TARGET SHOOTING AT MAGDALENA BAY
High Tension on the Fleet--Effect of Target Shooting on
Man-o'-War Crews--Splendid Advantages of Magdalena Bay--Making
the Targets and Clearing for Action--Why They Are All Nervous.
_On Board U. S. S. Louisiana, Battle Fleet_,
MAGDALENA BAY, March 22.
When Admiral Evans's fleet arrived in Magdalena two days ahead of
schedule time there was undoubtedly a sense of relief in official
circles in Washington over what was practically the termination of the
long cruise to the Pacific, and also one of gratification because the
ships, as Admiral Evans notified the Navy Department, were in better
condition than when they left Hampton Roads and ready for any duty
within an hour's notice.
On the fleet there was no sense of relief over the safe and prompt
arrival. That was taken as a mere matter of course. It is true every one
was a little proud over the performance of the fleet and glad that it
had shaken itself into a homogeneous unit and was in first class
fighting condition, not as separate battleships but as a fleet. In the
matter of cruising the fleet at last was as one ship and lots of useful
things had been learned.
[Illustration: _Copyright by A. Dupont_
Rear Admiral Robley D. Evans]
On the ships the arrival was marked by just the opposite feeling from
relief and gratification. The officers and men frankly were not in a
placid state of mind. All were under an intense tension. They were what
might be called wrought up. What, you say, American men-o'-wars men in a
nervous condition--one that actually showed itself in their work and
their play? No, not in their play, for there wasn't any. Well, but sea
fighters nervous? Not a mother's son of them would admit such a thing.
Preposterous! Men with nerves on warships? Well, perhaps not nerves as
the ordinary person speaks of these anatomical cutups, but certainly
something was the matter with all hands. Evidences of what the cub
reporter would call suppressed excitement were plenty everywhere on
every ship.
What was it all about? What was the matter? The answer is very simple
and short:
The time to begin shooting had come--that was all.
But why get worked up over that, you ask? Shooting is what a navy is
for. Of course; and in the old days real shooting was done only in time
of war. The navy no longer waits for war to learn how to shoot. Twice a
year it has exhaustive target practice--once for what is called record
and once for battle practice.
Record practice is at a target at exactly a known distance. Every gun
on every ship is fired individually at that target. Battle practice is
at a target that simulates in size and distance the ship of an enemy.
All the guns of the ship that reach that range are fired apparently
helter-skelter for a given number of minutes. The range in that case
has to be found out.
Record practice is held to qualify gun pointers, or, as the English
call it, gun layers. Its purpose is to find out the best shooters in
the ship and to give them practice. Battle practice is to give these
gun pointers an opportunity of displaying their skill in what would
seem to be slam-bang work, but what is really the result of months,
and even years, of scientific training of the eye and hand and of the
mind in knowing just when to pull a trigger or snap a lanyard at
exactly the right fraction of a second.
You see, the secret of success in fighting on the sea, as it is
practically in every kind of fighting, lies after all in what the
Western man calls "getting the drop on the other fellow." The way to get
that drop on warships is to find out the men who can shoot straightest
and fastest and can keep their nerve, and then be prepared to turn 'em
loose when war comes. The target practice here has been of that kind, to
pick out and train gun pointers. It was record practice exclusively.
So far as this fleet is concerned this cruise was chiefly for this
purpose. Aside from mere cruising and getting shaken down the officers
and men had their minds and their energies centred on shooting guns. No
matter what was the reason why the fleet was sent to the Pacific, the
officers and men passed it by as something that concerned them only
incidentally. They take their orders to go here or there with simply
passing interest. They obey. Their one idea, their chief work, mentally
and physically, during the entire cruise has been to prepare for this
target shooting. To them it was the business end of the cruise.
Some people think that the purpose of the cruise was to go calling
internationally, to say "How d'y do?" and fire salutes, the officers to
be entertained with receptions and dances and dinner speeches and the
men to have liberty on shore, with a chance to get a drink of real red
"likker"; some might say that the purpose was to get data as to the
cruising ability of the fleet; some might say it was to get the men used
to what might be called the navy habit; some might say it was to gain
experience in meeting problems of warship navigation; some might say it
was for other than strictly naval reasons, to make a show of strength or
to satisfy a public clamor or advance a political plan.
