The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, April 8, 1906, Page 5

BY COMMANDER J, D. JERROLD KELLEY, U. 8. esh eadnought, D ' Portsmouth dock- the King on February 10, bl ivance in naval not, of course, revi the French La Gloire NAVY. of 1857 or the American Monitor of 186z The type is as clearly evolved from the Lord Nelson class as that class is derived from the King Edward VII group. But, new departure or mot, no ship of war has since the advent of the La Glolre_— THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. now historically famous as the first sea- going ironclad—and of the Monitor aroused so much technical interest and excited so much public curiosity. It is gt this stage impossible to describe with exactness all the elements of the Dreadnought’s design, for its secrets have been kept with such admirable close- ness that the facts are known only to a limited circle. Even 8o eminent a critic as Sir Willlam White, late chief con- structor of the.British navy, seems to have based an adverse opinion of the type on wrong assumptions; and it is safe to say with the London Engineer, if a per- son of his enormous experience could be led into error, how less llkely is it that the opinions and deductions of legser lights will prove correct. It may there- fore be well to add that the general de- scription of the Dreadnought has been taken from conservative and apparently reliable accounts that have appeared in such trustworthy journals as the En- gineer and Engineering of London and the Naval and Military Record of Plymouth. During the filve months that the Dread- nought has been under construction suf- ficlent truth has, however, been whispered to prove that the new ship is an incorpo- ration of ideas, some suggested and soms, older and evolutionary, confirmed by the results of the Russo-Japanese sea war. It is fairly well known, for example, that the vessel is to possess an enormous concentration of offensive and defensive energies through the installation of a main battery of 12-inch guns, that the usual intermediate battery has been eliminated, that the Babcock-Wilcox water tube bollers are to develop 23,000 horsepower and that the turbine engines are expected to give an average sea speed of twenty or twenty-one knots. The ar- mor protection is to be distributed over a large area and to be thick enough to resist the direct impact of 12-inch projec- tiles fired over a range of 3000 yards. The ship’s underwater body is to be arranged £0 ,as to furnish a reasonable immunity from automatic torpedoes and fixed or floating mines. One further advantage is the gain in fighting simplification, due to the single class and the uniform service of the ammunition needed, p So far as the usual technical data go it is stated by London Engineering “that the Dreadnought is 500 feet long, 82 feet in beam and at a displacement of 18,000 tons will draw 26 feet of water. The boilers are of the Babcock & Wilcox type, with [ (55 N @ pressure of 250 pounds; there are four propeller shafts, and with a horsepower of 23,000 the speed will be about twenty-ons knots. Apart from the novel feature found in the abolition of the secondary arma- ment, there are several other notable de- partures from accepted design. Two stern posts and two rudders, placed some twen- ty feet apart, are provided. The ten twelve-inch guns of the main armament are arranged In three barbettes, each mounting & pair of guns on the keel line, one on the poop, one abaft the funnels and one on the high forecastle. The other two pairg will be in hooded barbettes, lo- cated on either bow, so that the fire ehead will be from six guns, the fire astern from two and on the broadside from no less than eight. This is a very great gain indeed, for there can be small doubt that broadside is far more im- portant than end-on fire. The Dread- nought will, when need arises, be a good ship in a chase; her stern fire is, of course, weak, but then she is not likely to be found showing her stern to anything that floats. The torpedo defense gun is now spoken of as an eighteen-pounder, but the number -to be mounted is not stated.” It is, however, claimed In: other quar- ters that the foregoing disposition of the main armament is not accurate, and that the twelve-inch guns (45-caliber in length) are to be mounted at nearly the same level on the upper deck. Two of these are to be carried in a forward and two in an after barbette, situated on the fore and aft line of the ship. Three are to be mounted each in a single barbette on either broadside. This disposition of the big guns is, therefore, a close reproduc- tion of that installed in the Lord Nelson, the only substantial changes being the substitution of 12-inch ordnance for the 9.2-inch intermediates of the earlier de- sign. Whichever plan is adopted, the cumulative effect of eight guns fired to- gether in broadside must be enmormous, and the effect even of a single shot, owing to the great increase in energy of these latest gun types, must be most destructive even at the new fighting ranges. It