OCR Text |
Show Hi CAMPAIGN WILL SHORT Naval Writer Believes Germans Ger-mans Cannot Long Continue U-Boat Warfare in Atlantic. LONDON. Wednesday. June 5. --(By the Associated Press.) The German I'-boat campaign off the Atlantic coast j of the United States cannot be kept Up for any length of time in the opinion opin-ion of Archibald Hurd. the naval writ er, expressed in a statemeht issued to- : night Mr. Hurd believes tjie operations opera-tions were undertaken to weaken the work of the United States navy in European Eu-ropean walers and scaring the American Ameri-can people. "There Is not any fear of the Germans Ger-mans maintaining a long campaign off the shores of the United States which would require a large number of U boats, he said. The Diesel engine gives a greatly increased radius of activity ac-tivity to submarines but New York is easily 3500 miles from the nearest German base and the return journey means a matter of 7000 miles apart 1 from the mileage involved in chasing merchantmen so there is no reason to anticipate any such developments as have been seen in British waters and in the Mediterranean. The U-boats crossing the Atlantic must pass twice ! through the danger areas of patrols, aircraft and mines. "There is a variety of measures available av-ailable to the American authorities short of relaxing the stringency of their anti-submarine measures 0n ihl-side ihl-side For Instance outward and homeward home-ward shipping can be dispersed thereby there-by increasing the difficulties of the U-boat U-boat in finding targets." "As soon as aircraft of suitable types are available they can be used in escorting ships off the coast in asso ciatlon with such surface vessels as may be available, but I am afraid this method of hunting submarines will prove unproductive for the simple reason rea-son that only the very largest are able to operate so far from German ports. "They will probably best be combat -ted in the narrow waters adjacent to Great Britain through which all such raiders must pass unless they issue from the Mediterranean which is possible, pos-sible, though unlikely. "The number of such large submarines subma-rines the Germans can build and man is limited. The losses during the last six or seven weeks have exceeded the resources of the German yards." |