During the last war we had ample evidence of the harm that an armed merchant raider can do on a trade route.
The object of the raiders was apparently to seize arms at the airport and munitions factory.
There have been a series of incidents, interference with communications and the acts of these commando raiders.
They had only to keep off the raider and the commerce destroyer and to deal with cruisers up to 10,000 tons.
Is it equipped to conduct a search-and-destroy operation against raiders in distant oceans?
In the late war, surface raiders, both warships and disguised merchant vessels, sank nearly one million tons of shipping, mostly in the broad oceans.
There have been a large number of merchant seamen captured by commerce raiders and kept prisoners, in some cases in quite large numbers.
He said it took 70 cruisers to catch one armed raider.
