Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, December 5, 1915, Page 30

s i A e . "THE, OMAHA - BiaGEsTGuN ONEARTH! IT's Qurs Remiarkable Picture of the New Monster 16-Inch Coast Defense Gun and Its Crew. Photo Taken at the Testing Grounds of Sandy Hook. The First of the New Coast Defense ' Monsters Arrives in New York Harbor and is Being Tried Out to See if the Giant Will Do All . That is Expected of It Sandy Hook is a type) will be of sixteen-inch calibre, and will throw an_explosive projectile eight miles It may be added that the pro- Jectile discharged by the sixteen- inch rifie, welghing more than haif was sent to Watertown (near Boston), where the Govern- ment maintains what it ~ i 55 LEE and farther, ton, Is nearly as tall as a man— calls a_ “carriage - u y snything An idea of the enormous size and When stood on end—or, ta speak mry"—mo-n:‘:: l:ty"J Wwrong with it ahd to make sure offectiveness of this new. gun i with exactness, five feet 4 inches that term an es. that 1t do an that it 18 ex- .best conveyed by comparing it, high. At a distance of three miles tablishment for ; mlip.' This hflotm.ot}hl‘ point for point, with the twelve- 1t will strike with an energy of making gun i ! defense guns whieh will tnth weapon. 90,000 foot-tons—enough, as it is = carriages. eventually be around the The twelve-dnch gun is forty feet reckoned, to smash a battleship at harbor defense of our big coast long. The length of the sixteen: one blow. cities and the Panama Canal. inch breech-loading rifle is nine The monster gun here described It is the biggest gun ever con. inches short of fifty feet. was built by the War Department structed. Some. of the great Ger- The twelve-inch gun welghs fitty- at Watervliet, N. Y. Thenee it was man cannon are of slightly larger seven tons. The weight of the six- ®ent a while ago to Sandy Hook. calibre, but they are mortars, a teon-inch monster is 130 tons—more From Sandy Hook it was re. different kind. of weapon, and do than twice as great. cently shipped back to Water- not weigh rearly so much. . The twelvednch gun throws a viiet, In order that it might There are to be wany of these 1,000-pound shell thirteen miles. - recelve some minor altera. huge guns, according to the War = The piojectlie discharged by the tions and improvements, Department's present plans. Seven sixteendinch gun welghs 2400 particularly in re. A of them are (0 be mounted in the - pounds. and fs thrown twenty-one spect to the firing Projec- forts that guard the entrances of = miles. mechan|sm. tile Shot the Panama Canal. Just bow many. ' The firing chargo of the twelve This being will be provided for the coast de- - inch gun 1s 520 pounds of smokeless accomplished, from the fences of the United States proper powder. For the sixteendnch gun the gun New 16-Inch is as yet a government seoret; it s 666% pounds. but an officlal board quite & While. The shel of the Gun at Sandy- ago reached (I:.mehlh;"t:.n twelvedneh gun Hook Could elghteen shouid be mounted- ¢ carries an expiod- hatt Lar, protection of New York City. Also ing charge of S er the & H recommended thet ten showd be aixty pounds i est Building in emplaced at San Franciaco, elght at high explosive. i mmuump-m That of the six- New York City, 14 to defend’ anc teen-inch gun car- Miles Away and Likewise = Could Destroy the Lar- gest Battleships in the Fleet of an Invading Enemy. g mmcars T At SUNDAY BEE MAGAZINE There it was placed upon the carriage which had been newly made for it, and subjected to a “shop test,” to make sure that gun and carriage would work together prop- erly, and finally (a few days @go) the carriage and gun were shipped to Sandy Hook. ‘A train of speclally constructed fat-cars was required for their transportation; and orders were is- sued by the railroad officials to have all lights in the Hoosic Tun- nel extinguished while the war- freight was passing through, lest the presence of such great masses of steel ‘cause a short circuit and set fire to the train, On reaching Sandy Hook, the gun was placed on its carriage, with the help of powerful ma- chinery ready at hand, and thus made ready for the “firing test.” It must be fired several times, to be sure that nothing is wrong with it, and then no time will be lost in forwarding the giant weapon to the Isthmus. Inasmuch as fifty shots will wear the gun out, through destruction of its rifiing by the enormous powder pressure, the test firlng will be carefully economized. From the wharf at Sandy Hook the gun and carriage will be trans- ferred by a wrecking derrick to * lighters, which will convey them to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where huge cranes will pick them up and place them on the deck of a freight steamship. Lashed fast to her deck, as a /precaution against damage in a possible storm, they will make the voyage to. the At- lantic terminus of the Panama Rallroad, at Colon. The raliroad will carry them on flat cars across the Isthmus and the gun will be mounted in an emplace ment of one of the forts at the Panama end of the cansl In order to realize the size of the trarsportation job, one should understand that the war-car- riage of the giant gun weighs something like 450 tons. It is of the “disappearing” type (built at a cost of $125,000), and its counter- welght alone—by the help of which the weapon is lowered and between < shots—is a bit heavier than the gun itself. The constructional ingenuity of this carriage may be judged from the fact that it must endure, with- out breaking or straining any of its parts, the most tremendous explo- slve shocks, meanwhile, between shots, lowering the gun eight feet to the loading position and re- furning it to the firing position. It must do this rapidly, certainly, and easily, by mechanism not liable to get out of order and readily oper- ated by the average soldier. The performance is comparable to that of a 50-ton locomotive and tender, running twenty miles an hour, which should be required to come to & full stop within sixteen feet, or onethird of its length, yet so easily and gently as to suffer not the test jar of the explosion each time the gun is discharged is bet- ter realized when it is explained that its firing load of smokeless powder (6681 pounds) is equiva- lent, in energy aeveloped, to 1,225 pounds of ordinary black powder. One can easily imagine what eighteen such guns could do for the defense of New York, or ten of them for that of San Francisco, against a hostile fleet—especially in view of the fact that, as reckoned by experts, one gun on land is equal to six on ships, calibre for calibre, owing to better protection and steadiness of platform. This wonderful sixteen-inch rifle, emplaced at the Battery, on the south end of Manhattan Island, could throw shells far beyond New Rochelle on the Sound. Tuckahoe and Hastings-on-the-Hydson would be within easy range. Its shells would pass far above Staten Island and fall half a mile beyond Atlantic Highlands. Perth Amboy could easily be wiped off the map, and residents of Montclair might hear the huge projectiles roaring over head, to fall three miles distant in the valley beyond. Paterson would be within easy reach, with four miles to spare. * 'With a range of twenty-one miles a projectile from this gun would mount nearly six miles into the air, reaching a height of 30,516 feet —an altitude at which no human belng can get enough oxygen for his lungs to keep him alive. If Pike's Peak (14,083 feet) were placed on top of Mont Blane (15,779 feet), midway between the Battery and Hastings-on-the-Hudson, the projectile fired from the Battery would land at Hastings after pass- ing clear over them both with 654 feet to spare! The glant gun is to be mounted at the Pacific end of the canal, be- cause that entrance is deemed more open to attack by a hostile fleet than the Atlantic entrance. ‘The forts there located have been built on four islands, most con- veniently situated for the defen- sive purpose, which were pur- chased by the War Department from the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. On each of these islands is a fort, and each fort will be provided with one sixteendnch gun of the type here described. The islands have been connected with each other, and also with the mainland, by causeways of solid concrete. In fact, as designed, the four forts are integrated into a single sys- tem, and even If an enemy were to capture one of them he could be driven out by concentrating the guns of the others upon it On the sea-frontage of each isl- and an inclined plane of concrete rises from the shore with a long and iow slant toward the mainland. This is covered with several feet of earth, turfed so as to present the appearance of a greemsward. No casual observer would suspect that beyond there are concrete- lined pits concealing formidable guns. Each fort consists of several such gun-pits. It 18 a series of holes in the ground, with the land- scape for a roof; there is nothing for an enemy to shoot at. There will be in each fort several fourteen-inch guns—very formid- able weapons, corresponding in size and power to the largest rifies carried by our battleships. In the rear of the ordinary gun-pits, fur- thermore, will be, on each of the four islands, a battery of four mor- tars, similarly emplaced. They are short rifled guns of twelvednch calibre meant for high-ungle firing, and to see them am enemy would bave to be in a balloon. Such & PAGE e ———— mortar is thirteen feet long, uses & powder charge of 105 pounds, and throws an 800-pound shell over five wiles. One such projectile land- ing on the deck of a dreadnought would be likely to put her out of action. The forts at the Atlantic entrance of the canal are three in number, and are situated on the mainland. In other respects their arrange- ments and armament are much the same. Each of them is to be pro- vided with one giant sixteen-inch rifle. The seven huge guns thus pro- vided for the defense of the Pan- ama Canal would alone be sufficient to “stand off” the most formidable fleet. Constructed, as they are, in accordance with the very latest military ideas, and armed as they will be, the forts here described are expected to be practically im- pregnable. That they will ever be captured by attack from the sea is not for a moment to be imagined. The danger lies in the possibility of attack by en army landed by an enemy a few miles up or down the coast. It is a peril that would be quick- ly made real if, through the de- feat of our fleet, we lost control of the sea. An- other danger is from military or naval aeroplanes —one well-aimed bomb would knock a gun and its carriage into @ scrap heap. Powder and Shell for the New Gun Compared to a | 7 ™\