The Mahnomen Pioneer

Friday, August 7, 1931

NAVY WILL ASK FOR MORE SHIPS

Program of Eleven Warships to Come Before Congress at the Next Session.

Washington—Aviation and underseas craft dominate the new warship authorization program which has just been worked out by the navy department for submission to congress in December.

Of 11 ships which the navy wants authorized this winter and commenced sometime in the fiscal year beginning next July, two are aircraft carriers, one a flying deck cruiser carrying from 36 to 48 airplanes, six are submarines and one is a six-inch gun cruiser. The eleventh vessel is a destroyer leader, an experimental type of craft insofar as the United States navy is concerned.

While Secretary of the Navy, W. F. Adams is not ready to make recommendations to President Herbert Hoover regarding the size of the building program he believes should be authorized this winter, the navy general board and officers of Mr. Adams' cabinet are agreed that appropriations should be voted at the next session of congress to provide funds with which to begin work on the 12 new vessels in the 1933 fiscal year, to continue work on 11 destroyers to be begun this year and to put the finishing touches on the aircraft carrier and eight-inch gun cruisers now under construction in American government and private ship building yards. Of these 12 new ships but one is authorized, an eight-inch gun 10,000-ton treaty cruiser. The other 11 must be authorized.