Ambitious Answer

Neutral shipping was warned last week by the British Admiralty to 'ware a vast new mine field it was laying, all the way from Kinnaird Head, on Scotland's northeast shoulder, down to join the fields laid earlier off Yorkshire and in the Dover Straits. These 500 miles of North Sea are to be sown in a band varying from 30 to 40 miles wide, leaving eight miles of safe water between mines and shore. Secret alleys through the mine field will be left for British Naval craft, but neutral ships will have to use the Dover or Kinnaird Head (Moray Firth) entrances, heavily guarded by the Navy, to reach British east coast ports.

This ambitious British answer to Germany's war on merchant shipping will require some 200,000 mines, costing at least $1,000 per mine ($200,000,000).* It will dwarf the mine barrage laid in 1918 across the North Sea from the Orkneys to Norway by the U. S. and Great Britain together. That barrage (71,126 mines) took from early March to mid-October to lay. Great Britain's mine-laying fleet is certainly capable of faster work now than then, but manufacturing 200,000 mines will tax her arsenals. Mine mechanism is tricky, requires expert labor.

> To fend mine-laying planes away from the Thames estuary, the British moved their balloon barrage to sea. This they did by swinging motor trucks, from which the balloons are flown on long cables, aboard lighters which then were anchored offshore.

> Knowing that the British Battle Fleet was no longer based constantly at Scapa Flow, but apparently also using Belfast for greater safety; and knowing that since the late Rawalpindi's encounter (TIME, Dec. 4) capital ships have been out looking for the raider Deutschland, and also convoying Canadian troops, some U-boat commander lurked for big game off the west coast of Scotland. Last week he found and hit with a torpedo a battleship "of the Queen Elizabeth class." In this 30,000-31,100-ton class, besides Queen Elizabeth, are Warspite, Valiant, Barham, Malaya, all commissioned between 1913 and 1915, all improved since with antitorpedo "blisters" of heavy armor amidships. From the British Admiralty's curt statement it was evident that the wounded ship was heading for port when attacked; that her "blister" saved her, since only four men were killed and she made port under her own steam.

> Outbound from a western British port, the 2,473-ton steamer Stanholme was torpedoed just as her crew were about to drink a Christmas toast. Dead: 14.

> Told last week was the bizarre bravery of the crew of the tanker San Alberto, torpedoed in two off Land's End on Dec. 9. When they saw the stern half of their ship still floating nicely, they rowed their lifeboat alongside, reboarded her, got up steam and backed toward shore. A rising sea finally foundered their half-ship. This episode reminded sailors of the destroyers Nubian and Zulu in World War I. The Nubian was torpedoed, lost her bow, but her crew made shore with the after half. The Zulu, which lost her stern striking a mine, was towed in. Then the Zulu forward half was fitted to the Nubian stern half and the resulting destroyer Zubian served for the duration.

> Uruguay gave the German supply-ship Tacoma which stood by as the Admiral Graf Spee was scuttled, 24 hours in which to leave Montevideo or accept internment. Tacoma defiantly ran up the Nazi battle flag (black swastika on red), weighed anchor, made as if to leave, changed her mind, anchored again. When time was up, Uruguayan officials took over the first ship to be interned by a neutral in World War II, and made Germany's defeat in the skirmish off Montevideo 100%.

*Great Britain's current war outlay is estimated at nearly $24,000,000 per day.

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