Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-09-27
No Wonder Germany Quit
By MAJOR FRANK @. NIAHIN
or the Army Recruiting Station

After hearing the deafening,
stunning concussion of an American
fourteen-inch railroad gun which
had taken up a position about a
hundred yards from my billet,
went over to see it. When got over
to the gun 1 found they had built
a spur off the main line and care
fully camoufifiaged the entire spur
as well as the gun on its car.
found captain in charge and
started asking questionse lie told
me they were shelling Metz, seven
teen miles away, and hitting it ev-
cry shot. 1 was curious about the
| gun itself and found that the life of
the gun was only $50 shots. After
| that it had to be sent to an arsenal
and the inner tube bored out and a
| new tube inserted. This meant that
the gun was out of commission for
couple of months, after each 150
shots. found that it took about
| one-fiftieth of a second from the
time that they fired the powder
charge till the shell left the muzzle,
| so the life of the gun in actual fir
ing was just three seconds. Then
l found that 1t took ten months to
| build the gun, ten months to build
for three seconds actual use, and
| the gun and its mount cost about
! 100000. And that set me to doing
some real inquiring. The reason the
gun wore out so fast was that it was
a direct fire gun, needing a high
muzzle velocity to carry the shell to
it's work. The shell from the gun
was never more than a few hun
dred yards off the ground during its
. Hight and to get the velocity re-
quired an enormous powder charge
with a pressure in the gun and
frightful amount of heat. With q
howitzer the velocity needed is
quite low as the shell goes miles
in the air and then drops, mainly
through the action of gravity, onto
its targets. The result is that
the life of howitzer is many, many
times that of q gun. Twelve-inch
howitzers have fired as MANY as TO-
600 shots and still been safe to use
and fairly accurate in their fire. But
the ten months to make a fourteen
inch gun got my goat until I found
that several plants in this country
had made them before and had the
necessary machinery. On the other
hand we started to build 9.45-inch
French howitzers on the LIST of Sep
tember, 1917, and the first one was
delivered early in November, 1918,
more than fourteen months later.
However, the work on these howit-
Zers had progressed to such a stage
that despite the difficulty of build
ing them we were to complete
eighty per month during the year
1919. Even the little but famous
75 took three months or more to
build. And to start the war we had
just four plants in the country
capable of turning out cannons.
Others had to be built, buildings,
machinery, furnaces, lathes and all
the delicate measuring instruments.
The result was that of field artillery,
that is guns from rs millimeter g
inchl to $40 millimeter (9.5 inch)
we built complete during Decem-
ber, 1917, the wonderful sum of
eight guns; eight guns when we
needed 5000. Slowly, month by
month, the production grew as
newly-built plants came into opera
ton. BY October, 1918, Che produc-
ton had reached 769 complete guns
for that month. The only reason the
number wasn't larger was that there
were certain delicate parts which
had not yet reached a quantity pro-
duction. During the month OF
October 1918, the number of can
non forgings reached a total of 2,
031 or almost three times the numS
Der completed. 1t had taken us a
year and half to really get un-
der way on our production of can
non, but the number that would
have been completed in the next
year simply would have swamped
the Boche and all with, their Allies
In four years, with we'll prepared
factories to start with, the French
which number We would have
equalied and perhaps exceeded in
the one year of 1919. And since
the German Government had a
pretty good idea of the extent oil
our preparations they used that
knowledge as another basis fol
J their desire to quit