World War: Where Is the Ark Royal?

Last week Herr Goring’s fliers set out to test one theory of air-minded modern militarists: that the plane is mightier than the battleship. If that theory can be proved true, the balance of power in Europe is far different from what it seems on paper. If the German Air Force is greater than the British Navy, then the French and British Armies are in a bad way.

Dutchmen heard the German theorists passing overhead to their laboratory, the North Sea. High-flying bombers, moving above the autumn lanes of migratory wildfowl, but in the opposite direction, sought out a squadron of the British Navy which they evidently knew was out maneuvering in open water, or which they just happened to find there. Weather favored the fliers when they located their targets: clouds low enough to afford a screen for the dive bombers to come down through, yet not so solid but that heavy, non-diving bombers could drop “stuff” from far aloft through cloud holes.

The only trouble with the North Sea experiment was that the guinea pigs flatly refuted the experimenters’ report. The only unquestioned result was a bewildering altercation between Herr Goring’s office and Great Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty, effervescent Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill.

The Germans claimed they made not one but two raids, both successful. On one occasion, 14 German bombers, unattended by fighters, spotted a squadron of battleships and cruisers accompanied by an aircraft carrier. Upon the carrier the Germans dropped one 1,100-lb. German air torpedo. Two 550-pounders hit a battleship on the prow and amidships. The carrier was “destroyed” (they did not say “sunk”), the battleship “crippled.” On another raid next day they flew to the Isle of May at the mouth of the Firth of Forth. There they struck the bow of a British cruiser (Washington Treaty 10,000-ton type) with a 550-lb. bomb. On both occasions, all Nazis got home safely. All this happened, said the Nazis, so help them Wotan.

Mr. Churchill’s office retorted to the first German claim: Yes, a formation of German bombers had passed over a squadron of British warboats which were escorting home a disabled British submarine. The Nazis dropped bombs, but hit nothing. British high-angle guns and planes from a carrier shot down one bomber, injured another, forced a third to alight so that its crew was captured. The Isle of May story, said the Admiralty, was “another version of the North Sea lie” and probably referred to the fact that a Nazi bomber had plunked that day at a British destroyer but missed, done no damage.

Sneered the German radio: “Where is the Ark Royal? English people! Ask your Admiralty.”

The Ark Royal is Great Britain’s newest 22,000-ton aircraft carrier. Her loss, eight days after the torpedoing of the Courageous, would be a horrible blow to British morale as well as to the Navy. If she were still afloat, the British Admiralty was not tricked into telling where the Ark Royal was, but did announce she was “safe & sound at her allotted station.” Admiral Sir Charles Forbes, Commander in Chief of the Home Fleet, dismissed the North Sea bombing as a slight episode and observed that it was done from “really too great a height—some 12,000 ft.—for efficacy.”*

Bombing battleships in motion on the high seas was proved possible and, to the vessel, disastrous, as long ago as 1920 by the late General “Billy” Mitchell of the U. S., who bombed the condemned ex-German battleship Ostfriesland off the Virginia Capes. During the Spanish Civil War, Loyalist bombers put the German Deutschland out of commission. First British air raid of World War II was on battleships anchored in Wilhelmshaven, Cuxhaven and Brunsbüttel, with the sinking of one and damaging of another battleship claimed. Last week the Royal Air Force retorted to the Nazis’ North Sea raids by sending bombers to Helgoland. The British story about this was: “In spite of formidable anti-aircraft fire, the attacks were pressed home at low altitude [i. e., dive bombing]. Some of our aircraft have not yet returned.” The Germans claimed they shot down five out of six British planes, suffered no damage.

To prevail over battleships, planes need not sink them. In fact, in a battle line at sea, a sunk ship is less troublesome than a disabled one, which must be escorted home. To disable a battleship, an air bomber need not score direct hits. Bombs landing beside a hull may do more damage, especially to steering mechanism, than direct hits on an armored deck. Major Al Williams, U. S. A., a vociferous champion of the airplane over the battleship, who believes the German Air Force (which he inspected intimately last year) can knock out the British Navy, says: “A pure air war has not been fought, but I’ll tell you one thing, air power is respected by all naval strategists in war games to this extent — that the side losing its aircraft carriers was first is deemed to have lost the war.”

It was for another American—the U. S.Naval Attaché in England, Captain Alan G. Kirk—to give Britain the last, happy word in the Ark Royal dispute. Capt. Kirk reported to the state department that in the course of a “routine official visit” to the Fleet, he attended church services and ate lunch aboard the Ark Royal, found her “not scratched.”

*The U. S. Army Air Corps claims it can bomb accurately from 18,000 ft. and above.