The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-08-30
TORPEDO GUNS AFLOAT AND

Torpedo guns, when used in land de- fences, should be looked upon as auxll- iary and supplementing the fixed sub marine mines defending a harbor. The mines may be removed by various methods of countermining, and, once removed, are difficult to replace, par ticularly in the presence of an enemy. Not alone may the submarine mines be removed by the action of the enemy, but In the course of an action they may be removed by the defence in endeavor ing to blow up the enemy's fleet man. oenvring in the harbor The fire of torpedo guns can, in such cases, be di-
 rected on that portion of the torpedo field where the mines may have thus been removed.
 When the firing Is from a fixed plat form, as is the case in shore defences,
 it has been shown to be extremely &C., curate. Where the ranges can be as- certained, as it likely to be the case in seacoast Notifications the great accu- racy of firing which has been shown to | be possessed by the pneumatic torpedo guns should make an attack, coming within their range of fire, extremely | hazardous As an example of the &C., l curacy of fire obtainable from shore, l the writer would mention that of some trials at Shoeburyness. Three rounds | were fired at about twenty-two hun l dred yards, of which two rounds en- 1 tered the same hole in the sand, the other being two or three yards from
 this. At thirty-five hundred yards five l shots out of six were placed in a space | no larger than a billiard-table.
 In an official test of three fifteen-inch | guns in San Francisco harbor, seventy | five per cent. of the shots fell, at a
 range of five thousand yards, in a rec tangle measuring three hundred and
 sixty feet by ninety feet. The contract
 requirements were only thirty-four per
 cent. within such rectangle. A rec tangle of two hundred, and ten feet by
 one hundred and twenty-five feet would have contained all the rounds fired.
 In considering the torpedo gun on
 shipboard, criticisme have usually been
 made because of the difficulty of firing
 from an unstable platform, but other
 guns af1oat are subject, in a great | measure, to the same objection. The 1 high-angle fire of the torpedo gun is
 often cited as an objectionable feature,
 but it has some advantages which are
 not ordinarily. conceded. Among these
 are the following: Es
 High power guns with their flat tra- jectories, have as their target only the
 vertical projections of the over-water hull of the ship. A very slight change of the angle of elevation of these guns | produces very considerable change in
 the height at which the shot would
 strike the target. With the change of
 about one-fourth of a degree of eleva- tion at one mile range, the shot would go under or over the point aimed at, a verticle distance of about twenty -threee feet
 The pneumatic gun, however, with its high angle fire, has as it's target the
 vertical projection of the over-water hull of the ship, the entire deck and a zone around the ship of from ten to for ty feet, according to the charge. A | change of angle of elevation of one de- gree would make a change in the range
 of only about sixty yards. Thus, with
 slight variation due to changes in ele-
 vation, and the greater size of the avail
 able target presented the chances ot securing effective results are more than
 fair-Captain E. l.. Zalinski, U. $. N.
 in Cassier's.