[19] Tables given in War Department statistics, 1915.
[20] Extracted from tabulated returns to War Department. (Report on Militia Organization, 1915.)
[21] Official figures: 12 Army aeroplanes, 13 Navy aeroplanes, no dirigibles, two aeroplanes not serviceable, total effective, 23.
[22] Block Island men helped in the capture of a troopship during the War of the Revolution.
[23] A landing party seizing an outlying island for a base, as Block Island would infallibly be seized, always destroys everything that might enable the inhabitants to communicate with the mainland.
[24] A submarine cannot attack until it has risen near enough to the surface to lift its periscope above water. Having thus obtained its aim, it submerges again only deep enough to conceal the periscope. It fires its torpedo blind when submerged. If it dives too deep, it might send the weapon harmlessly under the ship’s keel. Hence, it is possible, often, to “spot” the disturbed, whitened water above a submarine even though it is sunken out of sight.
[25] Target practice near the land has been found to so affect all life nearby that it seriously injures the commercial fisheries. The fishermen of Cape Cod have opposed fleet-firing several times. On one occasion it is recorded that the fishing for lobsters (exclusively bottom-haunting crustacean) was quite ruined for months owing to the firing of big guns.
[26] As a matter of fact, the extreme range of the present armament of American harbor defenses is 23,000 yards. This is not a reliably effective fighting range, and is merely stated as being the extreme range, “under crucial test,” of the 12-inch steel rifled mortars. The rifled guns as now mounted have a range of not more than 13,000 yards. Battle-ships now being constructed are armed with 15 and 16-inch guns that can outrange the extreme theoretical range of the mortars.
[27] Harbor defenses are not constructed, necessarily, to protect places near them. Their purpose is to prevent a naval force from occupying an important harbor whose possession would open the way to rich territory or lay commerce prostrate. Therefore it is no defect in the construction of the Long Island entrance defenses that it is possible to bombard coast places near them. It is physically impossible ever to defend all the places on our coast with fortifications.
[28] The Army War College has repeatedly called attention to the urgent need of the mobile army for siege artillery and for the organization of an efficient body of troops trained in its use to be available whenever needed. “Ammunition on hand for artillery, 38 per cent. of amount required.” (See report of Army Board, and Secretary of War Garrison’s statement to House Appropriations Committee, 1915.) Another estimate in the possession of the author would indicate that the ammunition on hand for heavy artillery is only about 15 per cent. of the amount required.