From Better to Worse

For the last three months, the Allied anti-submarine campaign has gone quite well. For the next three, the worst is feared.

Tonnage Up. Britain's First Lord of the Admiralty A. V. Alexander said last week: "In February we believe we have achieved the best results against the U-boat yet experienced. . . . There still is probably a larger output of U-boats than the total numbers being killed, but the gap is being reduced." Thanks to increased production and reduced sinkings, there has been a net gain in Allied shipping since last August of some 1,250,000 tons.

Requirements Up. Sir Arthur Salter, chief of the British Shipping Mission in Washington, said last week that U-boats cannot be beaten, and the war cannot be won, simply by building merchant ships a little faster than they are sunk. The past few months have been good ones largely because U-boats cannot operate efficiently in midwinter seas, and spring is apt to make Allied ships and hearts sink fast. The past few months have also seen vast extensions of Allied military lines, and campaigns of spring and summer are apt to stretch them farther yet. New construction is not outstripping new sinkings by a great enough margin to carry accumulating stocks of war and meet all the new demands. Result: much potential U.S. striking power may be immobilized on U.S. docks.

United We Float. In this black outlook there is at least one brightening spot. Cooperation between Britain and the U.S. on their most acute mutual problem is now very nearly complete. Integration on U.S. and British anti-submarine commands has improved and an effective joint command is evolving. Both countries have decided: 1) to build as many merchant ships as possible, without trying to concentrate on fast ships only; 2) to build more and better escorts.

Faster Means Fewer. Britain's War Transport Minister Lord Leathers explained last week why the idea of concentrating exclusively on fast ships had been discarded: "Faster ships mean fewer ships. To build a 15-knot vessel takes half as long again as an 11-knot vessel of the same carrying capacity, and the faster ship requires 50% more labor and material." To increase speed by one-third, power must be trebled.

Destroyer Escorts. The Royal Navy apparently now recognizes that its 200 or so corvettes have proved inadequate as transatlantic escorts. They are too small (500-600 tons), too slow (under 20 knots). Britain is building larger, faster escorts which will be called frigates.*

Without sacrificing its output of cargo ships, the U.S. also is putting emphasis on a new class of escorts which are smaller than modern destroyers, bigger and faster than corvettes.

These U.S. "destroyer escorts" have been at least indirectly delayed by super-priorities on: 1) carriers; 2) merchant ships; 3) invasion barges. Now they are in the clear, and urgent. Last week Secretary Knox announced that "several score" were in the water--which did not mean that they were fighting yet. He released pictures and told newsmen that DEs would be about 300 ft. long, would displace about 1,300 tons (more than the displacement of World War I four-stacker destroyers), would cost $3,500,000 (about half the cost of a new destroyer), can be built in four months (compared with nine for a destroyer), and will release destroyers for all-round naval jobs. He said that "several hundred" would be built.

Until these spirited little chaperones begin to go out in effective numbers, there will be trouble for Allied ships. That trouble will probably be concentrated, as it was last year, in the months of spring and summer.

As the cruisers of sailing-ship days, frigates were also used to convoy merchantmen. They lasted until armor-clad warships were introduced.

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