Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 February 1892 — TESTING BIG GUNS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

TESTING BIG GUNS.

Recent Trial of Tho»e on Our New Ironclad Monitor. The recent test of the big ten-inch guns of the double-turreted ironclad monitor Miantonomah attracted great attention in naval circles, and seems to have been satisfactory so far as definite results were reached. The tests were made in Gardiner's Bay, where there is a clear range of over ten miles, and were at first somewhat interfered with by rough, unfavorable weather. The trial was the more interesting from the fact that it was the first time in the history of the navy that immense rifles like those mounted on the Miantonomah had ever been fired on a coast-defense vessel. There are four of the ten-inch guns, three of which were made in England and one in Bethlehem. Pa. The Bethlehem gun, which is mounted in the after turret, is one foot shorter than the English guns, but has the same caliber as the others. The difference, however, of a foot in the length of the gun makes a difference of one ton in its weight as compared with the others, the English gun weighing twentyseven tons, and the Bethlehem gun weighs only twenty-six. The armament of the Miantonomoh, says Frank Leslie’s, is not confined to these great guns. She carries a secondary battery which is inferior to none in the service in point of efficiency, consisting of two threepounder Hotchkiss rapid-fire guns and two thirty-seven millimeter revolving cannon. There are also two of the new Driggs-Schroeder rapid-fire guns. It is stated, as illustrating their destructive power, that these guns throw a shell weighing six pounds four times a minute, these shells being filled with high explosives, and having a range of three miles. At the range of a mile their effect on the decks of a thickly peopled man-of-war would be simply terrific. The Miantonomoh’s complement during her cruise consisted of eleven officers and 132 men, but only five of these officers and sixteen men were required in the actual working of both batteries; the guns and turrets are worked by hydraulic machinery—the guns are depressed, loaded, elevated and run out, and the turrets turned by machinery, and the firing is done

by an electric battery. The shots from the great guns were not fired at any target, but merely sent over the water at a slight elevation of the guns, the object being to test the recoil. Twenty shots in all were fired from the great guns in the turrets. The Driggs-Schroeder and Hotchkiss rapid-firing guns were fired from the hurricane deck, the elevated structure between the two turrets, and the revolving cannon were worked in the military mast tops.