Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/308

290 stantly falling upon Paris, were having a more demoralizing effect upon the French populace than was officially admitted. The demand for the silencing of this gun came from all sides; and it was a happy coincidence that, at just about the time when this new peril appeared, the American naval guns were nearly ready to be transported to France. Encouraged by the success of this long-range gun on Paris, the Germans were preparing long-range bombardments on several sections of the front. They had taken huge guns from the new battle-cruiser Hindenburg and mounted them at convenient points for bombarding Dunkirk, Chalons-sur-Marne, and Nancy. In all, the Allied intelligence departments reported that sixteen guns of great calibre had left Kiel in May, 1918, and that they would soon be trained upon important objectives in France. For this reason it was welcome news to the Allies, who were deficient in this type of artillery, that five naval fourteen-inch guns, with mountings and ammunition and supply trains, were ready to embark for the European field. The Navy received an urgent request from General Pershing that these guns should be landed at St. Nazaire; it was to be their main mission to destroy the "Big Bertha " which was raining shells on Paris, and to attack specific points, especially railroad communications and the bridges across the Rhine.

The initiative in the design of these mobile railway batteries was taken by the Bureau of Ordnance of the Navy Department, under Rear-Admiral Ralph Earle, and the details of the design were worked out by the officers of that bureau and Admiral Plunkett. The actual construction of the great gun mounts on the cars from which the guns were to be fired, and of the specially designed cars of the supply trains for each gun, was an engineering feat which reflects great credit upon the Baldwin Locomotive Works and particularly upon its president, Mr. Samuel M. Vauclain, who undertook the task with the greatest enthusiasm. The reason why our naval guns represented a greater achievement than anything of a similar nature accomplished by the Germans was that they were mobile. Careful observations taken of the bombardment of Dunkirk revealed the fact that the gun with which it was being done was steadily losing range. This indicated that the weapon was not a movable one, but that it was firmly implanted in a fixed position. The seventy-five mile gun which was bombard-