The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-01-10

1 be necessary to replace a ships guns by new ones as the result of the wear due to their use in one or in any number of battles probably never entered any ones head
 With the advent of rified cannon, whose first modern appearance was on French and English ships during the Crimean War. came an era of short lived guns whose commonest end was by bursting often with disastrous effects. The in creased strains caused by the heavier proJectiles of rlfied guns were too much for the strength of materials which had served well enough for smooth bores, and l moreover. time and experience were nec- | essary before a good system of con struction could be developed. Our own attempts to apply the rife principle to cast iron guns were moro than usually unfortunate, a large number of the Par rot muzzle loaders, the only rifled gun , introduced into our navy during the civil war, bursting in service, with much re- sultant loss of life.
 Perfecting the Tuhes.
 It took many years to overcome all the difaculties which attended the use of the rife principle and breech loading, but finally they were all overcome, and at a period now, about twenty years ago the modern breech loading rife built up of forged steel parts had been almost uni- versally adopted. At first these guns used charges of ordinary black powder. moulded into large grains to give com paratively slow combustion and weighing from a fourth to third as much as the projectile, and. giving the latter a veloci- ty of 1,60O or. 1.7O0 feet per second, It had been found that escape of gas through the vent or around the breech plug rem dered gun unserviceable' after few rounds. but vent sealing primers and efficient gas checks were devised and these sources of deterioration thus re- moved It was then found that the es-
 cape of gas past the proJectile produced
 serious erosion of the bore, and this led
 to the adoption of the at present univer-
 sally used compressive system of impart- ing rotation to projectiles. A copper
 band fitted around the projectile and
 made slightly larger than the bore of the
 gun is forced by the powder pressure into l the rlfling grooves. thus not only rotat- ing the projectile, but sealing up all the
 space through which the gases would | otherwise rush. .
 At this period the struggle for supre-
 macy between guns and armor had fairly
 begun and rival governments, as well as
 rival gun makers. were bending every eff
 fort toward producing guns of greater
 and greater power. The first necessity
 was reliable steel forges of great size, and under the spur of demand these be-
 came available. It is easier today to ob'
 tain d sound steel forging of the highest
 quality weighing thirty tons than 1t was
 twenty years ago to get one weighing
 three tons and of even moderately good lquality. Then an improved propellant was called for, and brown, or cocoa, pow der was discovered and took the place o black powder, allowing. as 1t did, the us' of larger charges without increase of thu maximum pressure. Chambering, o making, the powder chamber of greater
 diameter than the bore, came into use and guns were made longer and longe to give time for the combustion within
 the bore of larger and larger powde
 charges. Finally. about ten years ago
 came the invention of smokeless powde
 and the discovery of a reliable means o
 safely using the high explosives gun
 cotton and nitro-glycerine as propellin
 agents in guns, and at once the powe and efficiency of ordnance were enoT ] mously increased.
 / Of course. this immense increase In pow CT was accompanied by corresponding great increase of the strains which Tn guns and their mountings had to endure but the improvements in materials and
 methods of construction have general kept pace with the increasing demands and in very few instances have moder guns proved deficient in strength. l Ifact. but for a few instances of gun