy's older battleships, the Alaskas should be very handy if the U.S. Navy has to back up President Roosevelt's threat to harry Nazi shipping out of the Atlantic, or do the same to Japan's trade routes in the Pacific. The catch: none of the Alaskas has even been laid down; they are future ships indeed.

Unofficial reports first had it that an Alaska cruiser, instead of an older type like the Santa Fe, was to go down in the South Dakota's vacated space. Secretary Knox said last week that the Navy was awaiting full details of the Hood and Bismarck sinkings, implied that some changes in U.S. design may result.

At the other extreme in U.S. cruisers are eight 6,000-tonners in another new class: the Atlantas. Other U.S. cruisers range from 7,050 to 10,000 tons and on up to the 13,000-ton Baltimores (the last are still in the pre-construction stage). The fast (35 knots), trim (541 ft. overall; 52 ft. in the beam) Atlantas are to be floating anti-aircraft batteries, a-bristle with the Navy's familiar 5-in. guns and, reportedly, with a new 6-in. anti-aircraft weapon. Four Atlantas are now under construction, four more will follow.

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