Whatever ideas others may have had about the cruise, the officers and
men have had only one, as a matter of business and daily toil, and that
was that the cruise would have its real naval culmination in target
shooting in Magdalena Bay. That was what it was for to the men on these
ships, and from the very hour the ships said good-by at Hampton Roads
every effort was made to get them in fighting condition as a fleet
entity. The target practice was to reveal whether they had done good
work in strictly naval business. To the fleet the cruise was no
spectacular parade around a continent; it was to prepare to shoot in the
finest naval shooting place in the world, Magdalena Bay.
Every one was glad to see Magdalena Bay because of this tension. It is a
splendid sheet of water, in a general way about fifteen miles long and
ten wide, with a narrow entrance and water just deep enough for safe
manoeuvring and good anchorages everywhere. A line of sharp crested
hills shuts it in from sight of the Pacific. There is only one village
on it, consisting of about twenty dwellings, and no commerce in its
waters. The shores on the inside are flat and there is a good horizon.
The warships of the world might find an anchorage here without crowding
one another. It is cut off from the rest of the world, in a desolate,
barren region, and was designed apparently by nature for the very
purpose of modern target shooting.
It seems a pity that American statesmanship years and years ago could
not have had the foresight to secure it, when such a course would have
been easy, for use of the navy, when a great naval station could have
been built up and proper use of the place for strategical purposes could
have been made certain. With a naval station on Puget Sound, one in San
Francisco and this one on Magdalena Bay, the entire Pacific Coast within
our immediate sphere of action would have been within our grasp. Oh,
yes; it's a pity--too bad--that we do not own Magdalena Bay. Perhaps an
effort to secure it would still be a most desirable field for the
exercise of statesmanship. One feels like suggesting to Washington to
get busy and keep busy.
As soon as the fleet came to anchor there were things doing. On every
ship what is known as bore sighting had to be done. That means that a
telescope sight had to be inserted in the exact axis of the bore of the
gun and the sighting telescopes had to be so adjusted that they were
exactly in line with the centre of the gun. It had to be proved
scientifically that when the sights of the gun were exactly on a
bullseye with their cross wires the centre of the gun was also exactly
on the same spot. Every sight on every gun had to be tested and checked
up, and it was tedious work. But you couldn't shoot straight without it,
and it took hours and hours of most careful adjustment to make sure that
all was in perfect condition.
Then came the laying out of the ranges. This required careful surveying.
An equilateral triangle had to be laid out for each range. Along one
side, the base, spar buoys with flags on them had to be fixed, and buoys
fixed further along at each end, so as to give a ship an opportunity of
getting on the exact range in its turnings. At the apex of each triangle
a great raft of thick timbers and poles on it for the targets had to be
put in position. All this took time, but it was surprising how quickly
the work was done.
And then the targets had to be brought out. Now the ship's crew had been
working on those targets in spare moments for several weeks. Each ship
had less than fifty and more than twenty-five of them to make. The
biggest targets are for the smaller guns and the smallest ones for the
larger guns. The size is proportional, as the experts put it, to "the
angle of fall," and the size also represents, they tell you, "the mean
error of fire" of a gun. Well, the angle of fall and mean error of fire
may not convey a satisfactory idea to you, but you must remember that
the shot of a little gun goes to its target in a high curve, while the
shot of a big one goes almost horizontally. So you can see why a little
gun ought to have the bigger target. It curves more, has a greater angle
of fall, than a big gun has. And the mean error of fire has to do with
what experience has shown that guns perfectly pointed and fired ought to
do. They vary a little in their performances and the target is just
large enough for every shot to hit it, if everything works absolutely
perfectly.
The making of the targets is a long job. Great rolls of canvas were
broken out of storerooms and cut into a certain number of strips of a
certain length. These strips had to be sewed together, and at times
certain compartments resembled the inside of a tailor shop with sewing
machines buzzing and trimming and cutting going on. Then the rough
target had to be spread out and the edges cut off until there was just
margin enough to sew it all around to a rope about an inch thick. It
required hard work with stout needles and thick leather palms to put the
ropes on all four sides.
