CHAPTER VII: JUSTIFYING THE DECISION
Having acted thus in headlong haste, the Commission is at last finding leisure to speculate as to whether targets more ideal for Stuka bombers and undersea craft could have been hit upon if Air Marshal Goering and Admiral Raeder themselves had been called into consultation. It is no secret that responsible members of the Commissions marine engineering staff are far from happy over the basic design of what has been boastfully designated as the “Liberty Fleet.” Anxious discussions are now in progress. One of the more conservative proposals is that horsepower should be stepped up at least to a point at which an “Ugly Duckling” might have a chance of escape if a submarine happened to miss with its first torpedo.” Stokes then went on to say that some extremists wanted the entire program scrapped before “possibly to little or no purpose” it absorbed the energies of 500,000 skilled workmen, the ways of 25 shipyards and a half-billion dollars of public money. The “sole factor” determining the decision had been to find a design by means of which the largest number of freight ships could be built in the shortest possible time. The design was taken over from the British, it having been worked out at the Clyde yards during the First World War and being immediately available since the British were building 60 such in this country. The triple-expansion reciprocating engine, long since outdated, was resorted to so as not to interfere with the Navy’s demand for modern steam turbines and diesel engines. Towards the end of this long article Stokes admitted that “officials high in the commission” agree it would be desirable to increase the speed of these vessels to 16 knots but protest that neither small size nor speed have proved sufficient to protect surface craft from dive-bombers, British corvettes of even 38 knots having been sunk in the Channel with “pitiful ease” by Stukas.
Launching STAR OF OREGON
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