Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/351

 Popular Science Monthly

��Vol. 88 No. 3

��239 Fourth Ave., New York

March, 1916

��$1.50 Annually

��Railroad Forts That Go Where They Are Needed

A New Idea in Preparedness

��WE have large cities, long coast lines and borders, also extensive areas that must be protected. It would be impracticable to fortify most of them by expensive fixed fortifications even though such fortifications were con- sidered efficient.

The conditions of our roads, bridges and general topography of the country make it impracticable to move very heavy artillery rapidly, and we must look to the railroads both to transport heavy guns and to provide suitable bases from which to fire them rapidly and accurately.

The vastness of our areas, coasts and borders, demands that we have an ex- tremely flexible as well as powerful land armament which can be operated by com- paratively few men and used anywhere.

Railroads can mount twelve, fourteen and sixteen-inch guns for defense through a new inxention patented by L. W. Luellen of New York, which makes it possil:)le to protect with heavy mor- tars and guns our inland cities and five thousand miles of coast line, instead of the three hundred miles now protected by fixed fortifications.

Heavy guns are permanently mounted on especially constructed railway cars, which are to be quickly locked on solid concrete foundations for instant use, to secure accuracy and rapidity of fire con- trol. These mobile armament cars are designed to utilize the present coast and inland railways to protect our seaboard, thus increasing the flexibility and stra- tegic value of high-])ower guns such as are now mounted on fixed foundations.

Mr. Luellen would install at fixcfl

��points along existing railroads or at de- sirable strategic points, suitable concrete foundations, from which the highest powered guns may be fired. A specially- designed car will permanently mount high powered guns which may thus be swiftly transported to the point of attack, lo- cated on the foundations and brought into action.

These concrete foundations may be sit- uated, at a very nominal cost, on main lines, spurs, or side-tracks, either singly or in groups, behind hills, in railway cuts and in secluded spots along the re- gion it is desired to protect, as compared with the cost of placing fortifications at such points.

Should the enemy locate and obtain the range of one of the mobile batteries, the car can be quickly unlocked and moved to another location.

Present railroad facilities along the coasts of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, — including Long Island — and New Jersey, are so located that ample giui foundations coidd be ])laced on spurs or side tracks so that an\' boat attempting to land must come within range of any desired number of guns. \\\ properly grouping the concrete l)ases and placing one hundreil and forty of them on the coast line mentioned, no landing party could reach the shores without coming within the deadly nine- mile range of six mortars.

These concrete bases would cost ap- proximately three thousand to four thou- sand dollars each — total cost of one hun- dred and forty bases, inchuling labor, about five hundred thousand tloUars.

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