New Britain herald., 1917-11-06
FACTS ABOUT THE AMERICAN NAVY
Dummies
BY LIEUT.. F1TzHUGH GREEN. U. S. N.

A boxer pretends his punching bag Is the other fellows jaw. A man-of- war is full of such imaginary jaws.
 In the Navy there are probably few CT flesh and blood dummies than in any other profession in the world except perhaps the Worlds Series" At tho same time mechanical dunn mics are more numerous than In a high class Eden Musee, and ten times as fascinating.
 There are three reasons for having dummies: economy, as with drill pow der and shell; personiflcation. as with the man-overboard eft1gy; and for
 purposes of disguise or stimulation
 such as the dummy smoke-pipe Capt.
 Mueller put on the Emden to make
 her look like a British cruiser.
 Last summer when the Navy jump
 ed from 60,OOO to 150,O00 men, one
 third or 3O,OOO of the recruits must
 be taught to actually load gun. Perhaps 10000 of them were sched- uled to man the rapid fire middle cal iber kind of rifle we were putting on merchant vessels and converted craft
 of all sorts, in addition to the thou sand or so of them already mounted in the Fleet.
 A green man must pra ct-ce twice a day for a month before he Is worth
 his wage. As q practice consists Of
 several strings of loads each we may
 estimate that he slam shell and pow
 der into his gun at least 30 times @ day. At the very lowest some 600,0O0 loads had to be made aboard ship before the new men werc even begun to be broken in.
 Obviously if 50-pound steel projec- tiles were to be hove against the faces of our finest 5-inch breech me- chanisms such a vast number of times, the bombardment of prepara- tion would demolish the very wea- pons with which we hoped to win the war. Truly we might create a ma chine of 10000 gunners but only at the expense of the even more deli cate machines of our precious guns.
 Consequently we have dummy guns old worn-out brooches mounted on legs. Into the dummy's hole. or at it, the rookie may hurl his dummy shells and bean bags from early morn to spewy eve. He misses the hole about ss often as he hits it-at first any way. He dents 1t. burrs the screw box, mashes the bag or shell, and aome etimes wrecks the whole blooming contrivance. But he learns; and the damage expense of his course Is neg ligible.
 There is also big-gun dummy ann munition-96-pound 14-inch powder bags made of sand or beans or even blocks of wood sewed up in canvas. Since mechanical rammers insure &C., l curate loading the actual gun in this l case may be used without harm. Day l after day crews wrestle with their gi- l gantic charges for the sake of a few ! ffths of seconds to be clipped from record loading times. And they bet good money on the game.
 Nearly every other kind of drill or has similar makeshifts to save valuable gear and equipment. Special guns shoot little bullets in- stead of big expensive projectiles. Rafts hold target screens on which are painted the silhouettes of war ships or submarines. An automatic diving raft has been perfected car rying a periscope which submerges and then pops up in an astonishingly life-like manner. Kites makes excel lent aeroplanes for aiming drill and small free balloons may be called the clay pigeons of naval warfare.
 A few curious 'gadgets become vi- carious heroes Man overheard drill Is seldom very real. But straw stuffed figure surreptitiously slipped up to the bridge and tumbled over the side will excite the lifeboat's~ crew of the watch to very creditable speed. Pulling machines are available at sea when boat drill is desired. They are similar to those used in 0 college gym nasium, except that a sailor hates them so fervently in his distress at tho labor.
 Of course a basket mast is a dead give-away so far as Identification of our battleships goes. But destroyers and cruisers may easily rig an extra