NEW FIELD GUNS

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4318, 29 March 1901, Page 2

NEW FIELD GUNS

WHY GERMAN MAKERS CAN TURN THEM OUT QUICKER. The Hon W. St. J. Brodrick, replying to a question in the House of Common?, referred to the- more expeditious execution by foreign firms of orders for fund guns. The question is now taken up by Sir Andrew Noble, who, in a letter dated January 2nd, and sent to the press from the Els wick Works on behalf of Sir W. G. Armstrong, Whitworth and Co., Ltd. (of which ho is a director), sets himself to correct the erroneous inference that German manufacturers can ma&o field artillery material quicker than their English rivals. . His explanation (which has been delayed by circumstances connected with tho illness and death of Lord Armstrong) is that the Gdnnan. makers were unfettered by being obliged-to work to the English Government designs. They wore allowed to supply guns and carriages -f their own stock pattern, and these patterns are of designs far’ easier to make than are these which have been issued by tho War Office. In the German carriage, for example, wood scarcely enters into the construction at all. The trails are constructed of steel tubes, and tho wheels are) made entirely of steel. In the Royal Arsenal design (an admirable one) tho trail is difficult’of construction, requiring most careful manufacture, while the wheels, also, .ore of an expensive par. tern, requiring long-seasoned cleft English oak spokes and ash felloes, the naurs and pipe boxes being of a modified pattern. Another point is that in all work made in England absolute interchangeability of the component parts of a gun and carriage wherever made is rightly insisted upon; and the doubt is expressed whether this is carried to the same extent in the case of Geo-man manufacture.*Tho battery presented by Lady Meux to Lord Roberts was completed in • about six weeks, and had a large number beetn ordered. of the same' pattern they could have beerl delivered at the rate of a battery peir week. .. CAUSES OP DELAY. Again, all English work is subjected to a most rigorous and exacting inspection, not only on completion, but at all stages during manufacture, and it is summarily rejected if it fails to comply, even in mufutoydfeiails,. with "the specification. It is (Sir Andrew thinks) cjuite certain that no correspondingly rigid inspection has been exacted in-the case-of the German material. Late in January or early in. February, he says, he was informed that eighteen batteries would ha ordered . from Elswickp but as an instance of the difficulties to be contended with ho mentions that tho model of the breech block, from which the tools and carriages had to bo made! (which would take five or six weeks) was only received oh Juno 2, and no less than forty-six drawings of detail, either original or alterations, were received between July 1 and the middlo'of September, when they-commonced to deliver. Since the middle of September the! company has delivered seventy-eight guns (thirteen batteries), hud sixty carriages and limbers—that is ten 'batteries and carriages ami-limbers, or mote than a battery every ten days. It is suggested that it would be a national calamity were it to be supposed that the existing manufacturing resources of. tho country.were unequal to the supply of any amount of warlike material that may be required. Tho slowness of supply, Sir Andrew thinks, arises from the fact that during the last quarter of a century hardly any field batteries have been ordered from any private makers. It is submitted that the main causes .of delay in the; supply of now and diffiqil t patterns cannot, on the, Tfhqlq,. bo attributed to the manufacturers’; and it.js distinctly''asserted that had; the foreign makers been placed in the position in which the, English makers were placed thely could not have manufactured the guns and carriages in so great 'number; or ■ in. so short a time as had actually been accomplished by the Elswick Company. . . ’