Courier Democrat. (Langdon, N.D.) 1891-1920, 1910-09-22
Uncle Sans Armament For New
Dreadnoughts Expensive.
TONNAGE FIGURES ENORMOUS

SSAptAAASo lAo lily
be armed with fourteen inch rifles. the
most powerful weapons yet construct
ed. These guns cost $S5 900 each, and,
although it seems incredible, vet it
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 and the increased size which the
increase in the weight and power of
the main battery has made necessary.
- The plans contemplate a ,displace-
ment Of about $1,000 tons as against
the 10000 of the Delaware and the
North Dakota, Americas pioneer bat
tleships of the Dreadnought type,
which We're 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 war. The fleet that block
AIDED Santiago was reckoned as a for
midable n in it's 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.
powerful ever 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 q 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 45O pounds. The designed muz-
Zle energy Of the new weapon is 65,GO0
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 battleship
Connecticut emplaced On top of the
Lusitania. whose displacement is 80, 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 at
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 a second take up and
absorb a shock equal to that Of a
heavy engine and five Pullman coaches
running at a speed of seventy miles an
hour and brought to a sudden stop-a
| stop as sudden as though such a train
had smashed into u 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
| p%rojectile through twenty-five and one
| half inches of the hardest Of steel ar
NOR 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
navy made some calculations which
60 to show that if one Of these new
fourteen inch rifles was constantly
submitted to excessive pressure, such
as 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 SO feet-641 inches. to be
exact. Although the, muzzle velocity
of the projectile is 1900 feet a second,
the ordnance experts have figured that
1t 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 1900 feet and that the mean
velocity must be taken. This mean
/ beinp one-tenth of q second. the actual
gas life of this $4,000 weapon is
shown to be only even seconds
Judging from the performance Of the
twelve inch guns. these greater weap-
ons should be able to deliver three
shots a minute. If all ten guns Of the
projected Dreadnought should be
brought into action and should main
tain that rapidly Of fire for one hour
the cost of the ammunition expended
in the hour would reach the enormous
sum of So. 900. or about o~ne-fourth
| o$ Tho uoccols, anxlvo noc<