ARMY & NAVY: Fleet Problem No. 13

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ARMY & NAVY

The main fighting strength of the Navy took a holiday last week. In the harbors of San Pedro'and San Diego. Calif., 152 grey vessels of the combined Scouting and Battle Forces swung lazily with the tide, while ship's boats and taxi launches plied among them like water fleas carrying most of the U. S. Fleet's 45.000 personnel to shore and liberty. One night a great officers' ball was held at Los Angeles, and during the week Fleet athletic championships—boxing, swimming, wrestling, rowing, baseball, basketball—flexed the muscles and raised the shouts of bluejackets and Marines. Meantime, as the men got their shore legs, high officers studied the results of the maneuvers which had just terminated—Fleet Problem No. 13.

Since early this winter, when preparations for the Hawaiian maneuvers began to get in the news, many a citizen has suspected that the concentration of U. S. sea power in the Pacific was in some way related to rumblings of war in the Far East. The impression that the exercises were at least being ominously protracted was fertilized two months ago when the Special Service Squadron pulled out of the Caribbean under orders to proceed to the Philippines. Fact is. the Navy's training schedule was made public last autumn, has not deviated from schedule.

Purpose of Fleet Problem No. 13, which followed the Grand Joint Exercise in Hawaiian waters, was to assay the vulnerability of the Pacific Coast to a mighty naval armament convoying troops, and the possibility of warding off such an attack by a lighter, more mobile defending force. The Blue attackers, under the command of Admiral Richard Henry Leigh, commander of the Battle Forces, consisted of nine battleships, four light cruisers, 23 destroyers, one mine layer, four light mine layers, aircraft carrier Saratoga ("Sister Sara"), 104 planes, 18 auxiliary craft representing 30 troopships. The Black defenders, commanded by Vice Admiral Arthur Lee Willard of the Scouting Force, numbered eleven cruisers (including seven of the new "Treaty" 10,000-tonners), 28 destroyers, five V-type heavy submarines, 15 smaller underseacraft, four minesweepers, aircraft carriers Lexington ("Lady Lex") and Langley, 171 planes.

Admiral Willard's problem was to locate the main body of Admiral Leigh's command. In that he failed to do this in seven days, at which time Admiral Frank Herman Schofield. commander of the Fleet, called off hostilities, Admiral Willard "lost" the war game. But even after the tactical discussion of the affray aboard the Saratoga this week, when a report will be drafted for the Navy Department, no layman will ever know who won, who lost. The Navy prefers to consider that neither side loses or wins a maneuver, but that all hands gain experience.

Unofficial conclusions of experts and officers on what had been one of the greatest tests the Navy has ever set itself varied in all save two characteristic details: 1) the old Wartime destroyers are obsolescent, "short legged," should be scrapped; 2) a Bigger Navy is needed to defend the U. S. shore line adequately.