Then came careful measurements for the black lines about two inches wide
that marked the targets into squares and a great square in the centre
for the bullseye. Out came the paint pots. Some of the targets were made
black with white lines and white centres and others were left white with
black lines and centres. Then came the battens to which the targets were
nailed so as to be stretched on the poles of the raft. Ropes had to be
attached in certain places for fastening the target in the exact place
and at the exact height. All this work had to be exact, for the umpires
measured every target to see that no ship got the slightest advantage.
The targets being prepared, the next thing done on every ship was to
clear for action. All stanchions, boats, ridge ropes, chests, gangways,
everything movable, were taken down and the decks stripped. Hatches were
closed and the ship was stripped for fighting. Theoretically everything
wooden and not absolutely necessary to the fighting of the ship was
thrown overboard. Pictures were removed from bulkheads and crockery
packed away so as to save breakage. So carefully was all this packing
done on the Louisiana that all the breakage that occurred when the big
guns were fired was one water pitcher in a stateroom under the forward
bridge and one pane of glass in the bridge storm shield.
The articles that were removed were not really thrown overboard, but
were moved to out of the way places and marked with a tag which read:
"Overboard."
These tags furnished about the only element of fun in the entire
practice. A mischievous boy, who may have been too familiar with the
ship's Angora goat--you know goats have a way of doing things to persons
when the persons are leaning over sometimes, and do not expect anything
unusual to happen--or who didn't like the way the goat refused to eat
tin cans occasionally and also spurned a pot of nice fresh paint, tied
one of the labels to Billy's horns. Billy thought it was a decoration
and if he had been a jackass instead of a goat would have heehawed with
the rest of the crowd.
Then there was a little rascal of a youngster who is always getting into
trouble because of his pranks and all too often has to be summoned to
the mast for his offences, where he gets regularly penalties of from
five to ten hours extra duty and grins as soon as the Captain's back is
turned. Something had to be done about him. A shipmate stole up behind
him and fixed an overboard tag on his back. For hours he carried it
about and was surprised to see that suddenly he had become popular,
while the rest of the crew grinned and laughed and slapped their sides
just as ordinary folks do on April fool day when a sedate man goes down
the street with a rag pinned to his coat tail.
But why should they be nervous about the shooting?
Well, if for three months you had been working almost day and night in
the practice of loading and firing guns, had been lifting, pushing,
pulling things about to represent great and small projectiles and bags
of powder, and if you had been drilling so as not to make a false step
or move and had been getting up team work so as to do your work in the
shortest possible time, where fractions of seconds count; if you had a
gun crew or were a member of one where probably one-half of the men had
never heard a big gun go off before and there was danger that you would
go gun shy; if for weeks and weeks you had been told to do exactly this
and that and never to do that and this, and a lot of other tremendously
important things had been dinned into your ears, especially matters
relating to safety, and you realized that some blunder of yours might
endanger not only yourself and your mates, but the ship itself; if you
recalled that the navy gives a prize to the best crew on the fleet for
each kind of gun fired and there is also a ship's prize for the best
work of these guns, and that if you did your work well and won out there
would be from $20 to $60, or possibly more, for yourself and each of
your mates; if you knew how one gun's crew bets it will beat its rival;
if you knew how every man on every ship is intensely eager to get the
naval trophy in shooting for his own ship, so that all hands can put on
proper airs and say in a deprecating way: "Of course we were glad to get
the trophy, but it was nothing, mere nothing; why, we could beat it all
to pieces in a fight, but of course we don't want to brag;" if you could
see these men working overtime of their own volition in the Morris tube
training, the miniature target shooting that is practised daily on the
ships--you'd begin to realize how a ship gets all wrought up over this
target practice.
The Captain naturally wants his ship to come out first when you get down
to the real business of a warship; the division officers want the ship
to win and their own division to be first; the gun crews, with money at
stake for them and with the great pride that Uncle Sam's sailormen have,
down to the last man, to excel in any contest, are more eager, if that
were possible, than the officers to get the shooting record. The result
is that when the great day approaches every one is as much under a
severe strain as a trained university football team approaching the
great game of the season. Team work has been the aim of the drills. To
pretend to be cool and utterly unconcerned is the little game of byplay
that is going on.
