Warships and their story

by R. A. Fletcher

Photograph by Stephen Cribb, Southsea.

Gun makers have always responded cheerfully to the challenge to penetrate the hardest armour of the time, and have succeeded in producing weapons which are able to penetrate any armour now carried. The problem at present is to increase the range at which the penetrative power may be exercised. This can only be attained by the increase in the length of the gun and the use of explosives developing higher pressures in order to obtain higher velocities. The British gun of 45 calibres and 9.2 inches diameter is about to be superseded by one of 50 calibres, and the 40-calibre gun carried in some of the latest ships is being superseded by the 12-inch gun of 45 calibres.

Twelve-inch guns of 45 calibres and 10-inch guns of 50 calibres have been installed in the new ships, built at Elswick recently, for the navies of Japan and one of the South American States.

Greater length means a greater muzzle energy, higher velocity, and increased power of penetration. The latest guns, too, have shown that the manufacturers have been considering the advisability of effecting a certain amount of redistribution in the thicknesses of the different parts of which the gun is built, notably the tubes, wires, and jackets, and the adoption of a uniform type of rifling. The theory was that the rifling should be increased as the grooves passed down the tube, so that a gradually increasing twist should be given to the projectile, but it is now held that no advantage is obtained by this method, whatever may have been the case in the past, and that the uniform rifling will give better results as to accuracy, muzzle energy and velocity, and inflict no greater strain upon the gun or shorten the “life” of its tube. The trials already made have shown that uniform rifling for modern high velocity guns has resulted in giving greater range and greater accuracy in shooting.

The war between France and Germany in 1871 brought machine guns into notice. Great things were expected by the French of the mitrailleuse, and some of the patriotic Paris newspapers at the time published glowing prophecies of the number of Germans each gun could be depended upon to kill in a few minutes, with the result that, according to their calculations, there would be no Germans left after a few days to continue the war. But events turned out otherwise; the mitrailleuse failed, and the Germans were victorious. This machine gun was very defective, and served to advertise by contrast the Gatling, Nordenfeldt, Gardner, and Maxim automatic guns, named after their respective inventors. Of these the Maxim has been so improved that it is considered to be superior to any of the others. The machine guns fire, according to the number of their barrels and their calibre, from four hundred to six hundred or more shots per minute, at a range equal to that of the best infantry rifle, and can be sighted with deadly accuracy.

CHAPTER X

WARSHIPS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Two classes of vessels stand forward prominently as the products of the twentieth century. One is the Dreadnought, or all-big-gun one-calibre type of battleship, the other is the submarine. The fact that both are the result of the slow developments of centuries does not render them the less the products of the last few years. Both are untried in battle, and they are regarded as preparing the way for the introduction respectively of surface and under-water warships, the power of which is conjecturable only. Associated with both is the torpedo. The dream of a submarine which shall travel faster than a surface vessel of the same size is never likely to be realised, provided that the surface vessel is built for speed also, for the simple reason that the vessel travelling on the surface has only about a third of its surface in connection with the water, whereas the submarine has its whole surface submerged, and has three times as much friction against the water to overcome. Hence, a lightly armed, very fast vessel is regarded as likely to play an important role in the navy of the not distant future, and finds its representative in the destroyer of to-day.

The submarine and the destroyer owe their existence to the battleship’s greatest enemy, the torpedo. All three vessels carry that weapon, and any two of them may combine against the third. The spar-torpedo was such an unsatisfactory weapon at best that it had either to be abandoned, save under most unusual circumstances, or improved out of all recognition. The possibilities of the torpedo itself were so great as to compel its retention, and the startling proposition was made that torpedoes should be fired by under-water guns at a distant ship. The blowing up of the Albemarle in the American Civil War showed what could be accomplished by a small fast steam launch. If this could be done with a spar-torpedo, how much more destructive would a torpedo be which could be directed against a hostile vessel from a small fast launch which could approach to within an effective range, and then turn and make a rush for safety from the gun-fire which might be brought to bear in her direction. Several torpedoes of one kind and another have been designed, but they have all had to give way to the Whitehead torpedo. The inventor is stated to have derived his idea in 1864 from a fire-boat designed by an Austrian officer, who thought of loading a small boat with explosives, to be fired by a pistol connected with protruding spars which should strike the vessel attacked, while the fire-boat itself was to be propelled by a screw driven by clockwork. Whitehead improved on this by making his boat of iron, and able to travel under water for a short distance at a speed of six knots. Its explosive was a few pounds of dynamite. By 1870 he had improved this to a torpedo having a speed of eight knots, a range of 400 yards, and a charge of 76 lb. of gun-cotton. The modern Whitehead torpedo is a wonderful piece of mechanism, so wonderful that to the ordinary spectator it seems almost endowed with intelligence. To see it lying in its cradle ashore it is simply a beautifully polished smooth steel cylinder. The fore end is blunt and with an innocent-looking steel spike projecting from the centre of its rounded front, but it is this spike which strikes the object aimed at and causes the ignition of the explosive an inch or two behind it in the head of the cylinder. The torpedo has a fine run aft for about a third of its length, and at the after end are two vertical and two horizontal rudders, and two screws revolving in opposite directions. It is some time since compressed air was adopted as the motive power. The efficacy of the compressed cold air has been increased to an extraordinary degree by the introduction of an apparatus for heating the air. A torpedo fitted with a heater can travel over double the distance at a given speed and the same expenditure of air that a torpedo without a heater can. “If a torpedo be run for the same distance with a heater as a similar torpedo without a heater, a 100 per cent. gain of power would be realised by increasing the speed, and at a range of 2,000 yards this increase is from 26 knots to 33.5 knots, the highest which has ever been realised with a torpedo over a range of 2,000 yards.”[56] The newest form of torpedo is that in which hot air instead of cold air is used.