The Chief of Staff of the Navy Almirante Dominguez was sat at his desk at Naval Headquarters in Bahia Blanca catching up with the endless stream of paperwork and reports on his desk. There was a knock at the door and his aide stepped in, “Sir, Capitan de Navio Pascal is here Sir.” The Admiral looked up, “Show him in.”
Capitan de Navio Pascal marched in, in his immaculate white summer uniform and he smartly saluted as he approached the desk, “Capitan Pascal reporting as ordered Sir.” “Ah, yes Capitan. Please have a seat.” Admiral Dominguez waved his hand, “Thank you Sir. I have here the reports from the engineer.” "What is his opinion?" the Admiral asked as he twirled a pen in his fingers. "He has looked over all the vessels and has made a brief assessment of their material condition. Five are in need of repair and another is in very poor condition. That leaves three in more or less good condition. He feels in his opionion that if we go ahead to rebuild them anyway this is not of serious concern." The Admiral mused for a while, "Hmm, well it will add to the final costs of the programme. And take time." "Yes Sir, he has enclosed his estimates on cost, of course the TTR is not yet complete but..." "yes very well, I'll look at his recommendations. I still need the approval of the Finance Minister, with the cruiser programme coming up its akward timing, we need to find enough funds for that." "What the public will say when we lay these vessels up on arrival is another problem Sir." The Admiral frowned, "that's not of your concern Captain. It's my job to run the Navy, not to run a popularity agency. The Minister will deal with that. Without funds and dock space things will be tricky enough but certainly we must go ahead. Those vessels will be very useful to us. You may go Captain. Thank you for your report, I'll read it in depth later on." The Captain stood, saluted and turned on his heel and left the room. The Admiral relaxed in his chair and spun round to face the large model of the battlecruiser Veinticinco de Mayo in a glass case behind his desk. “Ah its the devil to build a balanced fleet, these battlecruisers are fine ships but the support to go with them will cost us. And this is the only way we can afford what we need in enough numbers, buying other nation's cast-offs,"he murmured to himself. He turned round again to his desk and opened the next file of papers; the first line read ‘The Proposed Purchase of Fleet Destroyers …’