Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/527

 Our Helpless Coast Defenses

���IN one hun- dred years of naval warfare the range of guns has increased twelve times, the weight of broadsides twenty times, the speed of firing twenty times and the weight of pro- jectiles eighty times. The most powerful weapons at present mount- ed on a battle- ship are the fifteen-inch guns of the Queen Eliza- beth, England's famous super- dreadnought. They can hurl sixteen-hun- dred- pound shells from one end of Man- hattan Island to the other — a distance of fifteen miles. The Queen Elizabeth could standoff nearly two miles be- yond the range of our largest twelve-inch coast defense rifles at Sandy Hook and destroy the fort. And we — we could do nothing. The splashes from our shells would be seen by the officers on shore — evidences of our inferiority.

Making a Fonrteen-inch Gun Hit Harder The performance of the fifteen-inch guns mounted on the latest English super-

��The gun crew of a twelve-inch mortar in one of our coast-guard forts. These squat guns fire a heavy projectile high in the air, and are able to do great damage during an engagement. The shell at long ranges rises three or even five miles in the air and drops almost perpendicularly on its target

��dreadnoughts ha\e stirred the ingenuity of our naval ordnance experts. For our new battle- ships, the California, Mississippi and Idaho, fourteen-inch guns of forty- fi\'e-caliber were specified. The caliber of a gun is simply its muzzle diameter divi- ded into the length; a six- inch gun of fifty caliber is t w e n t y - f i \' e feet long. Ob- viously these fourteen-inch guns would be at a disad\an- tage if opposed by the fifteen- inch guns of a Queen Eliza- beth. Accord- i n g 1 }•, their length has been increased to fift\" calibers. Because the gun is longer, the powder is able to give the shot an addi- tional push, as it were. Rear-Admiral Joseph Strauss, Chief of Ordnance of the United States Navy, gives it as his opinion that "these guns, although of less caliber and weight than fifteen-inch guns now mounted abroad, are capr.ble of |)cnetrating the hea^'iest side armor at oblique impacts and at the greatest effecti\e battle range, and give us the advantage of flatter tra- jectory with greater volume of fire due to

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