Evening Star Newspaper, April 27, 1930, Page 90

10 THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. -C, APRIL 27, 1930. The Real Story of the United States Upsetting the Belief That Germany’s Guns Which Fired on Paris Were the Biggestin the War, RearAdmiral Plun- kett Reveals Here Hitherto Untold Facts About Navy’s Five Dry-Land Dreadnaughts. BY CHARLES P. PLUNKETT. (Real Admiral, U. S. N., Retired) —as told to— THOMAS M. JOHNSON YHE most spectacular job the American Navy did- during the World War wasn't done on the sea at all. It took place on dry land, a long way from salt water. For the American Navy, or part of it, any- way, came ashore in 1918 to cut the main Ger- man line of supply and retreat by flinging big 1-ton shells 27 miles across country to blast away the German railroad system at the high tide of the greatest battle in history. It Jsn't exactly a secret that the American Navy landed gigantic 14-inch naval guns in France, took them up to the front and fought them there. But it’s pretty much an untold story. For instance, the German “Big Berthas” are still believed to have been the most powerful guns on the western front during the war. They weren’'t. The American naval guns had far greater force, though shorter range. And when the American naval guns reached the front the Berthas retired. Here’'s another “for instance.” Everybody knows that the objective of the last American drive was the great strategic railway from Sedan to Metsz, vital to German communication, and that the approach of the Americans to this line was one of the chief contributing.causes of the final German defeat. But how many people know that for a whole week before the first American doughboy ever set eyes on that rail- road the naval gunners were dropping shells on it and blowing it apart faster than the Ger- mans could put it together again? And here’s another “for instance.” When the armistice was signed, two of these big guns were actually in position to fire into Germany. , it’s largely an untold story. The Navy is proud of this feat; proud that it was able to come ashore and play an important part in battles on dry land. I'm proud that I had a part in it. The job was well done. The accuracy of naval gunfire is attested to by the fact that of the 782 big shells we fired in France, fully two-thirds had a direct mate- rial effect, despite the fact that we were firing at targets that we never saw and that much of the time we didn’t even have the benefit of aerial observation. When you realize that these shells went 85,000 feet up into the air—hearly 7 miles— before they started to come down, you'll realize what a job that sort of shooting was. And when they landed, they landed! They hit a German army headquarters once, and headquarters moved away from there at once. ‘They hit a movie theater full of German sol- diers once with frightful effect. Prisoners told us that these guns had the Germans scared stiff. When we came ashore to fight our deep-sea guns on dry land, we were butting in on some- body else’'s war. We tacked about all over France, intruding on the government’s railroad and the American Army’s preserves, so that we sometimes felt like flying Dutchmen. Some- times we thought we’d have to beat both the French and the A. E. F. before we could get & chance to help beat the Germans. Hardly any one believed in us—except ourselves and Gen. Pershing. PROBABLY the fact that we were about the weirdest-looking outfit in France didn’t help us much. The gobs and officers wore Ma- ¥ine uniforms of greenish-gray, Army tin hats and gas masks. Underneath they were still sailors and wore blue trousers and sweaters. Bometimes, in the main, they wore Navy sou’- westers. The railroad cars they lived in were painted white inside, and kept white, and they had a ship’s bell, too. When I “came aboard” they wanted to pipe me over the side, nautical fash- fom, but they were afratd some doughboy Quick cover-up work. Gobs hastily spreading camouflage over one of the big naval guns after firing, to safeguard it (Photos on these pages by U. 8. Signal Corps.) against German air reprisals. would take the bosun’s whistle for a gas alarm. Yes, the Army probably thought we were a weird outfit. But these naval gunners were picked men—500 of them, chosen from more than 20,000 applicants. Only 25 of them had been in the Navy before the war. The best way to start telling about them is t> go way back to the Fall of 1917, In November of 1917, I was gunnery officer of the Navy, in charge of target practice, espe- cially with our big 10, 12 and 14 inch guns, the largest we had at that time, as none of our 16-inch guns got completed until after the war. Rear Admiral Ralph Earle, chief of the Navy Bureau of Ordnance, realizing that the German artillery was outranging anything the allies had, figured that the Navy ought to see if it couldn’t beat the Germans at their own game. 