Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

THE ARMAMENT OF A BATTLESHIP. 413 army gun, though not the largest ever pro- duced, weighs 126 tons exclu- sive of mounting, and is 59 feet long. It uses a projectile weighing 2,300 lbs., as com- the 850-lb. With a A Colossal Gun. pared with 12-inch gun. charge of 640 lbs. of nitro - cellulose pow- der, and a chamber pressure of 17| tons to the square inch, the shell attained a muzzle velocity of 2,306 feet per second and a muzzle energy of 84,880 foot-tons, as against 54,500 foot-tons for the Brit- ish 16'25-inch 110- ton gun! The pene- tration could only be guessed, but any pro- jectile, even an ar- mour - piercing shell with a large bursting charge, would, fired from this gun, go clean through the thickest belt armour carried by warships to-day at from 5,000 to 6,000 yards’ range. The disadvantages of a gun of this size are that it can fire but one shot every three minutes, and that its excessive. We now reach the secondary armament of the King Edward VII., the ten 6-inch guns. These are mounted in casemates. A casemate is a or gun-house formed within the Its outer face is pro- tected by steel plates of thicknesses varying from 4 to 7 inches, according to the class of ship; and its enclosing walls at the back are made of splinter-proof sheets up inches in thickness. These gun-houses separated entirely one shell for the British THE DOTTER ------A SMALL MOVABLE TARGET CONNECTED WITH A GUN, AND MARKED ELEC- TRICALLY BY A PENCIL. The correctness of the gun-layer’s aim is shown by the pencil when the trigger has been pulled. {Photo, S. Cribb.) weight and cost are 6-inch Gun. small room sides of the ship. to 2 s are An- of from the other. other method mounting the second- ary battery is that adopted in the Jap- anese battleship Mi- kasa ; this is the “ armoured battery.” Here the entire side of the ship is sheathed in armour, and the guns are placed in a row behind it, being separated by splinter- proof partitions. The value of the second- ary armament is a matter for dispute, but, whatever the future may bring forth, the large ma- jority of ships in commission to - day carry one. The 6-inch gun is a weapon firing a 100-lb. shell, a pro- jectile so easily handled that ten and eleven of them have been shot off in a minute, and the same The 6-inch guns of number of hits secured. the King Edward VII. weigh. 7’4 tons, and have a total length of 269| inches. The velocity of the shell on leaving the muzzle is 2,750 feet per second, and the charge of powder to propel it weighs 20 lbs. The manipulation of this gun is as follows : At the side of the weapon is a curved wooden ______ . _________ , „____________