NAVY: Atlantas

In a black crepe dress, black low-heeled shoes, black silk stockings, and a pink hat, Atlanta’s Margaret Mitchell (Gone With the Wind), who described herself as “an old baseball player,” batted a bottle of champagne on the prow of the light cruiser Atlanta, sent her down the ways in Kearny, N.J. Same day the Navy launched a sister ship, the San Juan at Quincy, Mass.

These new 6,000-ton, 5-in. gunned cruisers (five more to be launched), with slim cut-waters, hold enough secrets to make any spy’s mouth water. More loquacious than usual the Navy let out one incredible fact, their speed: 43 knots (close to 50 land miles an hour). Few destroyers, no other U.S. cruisers have ever topped that pace.

Before the launchings (and presumably in answer to the production blast of Virginia’s Senator Harry Byrd last month) the Navy recapitulated: In the first eight months of 1941, it had laid the keels of 436 craft, launched 249, placed 213 in service after fitting them out.

Most of these were transports, repair ships, tugs, minesweepers, net layers, but they included two battleships which had been placed in commission (the 35,000-ton North Carolina and Washington), one battleship (South Dakota) launched, keels laid for two more as well as for 14 cruisers, 18 submarines, two aircraft carriers, 57 destroyers. Launched were one cruiser, eight subs, eight destroyers.

In the stocks somewhere between keel-laying and launching (therefore not included in Navy’s totals) were four battleships (including two 45,000-tonners, Iowa and New Jersey), a swarm of cruisers, destroyers and submarines. All but a few units of its two-ocean fleet should be in commission by 1945.