SOME WEAK SPOTS IN THE U.S. NAVY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2840, 19 August 1908, Page 37

SOME WEAK SPOTS IN THE U.S. NAVY.

'A MARVELLOUS ENGINEERING

AUCKLAND, August 14. As you climb the long ladder leading from your gently-heaving launch on to the broad wooden decks of the battleships and note the long, raking muzzles of the 12in and Bin guns protruding from their armoured protecting turrets and the broadside gun muzzles protruding from gashes in the white sides of the ships, you are considerably impressed with the fleet as a fighting machine, but when you come to make careful inquiries, as all conscientious journalists must do, you find that the ships are not without their defects. It is 24 years since the building of America's modern navy began, and since then there has been an average annual expenditure of 13 million dollars. In spite of all, however, America's navy is far from perfect in some respects, but probably that might be said of any

navy in the world. There are so many issues to be considered and such great diversity of opinion about JmpoTtant details that probably in the eyes of the critic" the perfect navy will never be evolved. In the matter of strength Great Britain, of course, comes first, and the United States, France, Germany, and Japan follow in that order. Russia nowadays cioes not count in number of ships. All the above-mentioned naval Powers are ahead of the United States in point of numbers. The French have 508 vessels, Great Britain 454, Germany 219, Japan 194, and the United States 168.

It is not, however, numbers that count. America, for instance, has 29 battleships of 10,000 tons and over, whereas Japan has only 13. On the other hand. Japan has 79 torpedo boats against the U.S. navy* 33, and 57 torpedo boat destroyers as against the latter's 21. - Incidentally it may be interesting to mention that Japan's first- ironclad was purchased in America. It is probably now on the scrap heap. While we are .dealing with figures, it may be as well to mention some startling facts regarding the explosives on the battleships we have been visiting. Each ship has 2,250,0001b of explosives and projectiles on board. The deadly "D," which is the fleet name for the navy explosive, is enclosed in safety squaiesided bottles, 18in long .and 6in through. It is & kind of guncbtton, but I believe the secret of it has been well kept. It is said to be just about the most powerful •explosive thai; could be u&e<3 in modern warfare, and is even more deadly than the famous shimose of the Japanese.

There are three points of apparent weakness about the battleships of the U.S. navy that strike a stranger. Ihe first of these is in regard to the armour belting, which does- not appear to rise to a sufficient height above the water line. A shot successfully planted just above the water line would apparently be a serious matter for some of the ships if the sea was at all rough, unless, indeed, they threw overboard so much top hamper as to materially increase tho height of the water line. The point has beui a good deal debated of late, and more than one officer to whom I mentioned the matter admitted that there was something in the criticism, though at the same time they pointed out lha-t you cannot pile the armour too high above the water line without detrimentally affecting the' ships in other directions. They also said that no commander m his sane senses would go into battle with his armour belting too close to the water line. They alto pointed out that there is armour ol a considerable thickness for some heigiit jifcove the belt armour, and that this armour is also backed by the coal bunkers and a heavy protective deck, thro.igh all ol which it would be extremely difficult to drive even the 12in shells. Undoubtedly the point is a most interesting one, and one that is likely to be debated for some time to come.

The construction of the turrets ha-? been subjected to some adverse criticism, but apparently they have during recent years been made quite safe, or practically as pafe as a battleship turret .can ever be. One is, however, very much surprised to find that there are no torpedoes on some of the battleships. The other necestary machinery appears to be there, but the torpedoes themselves are conspicuous only by their absence. The American naval authorities appear to have had some doubt about the efficacy of the torpedo on a battleship, and I was given to understand that they are arranging for a new kind of torpedo. No doubt torpedoes could be put in if war were probable. It may perhaps be regarded as one of the evidences that this is a peace cruise that ho torpedoes have been put in several of these ships. Fourteen of the U.S. battleships have submerged torpedo rooms, and arrangements for the tube itself. Many of these rooms have ben provided after the ships were con&tructed, and at great cost. Others were provided after the f-hips were well under way in the dockyards. It would thus appear that our American friends are changing th.eir ideas in regard to the non-effccti\enes& of the torpedo. One_of the most serious defects of the navy appears to me to be in the fact that the ships are both under-officered and undermanned. Undoubtedly there are not enough extra officers. With only 34,000 men the U.S. navy has not more than 950 officers and engineers. Japan, with half the tonnage, has 41.000 men ami over 2000 officers. Thus the 6in battery of the Rhode Island, with its 12 guns, would, we find, in time of war be in charge of one ensign and one midshipman. The midshipman, it is tTue, is a grown man, with considerably more experience and judgment than the very junior "middies" one sees in our own navy ; but still the paucity of numbers quoted tells its own tale. According to one American correspondent who was en the ships during a portion of the present cruise, both the crew and "the line" are deficient by 25 per cent. This is the more extraordinary when one considers the high wages and salaries that aie paid. It is probably a tribute to the commercial prosperity of the country. The men are a very young-looking lot, and not to be compared with our thick-set, deep-chested " boys of the bulldog breed."' Another point is that the term of service is for only four years, and few of the men care to serve more than one term.