'HAT was before the first German Bertha shell traveled 72 miles to drop in Paris. But even then the Germans were supreme in long-range artillery fire. They had guns which the allies never mentioned publicly, throwing shells 40 miles. Those guns were fired from near Cambrai, and they hit St. Omer and Doullens, important railway junctions behind the British front. The Germans also had 12-inch guns that bom- barded Dunkirk, the important French port just across from England. Those guns gave the allies some nervous moments. In the Fall of 1917 we all knew there would be a great German drive in the Spring. Suppose the Ger- mans should come up with guns that could shell Calais and Boulogne! The whole British army would be imperiled and the war might be irretrievably lost then and there. So Admiral Earle decided to pit against these German guns our 14-inch, 50-caliber naval gun. This, the main gun on our biggest battleships, threw a shell 48.000 yards (27 miles) at an Rear Admiral Charles P. Plunkett, U. S. N., retired, who was intrusted with carrying out Admiral Earle’s plan to put battleships on wheels. i initial muzzle velocity of 2,800 feet per second. Admiral Earle figured it would hit harder than the German shells and believed that we could either knock the big German guns out or force them back so far behind the lines that they could no longer reach important railway junc- tions and seaports far behind the allied front. But it wasn’t going to be a simple job. The German drive would be on by the time we could get our guns in France, so nobody had the faintest idea where we’d be wanting to put them. Obviously, they must be able to go any- where and take care of themselves. ‘That meant that we must adapt guns designed for battleships to traveling on railroads and we also must devise rolling repair and machine shops, cranes, wireless cars, ammunition cars and the lke. . In fact, it practically meant that we had put battleships on wheels. : Ammunition for the American big berthas, and these soldiers are all sailors, many of them with navy blues and sweaters, under their marine-green uniforms. Twenty thousands sailors sought the 500 posts needed to man the railway guns. DMIRAL EARLE was confident that it could be done, though. On November 26, 1917, the department approved Earle’s plans, and in- side of two weeks the drafting room force at the Naval Gun Factory, under Comdr. Harvey Delano, produced its first report. It had to be a rush job. Battleship turret mount designers gathered with bridge and railroad men to develop detailed plans. By January 25, 1918, drawings and sketches were ready to submit to the bidders. The biggest job was planning the gun car. It had to be strong enough to carry a 58-foot, 90-ton gun. It also had to be able to with- stand the shock of its firing at an angle from zero to 43 degrees, with a trunnion pressure of 966,000 pounds and vertical and horizontal re- actions of 100,000 pounds. But with all of that it had to be light enough to travel the rundown French railroads and take the bridges in safety, and it had to be small enough to go through the tunnels. As it was finally built, the gun car had as backbone two lengthwise girders, each 72 feet long, 8 feet deep and 135,830 pounds in weight. At each end these were bracketed together with special U-shaped housings in which steel H-beams, each carrying a center pin socket, received the center pins on the two 12-wheel car trucks placed at each end. Structural-steel girder beams carried the load to the axles. THIB axle-load business had the experts stumped. They all said we had too much axle load. The whole business—car, gun and all—weighed 535,000 pounds, as compared with the 518,240 pounds of a class 1300 New York Central locomotive and tender. They told us the whole thing would collapse. Then we had a job placing the gun so that the girders would take up its firing load and recoil. We put the gun in a well between the girders, which would permit of 15-degree ele- vation; that would only give us half our maxi- mum range; we needed all we could get, for we were going to be shorter in range than the German guns, even at our best. best foot forward. But to elevate the muszzle you have to de- press the breech, together with all the bulky recoil mechanism. So we fixed that in this way: Between the rails of the track at the Then the gun car was run over this pit. Each car had a transom bedplate similar to the caste ing in the foundation. When this bedplate was directly over the casting, 100-ton jacks were placed at the ends of the car girders and the whole car was raised about 4 inches off the track. Then, by screw packs in the foundation casting, the foundation casting was brought up to meet the bedplate, so that the load of the car rested on it. ALL of that sounds complicated, but it has to be given in order that you may undere stand the problem that confronted us. When we had this done, we were able to fire our gun at its maximum range, 48,000 yards, from any place in France where there was a railroad track, 20 hours after receiving our orders. There had to be plenty of auxiliaries, of course. All in all, we had to have six locomo- tives, 10 ammunition cars, 10 berthing cars for the crews to live in, six construction cars and five each of the following: Kitchen cars, head~ quarters cars, fuel cars, workshop cars, crane cars and cars to carry pit foundation material and miscellaneous equipment. In addition there had to be a staff quarters car, kitchen, dispensary, radio and commissary car. On February 19, 1918, I was ordered to get the personnel together for training. We tried to keep the expedition secret, but the news spread all through the Navy and 20,000 men asked to be assigned to the detache ment—and we needed just 30 officers and 500 men! I picked the men mostly from the Naval Reserve; excellent men, many of them from college. Others were grade A machinists, elece tricians, engineers, firemen, carpenters, and good general handy men. Long before the guns were ready we had these men at work at Naval Proving Grounds, Indian Head, Md., and else- where, teaching them how to handle and fire big guns About thas time we struck our first burhp., ‘The bidders all named remote dates of delivery. They didn’t seem to realize that we had to ge War Industries Board. After everybody else had said it was impose sible, Vauclain declared that if the American