BIG NAVAL GUNS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 154, 2 July 1927, Page 14

BIG NAVAL GUNS.

NEW CALIBRES FOR THE FLEET. THE 16-INCH BROADSIDE.

Naval tacticians agree that a warship is, in tie final analysis, a floating gun platform. Speed and armour are subordinate factors, the first designed to carry the gun into action with the least possible delay, the second to protect the gun carriage, i.e., the ship, from disablement before the gun has done its work. In the past we built not a few ships which were under-gunned in proportion to their tonnage. The modern Navy does not make a mistake. During the current year seven large men-o'-war are due to be commissioned, and the artillery of the Fleet will then bo reinforced by eighteen lOin and forty Bin guns, irrespective of smaller pieces. Exact details of British naval guns are never made public, this being an item of national defence in regard to which reticence is completely justified. But once the calibre of a naval gun is known, its ballistic properties can be roughly gauged by anyone who is conversant with modern ordnance. Moreover, all the armament firms publish catalogues which include particulars of guns of the same bore as those used by the Navy, though not necessarily with the same characteristics. The I6in Gun. Each of the new battleships Nelson and Rodney mounts nine 16in guns, a calibre new to the Royal Navy. The nearest approach to it was the 80-ton muzzleloading weapon of the old Inflexible and the 111-ton B.L. gun with which the illfated Victoria and her sister ship Sans Pareil were armed. But between these old guns and the latest 16in model there is no resemblance beyond calibre. The lfiin gun, as mounted in the Nelson, is about 60ft in length, and weighs 107 tons. It fires a 21001b projectile with an initial velocity of 2675 feet per second,'and the energy generated by the discharge would lift a weight of more than 100,000 tons a foot above the ground. Mounted on a carriage of ordinary naval type, this great gun could hurl its projectile over a distance of some twenty miles, but with a'high angle of elevation the range would be increased. In spite of the tremendous weight of the gun itself, the mounting, and the ammunition, the 16in model can fire f round every thirty seconds. Theoreflfe cally, therefore, the Nelson could discharge eighteen 2100-pounder shells per minute, but in practice, for various reasons, such a high rate of fire would be difficult to maintain. The extraordinary power of this weapon is indicated by the fact that if a slab of wrought iron nearly sft in thickness were placed across the muzzle, the shell would pass clean through it. When it is added that the nine 16in guns of the Nelson throw at each broadside a weight of metal two and a-half times greater than that discharged by the original dreadnought, which was armed with ten 12in guns, some idea will be gained of the progress that naval artillery has made in the past two decades. . The "Kent" Cruisers. Another calibre new to" the Navy is represented by the Bin guns of the "Kent" cruisers, which will pass intc service a few months hence. These five .vessels, each carry eight big guns, the bore of which, like that of the Nelson's 16in pieces, was determined by the Washington Treaty. If the new Bin gun conforms to the weapon of this size listed in the ordnance tables of a private firm, it will be 33ft in length and weigh 17 tons. The shell, weighing 2501b, leaves the muzzle at a velocity of 3000 feet per second, and will pass through nearly 3ft of wrought iron. With a well-trained crew this gun could be fired five times a minute, so that each "Kent" cruiser could deliver forty Sin projectiles in that space of time, equivalent to four and a-half tons o1 metal. As the great majority of out cruisers are armed with the 6in 100pounder gun, the completion of the first five ships of the "Kent* class will add very considerably to the artillery power of our cruising fleet. In fact, for some years to come,'no other nation will possess a cruiser squadron of equal fighting power.