For the engineering staff of the battleships now in Auckland Harbour one can have nothing but the most unfeigned admiration. The training in this department must be remarkably thorough and efficient to produce such very excellent results. The present cruise is an answer complete and incontrovertible to any adverse criticism there may have been, for as the London Times has well said, the fleet's circumnavigation of the world is the best test of its efficiency. The engineers have had a great opportunity, and they have more than justified the confidence reposed in them, and have given the lie to all those who have been saying that

the bureau system of the American Admiralty was a necessity. Whil« the high officials her© would not discuss with a stranger the questions of torpedoes and turrets, they talked quite freely with one on the engineering question. In his roomy office on the flagship Connecticut I talked one evening after dinner with a high officer of the etaff , and what he said will be well worth reproducing. "The first part of our cruise," he said, "was practically completed when we entered Magdelena Bay, where we stayed a month, mainly for target practice. The lon^, steady grind of the crui6e was practically over by that time, and along the rest of the coast we had only short trips from time to time. The only breakdown — and it was not a serious one — was the cracking of a cylinder hood and the upper part of a cylinder, which had to be replaced. That was on the Missouri, and occurred between Santa Barbara and Monterey. The most remarkable thing about the cruise from a foreigner's point of view is the result of the amalgamation of the line and the engineering corps. For instance, if at any time we want an engineering officer we can look round and take any man in the line who is available. To be s. successful naval officer you must be versatile "

"But," I interposed, "do you not gain versatility at the co.st of "efficiency in certain departments? "

"The answer to that," replied the officer, "is that if we had two or three times as many officers ac we have -we could afford to have specialists in the various branches ; but that is impossible. The trouble about specialists is this : Take, for instance, a gunnery officer If h© is only a gunnery officer he is not available for any other duty, so that in case of serious casualties, accident, or other reason it might be difficult to carry on the work. For irostan-ce, if anything happens in a turret and a man does not understand electricity, hydraulics, and e team he would have to send to the other departments to eet a man or men to put things right. We would think an officer a total failure if he were not able to take charge nf every portion of the machinery in his turret, and therefore such an officer must be versatile and have a working knowledge of all the appliances and gear. It has been -my experience that an officer who is a successful gunnery officer will make a successful engineering officer, and vice> versa. It i« tlie man that counts. In the first place, he is grounded at the Naval Academy in all these branches. During the early years ot his> training he is given an opportunity to acquire practical knowledge in all these branches, so that after a. few years he may be able to take up any one of thcee duties or be able to shift from one to another. He would, of course, be changed at short notice only when the necessity arose. It is our practice to keep, for instance, a gunnery officer or a navigator at his job for two or three years before shifting him to another department. Three years are counted as a cruise. The British naval traditions, laws, and customs are ours to a certain extent. Our customs are founded on Britain's because of our common history and experience before th-s separation, and for a long time in our service our laws and customs were absolutely the same. The older experience of the parent country naturally gave us a lead to follow. "In regard to incident, the cruise from 'Frisco to New Zealand was really themost uneventful cruise I hove ever seen. There was no breakdown of any serious nature, and only twice- on the whole trip has a ship fallen out of line, and that only for a few minutes, because in one instance • the steering gear jammed and in the other a circulating pump got out of ord^r. The b-iiileships csrac ;>long 250 yarcte apart m exact line of squadrons — i.e., in tv.o parallel oolumne, — and they have reached New Zealand with everything in as. good, or better, order than when we left San Francisco, becaufe we are getting better as we go on.

"Yes, we have effected a considerable economy in coal consumption. I cannot give yon the exact figures, because we hare not yet sent them to the naval authorities, but in a general way I may state that we have increased the steaming radius of the fleet by about 25 per cent. We steamed about 3097 miles from Honolulu to Auckland. That was considered a long trip for a fleet of 16 battleships to take, but when we arrived here we had enough coal to carry us on to Sydney. We could have made a voyage of 5000 miles. During the cruise we have done a great deal of tactical work ; indeed, we have done fleet evolutions •every day. Admiral Sperry's idea is to develop the fleet along all lines. He goc-s on the principle of what he calls the symmetrical development, of the fleet, and his idea has been carried out with most excellent results.

"The cruif-e," concluded the man, who speaks for the Admiral, " is the best thing that ever happened for the navy. There waß strong opposition when we started on the ground that it would interfere with our training, but that idea is utterly disproved, and we have had a better training than ever we have had before. '