BATTLE-SHIPS OF THIS DAY
The logical outcome of these leading ideas is realized in the present battle-ships as follows: There are two turrets, protected by armor, the thickest that can be given them, considering the other weights the ship has to carry, and of the highest resisting quality that processes of manufacture can develop. Armor of similar character and weight protects the sides about the engines. In each turret are guns whose power corresponds to the armor which protects them. Their proper aim—not, of course, always reached—is the heavy armored part of the enemy, chiefly the engines, the motive power. When they strike outside of this target, as often must happen, there is excess of blow, and consequent waste. The turrets are separated, fore and aft, by a distance as great as possible, to minimize the danger of a single shot or any other local incident disabling both. The fact that the ends of ships, being comparatively sharp, are less waterborne and cannot support extreme weights, chiefly limits this severance of the turrets. Between the two, and occasionally before or abaft them, is distributed the broadside rapid fire of the ship, which in its development is in contradistinction to the compressed fire of the monitor. This fire is rapid because the guns are many and because individually they can fire fast. Thus, the turret gun, twelve or thirteen inch in bore, fires once in five minutes; the five-inch rapid-fire gun thrice in one minute. The rapid-fire battery aims outside of the heaviest armor. When it strikes that, unless it chance to enter a gun port, its effect is lost; but as much the greater part of the ship is penetrable by it, the chance of wasting power is less than in the case of the heavier guns. As most of a ship’s company are outside the protection of the heaviest armor, the rapid-fire gun aims, as did the British in the old line-of-battle ship, at the personnel of the enemy.
The reader will comprehend that in the application of these leading ideas there is considerable variety in detail. The two turrets may be looked upon at present as the least variable factor; and in disposing armor all practice agrees that the turrets and engines receive the greatest protection. But how to distribute the total available weight of armor gives rise to varieties of practice which find their reflection in similar variety in the sizes and numbers of the rapid-fire guns, to whose penetrative force there is a corresponding thickness of armor. For example, two battle-ships now building for the United States navy have four thirteen-inch guns in turrets, and in broadside fourteen five-inch, twenty six-pounder, and six one-pounder rapid-fire guns; between the two classes they have four eight-inch guns, also mounted in smaller turrets, superimposed on the main turrets. A ship since designed will have the same thirteen-inch gun fire, but in place of the eight-inch and five-inch will have fourteen six-inch rapid-fire guns. An expert officer, discussing these, says: “In the former the weight of fire per minute is two thousand and fifty pounds on the broadside and five hundred ahead or astern, while with the latter plan it is only one thousand seven hundred and fifty on the broadside and five hundred ahead and astern. But the main objection to the second plan is that the volume of effective fire is enormously diminished by the omission of eight-inch guns. The larger area covered with their armor is fairly safe from the six-inch gun at fighting ranges, whereas the eight-inch projectile at any range, and at even a considerable angle of incidence, will penetrate it.” In the judgment of the present writer the weight of this argument depends upon what is behind the armor the eight-inch only will penetrate. If battery and men, it is strong, if not decisive; if motive power only, not.