The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1909-11-19
RETURNED TO MAWAII
WHEN WINTER CAME
Philippine Officer Thought of Honolulu
When Leaves Began to Turn.

Lieut.. C. D. Townsley, Z. S. A., who
has been frequent visitor in Homo
lulu, on his way to and from the Phil
ippines, is here now as a civilian and
will remain during the winter. Mr..
Townsley has resigned from the Army
and had intended to take up his resi-
dence in his home town of Milwaukee.
This was all right until the leaves
began to turn, when he remembered
the Paradise of the Pacific and bought
a railroad and steamer ticket this way.
Most Powerful Gun.
WASHINGTON, October 29.-The
largest and most powerful naval
weapon in the world will be received
at the Washington gun factory in a
few days, for completion. It is four
teen-inch breech-loading gun, and is be-
ing built by the Midvale Steel Com
pany. The work to be done at the
local factory includes rifing and the
installation of the breech mechanism
When completed, the gun will be test
ed at the proving grounds at Indian
Head.
The fourteen-inch guns will weigh
63.3 tons, or ten tons more than the.
twelve-ineh guns of .45-caliber length
built for the battleships North Dakota
and Delaware, and about six tons
heavier than the latest type of so
caliber-Iength twelve-inch guns intend
ed for the Arkansas and Wyoming. Its
total length will be 50 IL feet. The
capacity of the chamber of the new
gun will be 15.S4S cubic inches, that
being the compartment in which will
be placed the charge of 365 pounds of
smokeless powder required to DISCHARGE
the powerful projectile, weighing 1400
pounds, which the gun will fire.
This gun will have an extreme range
of more than twenty-five miles, al
though the range at which it would
be fired in actual battle would be about
FIVE miles. The 1400-pounds shell from
this new gun will leave the muzzle
of the weapon at the rate of 1000 feet
a second, and its muzzle energy will
be 65,606-foOt tons. This is about 49,
600 more foot tons of muzzle energy
than that designed for the latest 12-
inch guns, and about 22,000fOot tons
more than that of the 45-caliber-
length 12-inch guns now in service. So
great is the penetra.ive power of this
new gun that. when fred with a full
charge of 800 pounds of powder, the
projectile would penetrate 22-7 inches
of the latest Krupp steel armor at the
muzzle.
This does not measure the full power
of the gun for naval purposes, the muz-
zle penetra tion being merely proving
ground factor, for after the shot hurled
from the fourteen-inch has travelled a
distance of 5000 wards it will still have
a remaining velocity of 2234 feet
second, which would enable it to pierce
at that distance a thickness of 1871
inches of Krupp steel armor.
The penetration of the new twelve
inch gun of 50-caliber-length TO be in
stalled on the new 26,000-ton battle
ships of the Arkansas class is given at
eleven inches of Krupp steel at an ex-
treme battle range of 5000 yards. The
thickness of the armor on the British
battleship Dreadnought and her sue
cessors in the British navy, as wei as
of the main armor betting of the latest
United States battleships under con-
struction, is eleven inches at the maxi
mum.
The new American twelve-inch gun,
with its penetration of eleven inches of
Krupp steel at 1000 yards, makes it
the most powerful gun in the world. 1t
Is capable of more than that, but the
eleven-ineh penetration at 1000 yards
would be obtained through the use of
normal pressure in the powder cham
Der, and not through the use of an ex-
cessive pressure that would soon cause
the gun to waste away. The pressure
would be about seventeen and one-half
tons to the square inch at the maxi
mum in the firing of the latest twelve
inch gun, and this is the pressure that
would be used in actual service, en-
aiding it to penetrate eleven inches at
5000 yards. The shot from the four
teen-ineh gun would be even more pow
erful than that of the twelveinch, and
would penetrate two more inches of
Krupp armor at 5000 yards than the
latest twelve-ineh weapon.
Captain Fortescue in Scrap.