NAVY: Inventory

On the way through Congress last week, but stalled temporarily behind Conscription, were bills upping to $3,259,000,000 the funds voted or requested so far this year for the U. S. Navy. This respectable sum was only a down payment. Before the Navy which the U. S. now has on order can be completed, equipped and manned, Congress will have to dig up at least $7,000,000,000 more.

At Sea the U. S. had what looked like the mightiest of navies (1,330,415 tons; 397 warships of all kinds). Its effective Navy included: 15 battleships, six aircraft carriers, 37 cruisers, 237 destroyers, 102 submarines, 1,300-odd useful combat airplanes. Great Britain at last reports had a little less tonnage (1,253,744) and 336 warships, was far behind the U. S. in submarines (56) and destroyers (192).* The world’s third sea power, Japan, has afloat 241 combat vessels (tonnage: 961,326). Japan, Italy, Germany—the combination which the U. S. must now think about when measuring sea power—had in service only 409,323 tons more than the U. S.

But these totals were deceptively simple; U. S. arithmetic looked better than the total facts. Nobody knew how much or how fast secretive Japan was adding to its fleet—or when and whether the British Navy would fall to enemies of the U. S. As of last week, the U. S.’s “Big Navy” was just big enough to keep its defensive watch in the Pacific and a small squadron in the uncertain Atlantic. Its 15 battleships made up the most powerful battle line of any navy, but the average dreadnought age is 23 years. Three were so far outdated that Congress was asked to vote money to modernize their guns and armor. In the impressive total of destroyers were 109 World War I veterans, recently recommissioned. The U. S. was behind both Great Britain and Japan in the important categories of cruisers and carriers.

“Under Construction” in loose naval lingo means variously that new ships are: 1) in the prefabrication stage (when parts are being designed, ordered, made); 2) actually being built in shipyards; 3) in fitting-out basins, where newly launched hulls are armored and equipped. By last month the U. S. Navy could say that it had thus under construction an additional, enormous fleet, to be completed in the following yearly quotas:

1940—eight destroyers.

1941—two battleships, twelve submarines, 17 destroyers.

1942—one aircraft carrier, four cruisers, 13 submarines, 13 destroyers.

1943—six battleships, ten cruisers, 14 submarines, 23 destroyers.

1944— two battleships, seven cruisers, three aircraft carriers (with one more carrier to follow in 1945).

On Paper. Congress last month wrote down a second, still larger fleet-to-be, 70% (1,325,000 tons) bigger than the Navy then existing and planned. Reason: Hitler. With this new program, the U. S. Navy was to have the hitherto incredible total of: 15,000 airplanes, 35 battleships (including several 45,000-ton ones), 20 aircraft carriers, 88 cruisers, 378 destroyers, 180 submarines.

No nation had ever dreamed of, much less possessed, such a Navy. Told time & again that their navy yards were jammed, that bottlenecks galore cluttered the Navy’s way even before the last increases were voted, the U. S. people impatiently asked: How soon could all the new ships be off paper and in the water? The question was an old one. Romans asked it in 260 B.C., when Carthage cracked the whip in the Mediterranean. Rome’s winning answer was its first fleet—100 galleys, knocked together on the beaches with hammer and saw in 60 days. But tomorrow’s Navy is no two-month building job. Rear Admirals Samuel M. Robinson and Ben Moreell, the Navy’s chiefs of new-ship construction, could give no better answer than: 1946 or 1947, if the U. S. put its mind, men and money to the job.

Dead slow though this schedule seemed to anxious landlubbers, it looked like fair speed to those who knew the tough realities. New construction already clogged the ways at most of the Navy’s own yards (Brooklyn, Portsmouth, Norfolk, Boston, Mare Island, Charleston, Philadelphia, Puget Sound). Few and busy were the private yards geared to produce warships (Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co., Bethlehem Steel, Bath Iron Works, Federal Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co., New York Shipbuilding Corp., Electric Boat Co.). Also at or near capacity were the only three private producers of naval armor plate (Bethlehem, U. S. Steel, Baldwin Locomotive’s subsidiary Midvale Co.) and the Navy’s armor factory at Charleston, W. Va. Armor-plate capacity doubled in the past year, would have to be doubled again. Manufacturers of many a needed naval item declined to expand their plants—capacity unless & until they were assured of a fair taxation-amortization policy (see p. 72). All in all, U. S. citizens Could well wish for more speed. But after pondering what Robinson, Moreell & Co. were up against, they could hardly carp at less.

Two gentlemen who looked at all the facts, calmly demanded more speed, were Franklin Roosevelt and his Republican Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox. Publisher Knox set to work to advance the Navy’s deadlines, by last week had done nobly. In negotiation were arrangements to reopen the abandoned, rotting Cramp shipyards at Philadelphia (which turned out many a World War I emergency vessel). Lined up were other private yards at Chester, Pa., Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Beaumont, Tex., Tampa, Fla., Birmingham, Ala., Oakland, Calif., Wilmington, Del. In collaboration with Labor’s Defense Commissioner Sidney Hillman, Secretary Knox announced a plan to round up unemployed artisans in the interior, transport them to the coasts. Some of the sand was taken out of the Navy Department’s gears. Payments to contractors have been increased and speeded up. Navy-yard workers were put on overtime (at time-&-a-half pay).

As a result of these and other speed-up measures, Secretary Knox and his Chief of Naval Operations, Harold Raynsford Stark, announced that the U. S. Navy might have its new ships—including the new second-ocean navy—by 1944, two to three years ahead of original schedule. Good as this news was, Navy men hoped they would not have to fight their next war before then.

* These figures do not include replacements. Actually the British are probably further behind. Some experts guessed that the British had under 60 usable destroyers left last week.