New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1903-01-25
PROVING BIG GUNS.
INTERESTING FEATURES OF ORDNANCE
TESTS AT SANDY HOOK.

One of the most interesting, and al the saihe
time one of the most dangerous, places IN the
United States is the government proving ground
for ordnance at Sandy Hook There is where
some of the most skilled men in the army are
stationed for the express purpose OF destroylhs'
disabling causing to be abandoned LOT WANT
practica bity, if it be possible, the devices TOT
use in war Other men, and in some cases even
the provers themselves, have devoted years Oh
unremitting study and labor to designing ana
building these Another and wholly appropriate
came for the place would be the graveyard ei
hppracticable engines of war and of the hopes
of their inventors. The wreck of each such IN
yention is its own monument. The scrap heap
at Sandy Hook contains such memorials from d
hundred pounds weight to hundred tons
That however is the gloomy aspect of the
place. 1t has another.
Whatever survives the awful tests of the
moving ground resisting every effort TO destroy
the mechanism or prove the theory, material or
construction faulty, takes place in the cate
CORY of success, and wins fame If not always
fortune for its inventor. Whether 1t be plate
Of arnor a chest OF ammunition, a new pro-
iectile or a novel powerful gun than
any before made, when it goes to the proving
ground the die is cast. Its WIeckage remains to
mark its failure or its successful resistance of
4
place in the esteem of the military world.
There is no halfway GROUNDING qualified in
dorsement. 1t stands falls its own merits.
The scrap heap of few thousand dollars worth
Of old iron steel brass and copper was built at
a cost of many millions in money to capitalists
with confidence in the genius of inventors, and
dozens of Hfetimes of thought and labor.
In military parlance, proving gun" is con-
fined to determining its power to resist the
pressure of the largest amount of explosive
designed to be used in it in order to achieve
the muzzle velocity of the projectie which
was computed for it. For instance, the 16-inch
gun tested the other day at Sandy Hook is de-
signed to throw a shot weighing 2,400 pounds
with muzzle Aocity of 1890 feet second.
the powder charge to be $40 pounds of the
most powerful smokeless variety. To such a
nicely has the mathematics of gun building
been reduced that before the gun was built. it
was known that the pressure produced in CIV
Ing the necessary momentum to the weight of
ouch a shot would be $4,000 pounds to the
square inch and the gun built to resist
sutb a pressure with the usual allowance for a
margin of safety. The thickness and bevel of
the threads of the oreech block. their length
On the threaded segments and their number,
the thickness of the walls of the breech, the
length of the section of that thickness and the
length and thickness of metal in the muzzle
section. where the pressure would be less, were
all computed with that pressure at the instant
Of combustion in view. The ordeal to prove
that the breech block perfect and would
bear that pressure. that the walls of the gun
chamber were f1awless and would stand the
enormous strain. that the powder charge would
give the nluzzle velocity expected and that the
recoil OF the gun in firing would not be greater
than the devices for taking UP and resisting il
could hear
These points alone were considered. The prov