GERMANY'S GUN.

Northern Advocate, 17 February 1912, Page 2

GERMANY'S GUN.

RECORDS BEATEN BY THE NEW 15-INCH KRUPP.

Although the new 15-inch Krupp gun is the most powerful piece yet actually constructed, it is by nc means the heaviest or biggest. The palm for this, curiously enough, belongs to the Krupp firm also, who in the eighties constructed a monster gun of no less than 132 tons weight. This gun had a bore of 15.7 inches, a length in bore of 36 calibres, and a projectile weighing 16281b. —that is to say, about three-quai-ters of a ton.

Two of these enormous weapons were purchased by Italy—originally with the idea of mounting them in a Lattleship. Actually, however, no ship carried them. Instead, an armoured turret some two feet thick was constructed and put in position at Taranto, on the island of San Pietro which guards the entrance of the arsenal, and they are presumably there to this day. * Rumors of this gun are understood to have inspired one of Jules Verne's novels, in which an enormous gun mounted on the "Bull Tower" k-.rgely figured.

to the modern gun, there is some reason ro believe that it may be allocated to the vessels of the new Kaiser class iiow completing, since these sjiips, though larger, have b'Jt five turrets, compared with six in then smaller predecessors. Against this, however, is the fact that the Germans never adopt a gun for naval service until it has been through a series of most exhaustive tests, including the bursting of a high explosive shell in its muzzle. A gun of 14-inch or thereabouts is understood to have been through most exhaustive tests successfully, and Krupp's have been manufacturing duplicates for some time. The 15-inch tor 15.7—a more likely calibre) has, so far as is known, not yet gone through tlie lengthy series of experiments demanded both by the German naval authorities and the Krupp firm before any gun is "put on the market." It is, however, not unlikely that the ships recently laid down will carry the new gun, which, it is needless 10 say, is as superior to the British as that piece is to the old 12-inch.