FORTIFYING PANAMA.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLVI, Issue 196, 19 August 1912, Page 2

FORTIFYING PANAMA.

While the question of the Panama 'Canal tolls is still under consideration the American authorities are losing no time in completing the fortifica-" tions that are to protect the waterway. A sum of £2,000,000 is to be spent on the works, which will contain the most modern engines of war, and Qo tigress has already voted apart of the money. A beginning was made with the construction of the forts last year. The approaches to the canal at eaoh end will be swept by powerful searchlights, and the main armament will consist of huge sixteen-inch guns. The weapons are fifty feet long and 130 tons in weight, and they cost the United States War Department about £20,600 each. The projectiles used in them weigh 2400 pounds and stand as ; high as ia man,, while the .propelling charge will consist of 640 pounds of smokeless powder. The Americans claim that one shot from a gun of this* type would disable the largest Dreadnought if it struck fairly, and the range-finding devices that they are installing would practically ensure this result. The terrible instruments of death are mounted on disappearing carriages. The plans for the defence of the canal also include the laying of contact and shore-control mines, so that a hostile ship which escaped the guns would be wrecked from below before it could! enter the waterway. Another feature of the armaments is avnumber of mortars, which throw shells three feet six inches long into the air so that they will fall on the decks of the enemy's warships. . An elaborate system of triangulation is said to reduce the aiming of these weapons to something like a mathematical certainty. The Americans evidently do not intend to allow the canal to fall into other hands in time of War.