As the day comes on you don't hear much levity about the ship. The time
of the grouch is at hand. Why, even the officers can hardly be civil to
one another, and as for the men they get saying things to one another in
their disputes and heat and anxiety that would make a stranger think
they were dangerously near an uprising. The ordnance officer loses all
his friends and the division officers glare at him and one another as if
each felt sorry that the earth in general and the ship in particular was
encumbered with such pitiful specimens of humanity.
Now and then they get to telling one another what they think of things,
not meaning a word of it, and sometimes a dispute goes clear up to the
Captain for him to decide. He does decide it gravely, and perhaps when
the disputants leave he turns away and smiles as he recalls that men
are but children of larger growth, and after all he's glad to see these
things come up because it shows how hard and earnestly every one is
working and bending all his energies to be first. Be first! Be first!
That's the thought of every one, and all these bickerings, sharp-tongued
retorts, objections, suggestions, sullen looks--yes, even drawn
faces--mean that every ounce of energy, of intensity that the men on the
ship have is being expended in the task at hand.
When you see all this you can understand why the men of a 7-inch gun's
crew, for example, who think they have what they call a look-in for the
navy prize elect to sleep beside their pet gun all night, just as a
stable boy sleeps in the stall of his great racer who is to be out the
next day for the supreme contest of the year; you can understand why
some of the officers refuse to shave themselves until target practice is
all over and they begin to look as if they were training to be pirates,
bad and bold; every naval hoodoo is avoided; you can see why the men go
over every part of the mechanism of the guns oiling, rubbing, shining,
testing parts until you wonder whether the gun itself is not in a state
of agitation and the molecules, which the experts gravely assert are
always in a state of motion, are not racing back and forth and saying
contemptuous things to one another.
Why some of these men never allow themselves out of sight of their gun
lest something may happen to it. They pat the guns with their hands and
whisper pet names to them, and tell them to do their best, and if they
win why they'll put ribbons on them and point them out to every one.
And, indeed, more than one gun--it would be telling to say which
ones--did wear ribbon decorations and did receive embraces from a
victorious crew after the shooting was over.
Just before the shooting begins a calm, a stillness, comes over the
ship. Men steady themselves with a supreme effort to keep cool, and the
spirit of do or die takes possession of the ship, and as the guns go
bang, bang and boom, boom you'd think these officers and men had done
nothing else all their lives but shoot off projectiles and it was as
much a matter of course with them as getting their breakfasts. All hands
are now smiling and good cheer pervades every compartment, and it's
"That's fine, Bill!" "Hit 'em again!" "Sock it to 'em!" "Soak 'er!"
"You're doin' great!" "Never mind, that's only one miss!" "Bully boy!"
And when the target is brought on board between the runs to be repaired
for use again you can understand why the men crowd around it while the
umpires examine the rents to see if they made any mistake in their
decisions and you can also enter into the feelings of some young fellow
who has done the shooting at it and has to repair it, as he looks at it
and sees only three hits, for example, out of five shots, while he
fairly moans: "I'll never get over this as long as I live. I thought I
was on the target and don't see how I missed it." And you can also enter
into the feelings of pride and exultation of another youngster as he
mends his target with every shot a hit and done in the fastest time ever
known, while his mates slap him on the back and say: "Great work, Bob!
Great work!" And when he finishes his mending and catches the eye of
the newspaper correspondent on board you know how he feels when he comes
up and touches his hat and says:
"You know my home, sir, is in a little town in the centre of Ohio. I
don't suppose our country papers print your articles, but I know my
people and friends, and I guess all the town, would be glad to know how
well I did and would like to see my picture in the paper, sir." Well,
you feel sorry that you have to tell him that you are not allowed to
give results of the target shooting or to mention names or to say
whether any ship or any gun did well or badly. But when you tell him
that in good time all his people and friends and neighbors are sure to
find out about it he smiles with great pride and says:
"Thank you, sir. I guess we've got 'em all skinned good and proper."
But how is it all done? Why don't you give details? perhaps you, gentle
reader, as the old-time books used to say, are asking. Well, this
article if it interests you at all will interest you because of what it
will not say rather than because of what it will say. Listen to the
pledge, which every correspondent bound himself to keep when he came on
this cruise:
"To refrain from giving out for publication, either while with the fleet
or later, any military information that might be of value to a possible
enemy, such as detailed descriptions of mechanism or of methods of
drills, of handling fire control (that means the way of controlling the
fire of the guns), tactical manoeuvres, scores at target practice, etc."
