ARMAMENT OF DREADNOUGHTS.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13420, 18 March 1914, Page 2

ARMAMENT OF DREADNOUGHTS.

The five battleships of th© Royal Sovereign class,. belonging to the curr rent British shipbuilding programme, will.not be armed with the 15in. gun, but will carry the same main armament as the ships of the Iron Duke class, laid down in 1911-12. This is the first time for 20 years that there has been a reduction in the calibre of the guns forming the main armament of Britain's capital ships. The eight battleships of the old Royal Sovereign class laid down under the Naval Defence! Act of 1889 and launched in 1891----1892, were armed .with four 13.5 in. apiece, but in the next large group, the Majesties (1894-5), four 12in. were mounted, and this remained the standard calibre of the main armament of battleships until the Orion and Lion were laid down in 1909. In those vessels an advance—and a return—was .made to the 13.5 in. gun, and in the ships of the following programme, the King George V. class of 1910-11, an improved weapon of this calibre was mounted, firing a shell 10 per cent, heavier. So far, the projectile had increased in weight from the 8501b. of the 12in. to the 12501b. 'of the 13.5, and the 13751b. of the improved 13.5; and the Queen Elizabeths of the 1912 programme are being equipped with 15in. weapons firing 19501b. shells. Although Germany and Italy are both mounting eight 15in. guns in their new ships, there is a general tendency abroad to adhere to a weapon of 14in. or thereabouts, and this in spits of comparatively enormous additions to tonnage. France has armed her successive classes of Dreadnoughts with twelve I2in., ten 13.4 in., twelve 13.4 in., and sixteen 13.4 in. guns. In the United States the steps have been: Eight 12in., ten 12in., twelve 12in., ten. liin., and twelve 14in.; and this calibre is to be retained in the next vessel, which, is to displace 38,600 tony. Russia, Austria, and Japan" are all adhering to the 14in. gun in their newest ships, although it was at one time believed that the Japanese vessels of the Fusb class would carry ten 15in. earnm da,o-r oae.h