They are embarked in fighting ships, battleships, and tile larger cruisers, as aids to efficient gunnery.
They were driven off only by the fact that battleships were in company with the convoys concerned.
A squadron of battleships is liable to be defeated and destroyed by a superior squadron; the same with cruisers, and the same even with destroyers.
It comprises 12 battleships, 8 aircraft carriers, 46 cruisers, 125 destroyers and 71 submarines, and it is acting in its own waters.
Two battleships and two salvage lighters and several torpedo-boat destroyers are on their way to the scene of the wreck.
During that war we lost five battleships, eight aircraft carriers, twenty-eight cruisers, 139 destroyers, eighty-three submarines, fifty-two frigates and fifteen armed merchantmen.
But it is true that the dry docks there are for the biggest battleships afloat.
And it is certainly uneconomic to retain battleships in commission merely for those doubtful duties.
