“Notwithstanding the distance between guns, a single explosion might embrace several guns and all their ammunition.
“Not far from the battery ammunition cases will be placed. If these be not exploded by the concussion of the atmosphere they may very easily be exploded by some of the heavy fragments which fall upon them.”
Let us look for a moment at a new kind of storm—a possible dynamite storm.
A rifle bullet fired into a stick of dynamite will explode the dynamite. A bullet accidentally fired from a high-power rifle into a dynamite factory even a mile distant might easily destroy the entire factory and destroy at the same time all life in and within hundreds of yards of the factory, because of the highly explosive nature of the dynamite. The same is true of factories in which other terrible explosives are being prepared for use on the battlefield. Such explosive materials in chests on the field of battle create, of course, enormous danger that thousands may be destroyed with their own ammunition. One steel bullet, or one shell, fired from a modern high-power gun into a chest of shells or bombs, loaded as they are with highly explosive material,—one such bullet or shell thus fired, might set off a chest of shells and carry death to all around, these shells, exploding other chests of shells, and these still others, creating a sort of hell in all directions. The possibilities thus created by modern highly explosive ammunition materials are terrible, horrible to contemplate. Suppose ten thousand men on the battlefield, and suppose an explosion due to a single shell crashing into a chest of shells. A series of explosions might follow. The first explosion, caused by one shot, might be communicated from the first bursting shell to the next, and so on in succession with startling rapidity. The thundering explosions would cause a cyclone of flying splinters of wood and steel, scrap-iron, cannon barrels, wagon wheels, the torn carcasses, the mingled flesh, blood and bones of dismembered horses and men,—a storm of hopeless and hideous confusion, a harvest of death utterly indescribable. Thousands of brave young fellows from the farm, factories, mines and other industries would thus be practically annihilated with their own ammunition.
What a place this would be (up close) for “prominent citizens”—bankers, priests, preachers, bishops, senators, lawyers and “captains of industry”! A storm of blood and steel! No, brother, oh, no. No dynamite cyclone for these pulmonary patriots. Hardly. There is plenty of “common” flesh and “common” blood of the “plain people” which can be bought cheap, dirt cheap.
Reflect for a moment on the horrible possibilities of the airship carrying a light machine gun with a good supply of ammunition, or carrying 1,000 or 1,500 pounds of dynamite aloft over an army, a city, or a fleet. The airship, though still very new, is already sufficiently developed to make it practicable to work wholesale ruin in this way. In March, 1909, Count Zeppelin’s dirigible airship, 445 feet long, 50 feet in diameter, carrying three motors, a searchlight, and twenty-five people, fifteen of them soldiers, made a hundred-and-fifty-mile trip at the rate of almost forty miles an hour. Hudson Maxim, the inventor and expert in high explosives, torpedo boat-destroyers, noiseless gun attachments, and the like, speaks thus of the airship as a fighting machine:[[90]]
“The great field for operations with high explosives carried in airships will be the raiders’ outfit. Aerial raiders would be able to do wide destruction on unprotected inland cities and towns, destroying railroads, blowing up bridges, arsenals, public stores, powder magazines and powder mills, and in levying ransom on moneyed institutions.... In future wars, the fronts of battle will be skyline and opposing skyline, and over the stupendous arena missiles of death will shriek and roar, while sharp-shooters with silent rifles will make ambush in copse and every hedge and highway.”
Now let us look for a moment at the greater cannon.
“A day will come,” said Victor Hugo,[[91]] “when a cannon will be exhibited in the public museums, just as an instrument of torture is now, and people will be astonished how such thing could have been.”
The new 14–inch gun fires a 1,600–pound projectile. Used at its maximum capacity it puts itself out of commission in six and one-half hours because of the frightful wear of the gun’s heavy charges upon itself.[[92]] The 16–inch seacoast gun exhibited at the World’s Fair in 1904 is officially described as having a “muzzle energy of projectile ... 76,904 foot tons.”