should be kept in mind that future actions will probably be fought at ranges so extended that only the heaviest shots will in any final gense count. The flat trajectory—the line of projected flight—can also be so low that no zone of safety will exist with- in effective torpedo range. What, it may be asked, will the Ad- miralty do with a ship of this tre- ‘mendous power when she is commis- sioned? With the ten 12:lnch guns of AND EER MIAMIENT TIBIE VAN ORF the latest type opposed to the four mounted in even the best foreign bat- tleships, she should be equal to any two vessels now afloat. In defensive quall- tles she will, thanks to the thickness and quality of her armor, be immune from damage by gunfire at ordinary battle ranges. It is generally believed that the Dreadnought will be assigned to the Atlantic fleet, which is the “pivot” force of the British navy. In the late “battle practice” the King Ed- ward VII, flagship of this fleer, when steaming at fifteen knots, fired eleven shells from her four 12-inch guns and hit ten times a target distant nearly three and a half miles. Thirty-one ounds were discharged with her four .2-inch guns, making fifteen hits, and out of seventy-one rounds twenty-six hits were scored by the 6-inch,guns. If the Dreadnought, with ten 12-inch guns, equals the record the target will, under similar conditions, be pierced twenty times. In addition to the Dreadnought the Atlantic fleet will include, irrespec- tive of armored cruisers and other com- ponents and auxilliaries, seven battle- ships of the King Edward VII type, each mounting four 12-inch, four 9.2- inch and ten 6-inch guns. Assuming that circumstances enabled each of these eight men-of-war to put in a full broadside every minute, the following welght of shells would be discharged: Pounds. Dreadnought woe Seven King Edward VII's Total . ... 58,740 The calculation is based on the mod- est assumption that from each 12-inch gun one shell will be fired a minute, from each 9.2-inch two and from every 6-inch five,” This rate is frequently ex- ceeded, but it may suffice as an average for a fleet of eight ships. On this basis the total dlscharge each minute from the Atlantic fleet firing broadside-on at an enemy is more than twenty-six tons of metal. Presuming the stana- ard of the King Edward VII's 12-inch guns is maintained, twenty-three tons would get therefore home in the ships of any foe that chanced to be the ob- jective. Nothing so overwhelming as this concentrated destruction has ever been conceived in the brain of man. It i{s impossible to picture the result of one minute’s well directed fire at an enemy’s ships, and when the gunners get the range and fire as at target prac- S T tice, one minute being followed by others, the effect will be annihilation. To this length has the contest for s power gone, and even this is not the end. These possibilities résult from the as- tonishing advances in heavier ordnance. Untll within a few years the British 12- inch gun was 40 caltbers in length and de- ped a velocity of about 2500 feet per second. It is interesting to learn that each of the 45-callber 12-inch guns of the Dreadnaught is to be something like 30 per cent more powerful than the 12-inch employed two years ago. It will have double the power of the 9.2-inch, nearly five times the power of the 7.5 and eight times that of the &-lnch. Be- tween 1592 and 1902 the collective musazle energy from one round of battleship guns increased 22 per cent, whereas between 1%2 and 198 the advance has been 147 per cent. Moreover, the maintenance of energm and penetrative power at long range is favored by a greater weight of projectile, and heavy guns have as a corollary the advantage over light pieces. At long ranges the improved optical devices for sighting and rangs finding demanded have been speedily provided by inventive ingenuity, and this combination of the various devices with a natural aptitude for getting on the target and with a ra- tional and progressive training is pro- ducing results that are nearly marvelous. The maximum fighting range of tho Dreadnaught's 12-inch guns, for ez~ ample, is five miles, and the chances of hitting targets at this distance are quite good. “Since we have been devel- oping larger battleships,” declares Cap- tain Wainwright, U. S, N,, In the Pro- ceedings of the Naval Institute, “the power of hitting with big guns has been increasing by leaps and bounds. All ord- nance material has improved, and the training of officers and men has become sclentific. Now the heaviest guns can be fired as rapidly as the intermediate guns could be fired formerly, and with them they can make more hits than the light- er guns could make in earlier es. The old theories of a ‘sm erihg fire" and ‘a greater number of units’ t be allowed to, die, as one or two hits from the big guns can destroy soft ends and wreck weak battery spaces, and such guns alone are able to attack the life of the ship. What use Is there Ir a large in- termediate battery 1f power i3 de- sabey i i s Sl T SR 21 8 Continued on Page &