Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 110, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 May 1911 — AMERICAN FLEET BREAKS WORLDS GUNNERY RECORDS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

AMERICAN FLEET BREAKS WORLDS GUNNERY RECORDS

WHEN the 15 battleships that had been shooting at targets off the Virginia capes steamed majestically up New York harbor recently, the Michigan brought back the trophy for the year. Her gunners had broken every record. The American navy is pre-eminent on all the five oceans for its unerring marksmanship, but the Michigan’s guns and the men behind them now stand at the head of the roll of fame for accuracy and deadly skill. In the battle practice the Michigan made 12 hits out of 26 shots. Her gunners made four bullseyes simultaneously at 12,000 yards, a fea‘t that is unique in the annals of naval gunnery. To fully understand what it means to make four bullseyes at this distance of six nautical miles the reader should consider these facts: A target rises above the sea less than the height of a three-story house, and is just about as long as a city dwelling of this sort. Only the center of the target-—the big roqnd spot of canvas sewed to the netting between the supporting masts — can be seen even through a good glass. All that the naked eye can distinguish at a distance of six miles is just a tiny, blurry speck on the horizon. It would be Counted good shooting on s6lid ground to hit a speck like that far away. But when the Michigan knocked the targets to pieces she was driving through the sea at the rate of a mile in four minutes. There was a heavy swell on out in the blue water and she rolled and pitched so that aiming the great guns was as difficult as shooting sparrows with a revolver from the back of a bucking horse. Though the Michigan smashed all gunnery records that ever were made the other big men-of-war were not far behind. Taking them collectively, there never was such an aggregation of leviathan sharpshooters sailing under any nation’s flag. That was the spectacular part of the battle practice. What precedes It and leads up to the tremendous climax of a broadside of 12-incb guns is no less interesting. In the hazy and liquid gold of dawn the bugle sounds to “general quarters.” In a twinkling the great steel fortress is stripped for battle. Everything movable or likely to be torn away by the tremendous concussion of the huge guns is stowed below decks. Then the men are lined up and inspected. Every one of them must have had a fresh bath and be dressed in clean clothing—these are the new antiseptic, rules to discount accident. Then the alarm sounds its deep, toc-sin-like strokes; the spotters and the telephone force clap on their leather headgear, like that worn in football games, and shin up to the foretop through the funnel smoke. Up there the concussion is the worst. The sailors wear celluloid ear protectors that go inside the ear and are almost invisible. Then, as the big ship gathers momentum with every second, come the instructions to man the starboard batteries and the information that six salvos are to be fired, 40 seconds apart. The targets have to be picked up blindly, for the ship is playing at grim war. The plain red pennant, the signal for "commence firing,” hangs like a stain'from the yards. Then comes the loading signal from tjie ordnance officer; the "stand by” bells sound their shrill peals. The spotters stand rigid, staring through the soft rubber eye pieces of their binocullrd, waiting the announcement of the final range and deflection. Slowly, far the moving turrets begin to nose upward their guns like intelligent creatures. The big fo’castle deck is an empty, slim, fiat cigar-shaped finger. There is a hoarse hiss of the air blasts clearing the bores. Then —“Fire! ” The shock of the broadside tears into ribbons the bridge screen; it shatters the four-inch-thick glass in the portholes. It is like the explosion of a powder magazine. Complete unison In a broadside is impossible, however, with each firing key In a separate hand, and the buzzers allowing four seconds in which to - press them. Therefore the shock might have been worse. In the dead seconds between the salvos the eye follows the traveling shells, seemingly endless moments, until they bloom out in a garden of mighty geysers of foam around the targets. There Is a burst of throaty oheere from here and there between

decks that tells of a riven target. Down in the turrets of the great 12inch guns the gun pointers say they hear practically no noise at all of the explosions. Their attention is concentrated on the three-foot recoil of the big monster that they have to neighbor with while at work. The men in the turrets go about their labors-with the rapt attention of bookkeepers trying to strike a difficult trial balance. There are loaders, shellmen, sight setters—one manipulating the deflections with a lamp strapped on his forehead —an stripped to the waist. Most of them are gay with tattoo marks—peacocks and Goddesses of Liberty being the favorite designs. Usually the pointer Is the least muscular of the lot Sometimes he is a milk-cheeked youth with a limpid eye —but a sure one. When the huge breech picks itself up on its hind legs and settles back in a quiet recoil, the men reel off the lightning mechanism of their drill with a confident litheness that is almost uncanny. They will even kill a cockroach or tiro on the white armor between salvos. The shock of just one of these great projectiles, weighing 1,400 pounds, is equal to that of a heavy locomotive and five Pullmans crashing into something at the rate of 70 miles an hour. The piuzzle energy of one of the big guns that the new Dreadnoughts carry is 65,600 foot tons. To explain in plain language what this means, suppose that a 16,000-ton battleship be put on top of a 32,000-ton Lusitania, and one of the biggest of the Sound steamers placed on top of that. The total weight of the three would be nearly 60,000 tons. Next try to conceive the power that would be necessary to raise that huge load. The muzzle energy of one of these guns is equal to this task. The energy exerted at the moment of discharge is so tremendous that it would be able to lift all three vessels one foot.