BIG NAVAL GUNS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 28 May 1927, Page 11

BIG NAVAL GUNS.

NEW oalibres for the fleet.

Naval tacticians agree that a warship is, in the final analysis, a floating gun platform. Speed and armour are subordinate' factors; the first is 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-of-war are due to . be commissioned, and the artillery of the Fleet will then be reinforced by eighteen 16in and forty Sin guns, irrespective of smaller pieces. Each of the new battleships Nelson and Rodney mounts nine 16in guns, a calibre new to the Royal Navy. The gun is about 60 feet in length, and weighs 107 tons. It fires a 21001 b 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, bur. with a high angle of elevation the range would' be increased. In spite of the - tremendous t weight of the gun itself’ the mounting, and the ammunition, the 16in model can fire a rounc]|' every thirty seconds. Theoretically, 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 five feet in thickness were placed across the muzzle, tho jisholl would / pass dlean 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.

Another calibre new to the Navy is represented by the Sin guns of the ♦‘Kent’-’ cruisers, which will pass into service a few months hence. These five vessels each carry eight big guns, the bore of which, like that of tho 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 Arm, it will be 33 feet in length and weight 17 tons. The shell, weighing 2501 b, leaves the muzzle at a velocity of 3000 feet per second, and will pass through nearly three feet 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 of metal. As the great majority of our existing cruisers are armed with the 6in 100-pounder gun, the completion .of the first five ships of the “Kent” class will add very considerably to the artillery power of our cruising fleet.