THE POWER OF BIG GUNS.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIIC, Issue 14340, 4 November 1910, Page 5

THE POWER OF BIG GUNS.

A 1400 ib PROJECTILE. HALF A MILE A SECOND. Naval architects are now giving us annual surprises. It is good lor their own exchequers. Ii is expensive lor the taxpayers. It is probably cheap as an insurance premium, for, as Tacitus observed: "If you desire peace, prepare for war." Coincident with .iiesa surprises are the amazing developments iu big gun construction, The armament for one war leviathan, tho plans of which- havu been approved, is a battery of 10 14-meh guns. Ibis weapon is churned to be by far the. moii powerful ever constructed for any navy. With a weight of 63.3 tons ! it is a fraction more than 10 tons • heavier time the U'-meh type carried ! by Dreadnoughts. 1 The weigh: or the projectile which ! the new gnu win carry is 1400 pounds; J the weight _of ti:o powder charge wll be about 4-y.J i>n. t.ds. 'i'b.e designed muzzle energy oi the new weapon is Go,(WO loot f.ii-.. To translate this into plainer English and to afford some idea of what this power means, let the reader suppose a 16.000 foot ton La!-, tlcslijp emplaned on top of the Cunardcr Busitania, 'whose displacement is .12.0UI! tons. i;i)d a steamboat superposed on ion of all. Next try to conceive of the united weight of the three, and the power that wenid be required to lift them. Tlie muzzle energy of this gun is equal to the task. By this is meant the energy exerted at the moment oi discharge, an energy so tremendous that it would be able to lift all three vessels one foot. A force that is sufficient to lift a weight so enormous as this must needs be eon< strained by metal of tremendous re* sisiance. The builders of the gun hava seen to it that the powder chamber in which the explosion' occurs and the massive steel breechblock upon which. the shock is exerted with ihe same energy that expels tho 1400 pound shell through the air at a pace of nearly half a-nnlo a second, shall be equal tothe terrific strain. This is. of course, instantly imparted to the carriage, a mechanism which must, in the fraction of a second, take up and absorb a shock equal to that of a heavy engine and five Pullman coaches running at a speed of 70 miles an hour and brought to a sudden stop—a stop so sudden as though a train had smashed into a stone wall. On leaving the muzzlo of the gun the shell ]vns an energy equivalent to that of a train of carriages weighing SSO tons and running at CO nines an hour. This energy is sufficient to send tie projectile through 22i inches of the hardest steel armour' at ihe muzzle, while at a range of 3000 yards the projectile, moving af the "rate of 2235 h--et per second, can pierce 18* inches of sice! armour at normal impact. At a range, of five miles the striking energy is sufficient to cut through 14i inches of Harveyised nickel steel. The velocity of the nroieetile as it leaves the gun is 2000" feet a second, a speed which, if maintained, would carry the missile almost twice around the globe within 24 hours, and to tho moon and back in little more than a week. Judging from the performance of 'he' 12-inch guns, these greater wrapo-is should be able to deliver three shots a minute. If all 10 guns of the projected Dreadnought should be brought i. to action, and should maintain thai rapid ty of fire for one hour, the cost of the ammunition expended in the hour would reach the enormous sum of £504, 000_. or about one-fourth of the vessel's entire cast. The cost of the 12-inch guns averages £14.000 each. The cost of the new 14-inch gun has been placed ,-p----proximately at £17,000. The develop. nieiit of naval ordnance lies been so rapid that tho h'gh-powered ?ea-horne guns o! ro-dev are aim st iw ee as powerful as were The ituns of the same. ca'ibro of 10 years n0,,. Became of the excessive pictures in these lattr years :r is diiicuit ro prevent i resion. an;! as :i would oe fural for -'iiiis in fail ttidcleniy in battle, the life rf the .rnv type, of ih-h-i.awored ordnance becomes a vita! factor. These guns cannot he hastily built, and the great amount of money that tltey cert would seem to warrant the expectation of oonsiderabh service Ixd'ore becoming useless. Ir lias been cak-ul:utd that if one of these new 14-inch rit; -s were constantly submitted to e.ve-e-ive pressure, such as mieet obtain in a hot :ie:ion. the urn. could not last, mora than 70 rounds. The length of the g;,u is a fraoi : o n more than ">3ir—o)42in. to be ,• Xll .'t. Although the muzzle veloritv of the projectile is 2600 ft a second, the ordnance experts h -ve eel-nbf d that -"t requires one-tenth of e. -=eeen:l for the see" to !eavo_ the nun. ill's is because of the fact that the shell moves from zero to 2600?t. and that ihe mean velocity must be taken. Ties mean being; one-temh of a s-conrl. the actual "as life of this £17.0000 weapon is shown to he only seven seconds. What wonder tho peoples of the various nations are sorely taxed when expensive toys, stub as these, are needed to warn each other I: off the rrrass." We use the term ••toys.'' for we grave!v doubt if their in.-du purpose—interEuropean war—will ever be fulfilled