The McCook tribune. (McCook, Neb.) 1886-1936, 1910-09-01
$4,000 Guns TO
LAST 70 ROUNDS
Uncle Sans Armament For New
DreadnoughtS Expensive
TONNAGE FIGURES ENORMOUS

Entire American Fleet at Time OF
Spanish War-Fourteen Inch Rifles
Largest In History of Worlds War.
fare and Most Costly.
AT its last session the congress au.
thorized the construction of two titanic
ships of war and stipulated that they
be armed with fourteen inch rifles. the
most powerful weapons yet construct.
ed. These guns cost 5000 each. and,
although it seems incredible. yet IL
Is no less true that under the excessive
preSsures of battle conditions the life
of these expensive weapons is only
seventy rounds.
The distinctive features of these
Dreadnoughts lie in the tremendous
battery which they are designed to
carry n the increased size which the
increase in the weight and power of
the main battery mas made necessary.
The plans contemplate a diSplace-
ment of about 2T.OOO tons as against
the 10000 of the Delaware and the
North Dakota. Americas pioneer bat
tleships of the DreadnOught type.
which were but recently commissioned.
Greater Than 1898 Fleets.
The united tonnage of the giant
twins is far greater than was our
entire battleship tonnage at the time
of the war with Spain. including even
the Maine. whose destruction brought
about the var The fleet that block
AIDED Santiago was reckoned as a for
midable one in its day. the battle
line comprising the superb Iowa. the
heavily armed and armOred Indiana.
Massachusetts and Oregon and the
hard fighting old Texas.
So much for the size of the two new
vessels. Turn now to their armament.
The plans contemplate a battery of
ten fourteen-inch rifles for each ship.
These weapons are by far the most
powerful yer constructed for any navy.
greatly exceeding in range and hitting
power the twelve inch guns with which
the Delaware and the North Dakota
are armed.
With a weight of 63.3 tons the new
gun is more than ten tons heavier
than the twelve inch type carried by
the Dreadnoughts that the United
States now has in commission. The
weight of the projectile which the new
gun will carry is 1.400 pounds The
weight of the powder charge will be
about 40 pounds. The designed muz-
zle energy of the new weapon is Gj.6GO
foot tons.
Example Is Appalling.
To translate this into palmer Eng
fish and to afford some idea of what |
this power means. let the reader sup
pose the 10000 tons of the batticShip
Connecticut emplaced on top of the
Lusitania. whose displacement is 32.500
tons. and the biggest of the Fall River
steamboats, superimposed ON top of all.
Next try to conceive of the united
weight of the three and the power that
would be required to lift them. The
muZzle energy of this gun eXerted mt
the moment of discharge is so tremen-
dous that it would be able to lift all
three vessels one foot.
The mechanism of the carriage must
in the fraction of Il second take up and
absorb a shock equal to that of a
heavy engine and five Pullman coaches
running at n speed of seventy miles an
hour and brought to a sudden stOp-a
c%n1 o- c,,J3o,, - tho,1I er,oH q, %-o,,
had smashed into a stone wall. On
leaving the muzzle of the gun the shell
has an energy equivalent to that of a
train or cars weighing $50 tons and
running at sixty miles an hour.
This energy is sufficient TO send the
projectile through twenty-five and one
half inches of the hardest of steel ar
at the muzzle. while at a range
of 5000 yards the ~projectile, moving
at the rate of 2,235 feet per second,
can pierce eighteen and One-half inches
of steel armor at normal impact.
Life Is Seventy Rounds.
One OF the ordnance experts of the
made some calculations which
go to show that if One of these new
fourteen inch rifles was constantly
TO excessive pressure. such
might obtain in a hot action. the
gun could not last more than seventy
rounds.
The length of the gun is a fraction
more than % feet-G41 inches. to be
exact. Although the muzzle velocity
of the projectile is 1900 feet a second,
the ordnance experts have figured that
it requires one-tenth of a second for
the shell to leave the gun this because
of the fact that the shell moves from
zero to $500 feet and that the mean
velocity must be taken. This mean