The Word from Jane's

Navymen around the world await the annual edition of Jane's Fighting Ships as eagerly as European aristocrats used to await the Almanack de Gotha. Since 1897, Jane's, published in London close to the British Admiralty, has been the unofficial but authoritative best word on the relative strength and precedence of all the navies of the world.

Published last week, the 1960-61 Jane's reported that the Russian navy now has four times the submarine strength that Hitler had at peak strength in World War II. By Jane's estimate, the Russians have six nuclear-powered subs, ten guided-missile types, more than 425 other submarines ranging from large ocean-going types down to seagoing patrol subs, medium-range subs and former German U-boats. In a foreword Editor Raymond Blackman observed that in "some quarters," it is still said that Russia's nuclear-powered submarines are not yet operational, but "this ostrich-like attitude can hardly be reconciled with the success which attended the building and operation of the Soviet nuclear-powered icebreaker Lenin.'''

Probably none of Russia's subs can yet match the U.S. Polaris missile subs' ability to fire from a submerged position, and the missiles they carry are presumed to be only short-range (300 miles) land-type types installed on regular subs whose conning towers were enlarged to make a firing platform for them. But the Russians are undoubtedly working on Polaris-like missiles, Blackman warned, and "it would be unwise to assume, especially in view of Soviet success in astral rocketry, that the U.S.S.R. is any less capable than other nations in the field of hydrodynamic rocketry."

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