More Small Carriers

"My husband, the President, asked me to say to the Kaiser management how deeply he appreciates the wonderful work it is doing and to say to the men and women workers in this shipyard how deeply he understands the effort they are putting into their work, which means the more rapid ending of the war."

These words uttered, Eleanor Roosevelt smacked a champagne bottle last week against the nose of the U.S.S. Alazon Bay. Thousands (30) cheered as the flat-topped craft slid into the chill waters of the Columbia River at Vancouver, Wash. The first of many small aircraft carriers which fabulous Henry Kaiser is building had been launched. On neighboring ways sisters of the Alazon Bay, converted from merchant design, stood abuilding. Bald Henry Kaiser promised to slide out three to six each month.

The Alazon Bay represented a meeting of two adventurous minds--his and the President's. Only three weeks before, Henry Kaiser had laid on the White House desk the plans for wholesale merchantman-into-carrier conversion. Many an old-fashioned Navy man frowned: slow, small carriers (flight deck: 514 ft.) tote few planes, often must catapult them when there is no strong wind to help. And the pros felt no certainty that the small flat tops, even in droves, would be the answer to the U-boat.

But planes were desperately needed to search out and destroy Nazi submarines now operating in mid-ocean (see p. 30). To Franklin Roosevelt the value of aircraft against submarines was obvious: . Britain's land-based planes had already pushed the U-boats beyond their own range. On the probability that converted carriers--50, 75, 100 of them if necessary--could push them out of the water altogether, the President was willing to gamble. If they worked, the Commander in Chief of the Navy could hold out his hand to Mr. Kaiser. It was their joint idea.

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