Shelled Tsing-tao With Wireless Aid
By Jefferson Jones,
Staff Correspondent of The Minneapolis Journal and Japan Advertiser.
[From The New York Times, Jan. 24, 1915.]
TOKIO, Dec. 15.—Far out in the Yellow Sea busy gunners on a Japanese battleship aimed a 12-inch gun at one of the German forts in Tsing-tao. Opening the breech, they removed the smoking cartridge case, put in another loaded one, and waited to learn whether the projectile had scattered death among the enemy or exploded harmlessly in soft earth. They were five or six miles from their target.
The gunners gazed toward the battleship's wireless masts. Presently came a sputter and crackle of electric sparks. An officer appeared in the turret and said, perhaps, "Very good. Put some more in the same place," or, "That one was fifty feet to the right or sixty feet too high." He had received a wireless message from the shore telling exactly where the shell had struck, probably for the first time since naval warfare began.
At the rear of the Japanese lines, where a naval lookout had been erected, I saw several marines focusing horned telescopes on the besieged forts. As soon as a shell landed one of the men would telephone the exact location to the naval wireless station at Sesheco, which relayed the message to the warships.
The fourth day of the siege was the most severe of the whole siege of Tsing-tao. Gen. Johoji on the extreme left, with Gen. Barnardiston of the British expeditionary force, was pressing the intrenched Germans near Moltke Fort. Early in the morning Gen. Johoji had sent a detachment against the triangular pumping station fort, as it was deemed wise not to turn the siege guns on the place, because the fort might be destroyed and the supply of water be cut off in the city when the troops entered. The detachment approached the fort without any resistance from the Germans, and, surrounding it, discovered that there was a small garrison, which had barred itself inside. The Japanese commanded the men to surrender, threatening to dynamite the place. The steel door was opened and twenty-three Germans walked out.
The capture of this fort was the key for the final attack of the Japanese, as it left the central fort and redoubts exposed to fire.