NAVY’S BIG GUNS

Greymouth Evening Star, 4 July 1933, Page 9

NAVY’S BIG GUNS

TRUTH ABOUT SEA “SHOOTS.” Hector C. Bywater, “Daily Telegraph” Naval correspondent writes: In view of statements which have been circulated to the effect that the big guns of the Fleet are never fired nowadays with full charges, owing to the demands of economy, the following comments by a leading ’ gunnery expert are of interest:

“The position is that since the allowance of practice ammunition was cut down last year, the heavy guns in our Fleet are fired with battle charges only on a few specified occasions during the training year. There are, however, three to four of these fullcalibre ‘shoots’ in a twelve-month, when the guns are loaded with threequarter cordite charges and shells of full weight, viz., 24601 b. for the 16in. gun and 19201 b. for the 15in. “On these occasions the firing is conducted exactly as it would be in war, the range averaging ten miles, though sometimes it is much longer. The sole difference is that, in order to compensate' for the lower velocity of the three-quarter charge, the guns must be given a higher elevation than they would have if full charges were used. “As it is, the gun is saved a considerable amount of erosion, or wear and tear, by reducing the cordite charge.

“For the rest of the year the big guns are continually firing sub-calibre ammunition from Morris tubes inserted in the breech. This form of practice, known as ‘piffing,’ is of great value for training purposes, and has been in use for well over thirty years. “Sub-caiibre shoots test the gunnery organisation of a ship just as searchingly as full-calibre firings, as they are conducted on precisely the same lines, with all control and plotting stations functioning as they would in action. “The Navy asks nothing better than that its practice ammunition outfit should be double or trebled, knowing as it does that the more full rounds a ship fires in peace the straighter it will shoot at.an enemy.

“But there are difficulties. Ammunition for modern big guns is verj’ costly; for example, the cost of firing one salvo from the nine 16in. guns of the Nelson is over £2OOO. It is reported, unofficially, that the concentrated shoot by three 15in. gun battleships off Weymouth last year, in the presence of.the King, cost £50,000, though the firing lasted only a. few minutes.

“To double the present allowance would entail an increase of several hundred thousand pounds in the Navy estimates.

In this connection I was able to show, in the “Daily Telegraph” of March 21, that the allowance of practice ammunition in the British Fleet is about 50 per cent, less than that of the leading foreign navies.