ARE STEEL GUNS REALLY SUPERIOR?
Admiral Porter said recently that there was little hope of building fast war ships as long as the Bureau of Steam Engineering designed the engines, for that, such was the influence of interested persons, it was not free to choose the best devices. Whoever is familiar with the workings of the Ordnance Bureau will admit that this, too, is similarly controlled. Long ago it pronounced in favor of steel guns, and like a judge who records his decision and then asks to hear the evidence, this bureau has been listening unmoved to the most convincing testimony regarding the relative efficiency of cast iron guns.
The importance of this question of steel vs. cast iron guns will be appreciated when it is explained that it would take at least five years after the passage of an appropriation before the first steel gun could be turned out, while only a twelvemonth would be required to establish a cast iron gun plant.
It has never been the custom among American mechanicians to blindly follow the lead of others, but rather to work untrammeled by traditions; to carefully note what has already been done, and to strike out anew in whatever direction gives the most promise. Experienced gun makers and artillerists have recently admitted that the steel rifle has not fulfilled the promises made for it. The Krupp guns, of which we hear so much, have never yet been subjected to such high pressures as have been applied to cast iron guns, and experience has shown it would not be safe to put them through such tests. Indeed, the cast-iron smooth bore guns which have been converted into rifles by the insertion of wrought iron rifled cylinders have been fired under a pressure fully three times as great as it has been thought advisable to subject steel guns of the same caliber to. An authority says: "Cast iron guns have often been fired hundreds of rounds under pressure of nearly seventeen tons to the square inch of bore, yet there has never been a failure, nor a sign of one. The United States has now a 12½ in. cast iron rifle constructed on the same plan as the 8 in. converted rifle. This gun was made ten years ago, as an experiment. It has been fired with charges as high as two hundred pounds of hexagonal or quick powder (as compared with powder now considered suitable), and is still serviceable. The United States has another experimental 12 in. rifle, entirely of cast iron. It has been fired more than a hundred rounds with high power charges (265 pounds powder, 800 pound shot), and is still serviceable."
Curiously enough, the experiments with these guns ceased at the very time when there was the most reason for continuing them, to wit, while they were giving evidence of their ability to stand a long series of continuous rounds. The mode of testing a high pressure gun, upon which all authorities agree, is to fire it, round after round, until it bursts or shows weakness. There is authority for the statement that there is not a 12 inch steel gun in Europe which has been fired two hundred rounds, and yet, just as soon as these cast iron guns gave promise of withstanding successfully such a test, a peremptory order came from the Ordnance Bureau to cease firing and stop further experiment.
The failure of steel guns in Europe is frequent, though there is good reason for the belief that we only hear of a tithe of them, the balance being kept secret. Only the other day a big steel gun exploded at the muzzle, on the French trial grounds, and news comes that both in the war ships Collingwood and Ajax a number of steel guns have been condemned.
Because of these facts it is not at all surprising that the majority in the House of Representatives, though willing to appropriate money for guns, are averse to having the outlay controlled by the Ordnance Bureau, which is wedded to the steel gun theory and others not much better sustained.