Word: fleetly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
They have another reason for preferring a Japanese war sooner rather than later. Today the U. S. Fleet in the Pacific, in gun power and tonnage, is conservatively 15% bigger than the Japanese Navy. By the calculations of naval experts, that is a decisive margin. Within two years, however, that margin will be pared perilously thin. The U. S. and Japan both have new ships building. The U. S. building program was only recently begun. The Japanese program, begun two or three years earlier, will begin producing on a big scale very soon...
Scene of Action. Naval experts have long faced the fact that it is unsafe for a fleet to fight too far from its base, for unless ships can get back to their docks and repair shops, in case of damage, they are at the mercy of enemy submarines and air raiders. The naval rule of thumb for a safe operating radius for a fleet is 2,500 miles from its base. The only fleet operating base of the U. S. Navy in the Pacific is at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Only sketchy facilities for planes and light craft exist at other...
...this reason, there has long been doubt that the U. S. Navy could ever force a decisive battle with the Japanese except in areas where it would be at serious disadvantage. For normally the Japanese, knowing the inferior weight of their fleet, would be careful to keep out of mid-Pacific, to fight only close to its own protected bases, where it would have the advantage...
British, Dutch and U. S. air and naval forces now in the Far East would be no match for the full power of the Japanese Fleet, but they would have more than a nuisance value. Based principally at Singapore, Britain has two cruisers, six to eight submarines, a considerable air force which can be reinforced by flights from Burma. At the Dutch bases are five cruisers, eight destroyers, 18 submarines and about 100 long-range bombers (some of them U. S.-made Martins). In the Far East the U. S. has two cruisers, 13 destroyers, twelve submarines besides patrol...
...German troops and wide open to attack, held out against the Japanese and British for more than two months. Better munitioned and better located (on an island) than Tsingtao, Hong Kong is garrisoned by 12,000 crack British troops. Once having silenced Hong Kong, Surabaya and Amboina, the Japanese Fleet might swing around the east side of Borneo-trusting to distance and superior force to keep off the British from Singapore-and force a Borneo landing, would even then have only a fair start to conquest of the Indies. And if the U. S. took a hand the Japanese would...