The Holbrook news., 1912-07-05
TwENTY fOurteen-inch guns, the

largest naval guns In the
 world, are being constructed
 at the Washington navy yard
 for the New York and the Texas. frst-class battIeships of the dreadnought type, which are expected to be ready for launching about a year hence. Later on twenty or more of the great bores are to be built for the Nevada and the Oklahoma dread noughts to be completed in 1914, and the United States will then have four WAT ships armed with larger guns than any other navy possesses, each of the four battleships capable of hurling seven tons of projectile dis tance of thirteen miles with each dis charge of its batteries. writes Arthur M. Evans in the Chicago Record-Her- aid.
 Two or three larger guns, fifteen and sixteen inch bores, it is true, have been built by other naval powers, but they have either been smoothbore or have had faults in mechanism that have made them unsuccessful of oper- ation, and they are not listed in the Dattleship armament of the great powers.
 The fourteen-inch monsters in the shops at the navy yard are rivals of the Washington monument, the capi- tol. the White House and the congress sional library in attracting the inter- est of visitors in Washington, and a continuous procession of sightseers streams through the factory to watch the manufacturer of the giant roar CTS. The navy yard is an ordnance factory, and it's machine shop is one of the wonders of Washington. Up to two years ago the thirteen-inch gun was the largest manufactured, but since then the fourteen-inch monster has been the pet product of the plant, a great black bore, fifty feet long, that stretches almost to the width of the shop when 1t is in the lathe and that weighs more than sixty-three tons without It's mount
 What They Cost.
 The guns are forged at Bethlehem, Pa. and are finished here. They are made in sections, with successive jackets and hoops shrunk upon the central tube, just as a blacksmith shrinks a tire upon wagon wheel The jacket is heated in an electric furnace that produces a temperature of 400 to 500 degrees, the core is in- serted and the jacket is then cooled of, shrinking until it encases the tube almost as closely as if both were one piece of metal The gun made up of layers of steel in this way is much stronger than one formed of one piece of metal.
 Travelling cranes pick up the gun as if 1t were a toothpick, and place it in the barrel-bortng lathe, where pow erfuI machines bore out the barrel and chamber, after which the rifiing lathe cuts grooves on the inside of the bore to give the projectile TO- tary movement In the lathe the i'm mense gun itself is rotated upon the cutting instruments.
 By the time the fourteen-inch gun is finished it has cost S62, ,2OS. The mount costs S5O,0OO more. The life ot the gun before lining is necessary is 225 rounds, and the cost of each round of ammunition in warfare is somewhat in excess of $500, of which the pro jectiIe itself costs $500. In target practice the cost of each shot is about s2OO. The fourteen-inch gun throws a shell weighing 1,4OO pounds a dis tance of nearly thirteen miles with such accuracy that the expert gun ners can land the projectiIe some where within a rectangle with twenty foot sides. The shell leaves the mug gle of the gun travelling at velocity of nearly half a mile a second and at a distance of 10000 yards 1t is capable of penetrating 15.9 inches Of face hardened armor The twelve-inch guns penetrate 15.6 inches of similar armor at the same distance.
 In the yard is a display of trophies that Illustrates vividly the great progress made in the machinery of warfare. The Cornwallis battery, captured at Yorktown. is arranged in a circle on a concrete stand. Con- pared with the immense fourteen-inch guns in the shop, with their length of 1fty-fiVe feet and their weight of aixty-three tons, the cannon of Corn wallis look almost like watch charms. Each is about the size of length of drain tile Some of them have handles on their tops like satchels. They