Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1917-05-25


room was one OF the steel tubes through |
winch the anchor chains slide and very
! early l was Weakened by a sound that was
as II on dozen adjoining alleys giants
We're bowling and making ten.strikes A
little later l felt the first revolutions Of
the engines l did not need to look at my
watch. The captain had said that we were
going out at SIS, and I had learned by
now that when the navy says 5.15 II means
5.15 to the second
thought Of my newspapers and said.
Il ought TO get up" l thought Of the
| censorship, and 1 said: NO. had better
not know where we are going nor how We
got there"
breakfasted at and went on deck.
There was nothing TO be seen but water and
blue sky, closeup battleship which re-
| sembled ours as one pea resembles another
and several far.oft ba.leships that looked
as If they had been cut out Of cardboard.
INTO THE UNKNOWN
All the time that we were out kent
away from charts and compasse5 Only the
sun by day and the stars by night gave me
any notion Of our whereabouts,
1t was a restful feeling
We were moving at the rate Of fifteen
knots an hour. There was nothing vague
about this. That was our speed to the inch
and second It was also the leisurely rate
| maintained Dy tne closeup battleShlp, and
his distance from us at the end of given
| hour was within inches of what it had been
at the beginning
A marvel Of battleshlps is the precision
with which they move and keep their dis
tances and mind their manners II is only
less marvellous than the mobility of their
| turrets and their great guns. A turret re-
wolves without a sound. II may be turned
so fast that IL you got in the way the busi-
ness end of the gun would knock your head
off, or II may be turned so slowly that 20
the eye It is not turning at all
That day attached myself to a group of
boys who were learning to be a gun crew
and who that afternoon would hear gun
fired for the first time in their lives, would
fire one and would try to hit target AL
though did none of the hard work I think
that shared as an equal in all their mental
processes and know that ! suffered just as
much as they did when, after rehearsals
and dress rehearsals the gun finally and
very suddenly and horribly went off.
First they were taught how to load For
| this business short dummy gun with
genuine brush. screw box and plug is pro-
vided. | am not now speaking Of great
turret guns, but of lesser guns. whose bark
! however, is much higher pitched and less
| tolerable to the ears, eyes, nose, spleen
liver, toes, spine and scalp. l am speak
ing of gun which has the highest muz-
zle velocity of any gun in the world. and
much the most disagreeabe voice.
This is how you load It, The plug man
with his right hand swings a lever the plug
swings out of the breech or screw box and
to one side. With his left hand the plug
man slips into its chamber in the plug a
| primer (imagine a 44-caliber blank cart
ridge) to replace the exploded one which
has been automatically extracted. Then
| the plugman swings his lever again and
| closes the breech of the gun.
That is what the plugman does. While
| he is doing II five other men are doing other
| things of equal Importance. The moment
! the gun is open the trayman slaps into the
| form box metal contrivance, which pro-
tects it's fine gears and edges from being
! injured by the sharp point of the heaVy
| wheel and which guides the shell itself into
| the bore of the gun.
The brush being open and the tray in
place. the first shellman with all his might
/ hurls into the opening the shell that ne mas
| been holding. the first powderman hurts
! after IL a bag of powder, and then even as
| the tray comes out and the breech Closes
| the first shellman has turned. without using
| his feet, and received from the second she'll
| man a fresh shell, and the first powderman
| has turned and received from the second
| powderman a fresh bag of powder.
That is how the gun is loaded. 1t is a
matter of seconds In practice the shell and
! the powder bag (OmlSSlOn DN ttilsoI - W
| keys the junction OF two lines that cross
! each other at a right angle on the exact
| center of the bulls-eye. A third pointer
| does the same thing with another pair OF
| crossed lines, but the wheel elevates the
muzzle of the gun end or depresses 1t. And
| of all the men in the compartment or that
| particular gun he is the luckiest, for he is
| the one who knows the exact moment when
| the bang is coming. He causes 1t by press
| ing a button. At any moment while GER
tain buzzer is buzzing, and the crossed lines
are on the bulrs-eye, he is at liberty to fire
| the gun.
BLAST OF THE GUNS
We steamed slowly down the range a
number of times and all the compartment
guns on our side of the ship swung Slowly
from left to right rs the pointers Kept
| the crossed lines on the bull's-eye. And we
| all got a line because we knew that each
| practice run brought us nearer to that rea!
| run when the awful blasts that we expected
| would have TO be endured somehow.
We turned and steamed slowly toward
the range We were in the compartment
the gun crew and the officer in charge, my
self and twenty or thirty fedgling sea
men, who were there to pick up what they
could by eye and ear.
l have Lever i'm one time or place seen
so many forced smiles. one of them was
mine. We had been served with absorbent
cotton and had plugged our ears. The cot
ton made mems voices sound NUMB and
|