And this pledge was supplemented on arrival in Magdalena Bay by further
instructions from the Commander-in-Chief, which said:
"No statement of scores shall be forwarded or whether ships do well or
badly.
"No comments on the workings of the battery or its appurtenances,
including the fire control, shall be forwarded."
Now, what can a conscientious correspondent do when, for the good of the
service and the welfare of the country, he's all tied up like that?
Well, there are lots of things that can be told about target shooting,
things that every naval man knows about and are no secret and that the
ordinary person doesn't know about. There's no inhibition on writing
about noise, and the flare of guns and the puffs of smoke, and the
geysers that shoot up out of the water as the shots ricochet far out to
the horizon. Oh, yes, the old adage is still true that there are a good
many ways to skin a cat.
As has been said, the preparations for this target practice began as
soon as the fleet was out of Hampton Roads. There was the daily drill
of hours and hours at Morris tube practice, where the men shoot at
little targets from little rifles attached to the big guns. The
targets are kept in motion and every man has to shoot his string of so
many shots. The division officer soon comes to know which men have the
sharpest eye, the steadiest hand, the coolest temperament, and in time
the pointers and trainers are selected and each man has his post
assigned to him. And when the miniature target shooting is over for
the day there is the team work drill with dummy projectiles and powder
bags and day by day the men become expert in making this exact step
and avoiding that false move, and show increasing deftness and zeal.
They get to dreaming of what they will do. They learn just how far to
lean back and move their heads when the gun darts past their faces in
its lightning recoil, and those who have never heard a big gun go off
try to imagine what the roar will be like and to nerve themselves not
to mind it any more than a firecracker's report. Then as the final
test comes and they hear the officers scold or praise them they get
into the state of anxiety described in the first part of this article.
But it is time to shoot. Every one now is calm and eager to begin. The
bos'n and three launches and two boats' crews go out and put up the
first targets. The ship gets under way and steams about slowly until she
gets the proper headway of a predetermined speed. The men at the targets
set them up and steam away to a buoy a quarter of a mile from the
target. Slowly the ship swings out and comes on the range, just grazing
the buoys that mark the path. The men are at the guns. The outward buoy
is passed and then the ship approaches the first buoy, where the firing
is to begin. The exact range of that point is known. The elevation of
the gun is known, as is also the deflection. You know the sights have to
be right on the target, but the gun itself has to be aimed a little to
one side, so as to account for the side movement of the projectile, due
to the ship's motion, as it flies through the air. What is called fire
control determines just how much the gun must be elevated and how much
it must be deflected at a certain instant. There is a man at the gun who
turns little wheels and adjusts gauges, and he gets word from some one
else just what to do and when to do it. Never mind how this is
communicated to him.
Meantime one man has been training the gun sideways and another has been
raising or lowering it, independently of the man who has been setting
the deflection and fixing the range. When the cross-wires in the gun
pointer's telescope are right on the bullseye and it is time to fire he
pulls a trigger and the electrical apparatus sends a lightning impulse
into the powder, there is a roar, a thin cloud of smoke from the primer,
a flash and you look for the splash to see if it is a hit.
As the ship proceeds along the base of the triangle the deflection and
range have to be changed constantly. The change is greatest at the ends
of the run. Along about the centre, when you are just opposite the
target, the changes are slight, but it is just as hard to hit the
target. All these changes are matters of fractions of seconds. It is not
deliberate work, but it is done carefully, and there is where the
element of training comes in.
The first roar of a gun sends a thrill through the ship. The man who has
fired it is nervous. If it's a miss, he steadies himself at once. Rare
is it that the second shot is a miss. The gun-shy part of that man's
career is over. He is now as cool as if he were whistling Yankee Doodle.
Bang and crack go his shots. Perhaps the gases obscure his vision to
some extent. He waits an instant from time to time before he fires.
Pump, pump, goes the trigger. He's got the range, he's got his nerve, he
knows when he hits and when he misses. It's a big contest, and his tools
of trade are the confined elements of destruction with the accumulated
scientific skill of decades behind him, and the result depends upon his
clear vision and steady hand. The task inspires him, his face is drawn
tense, he forgets everything else. He becomes part of that machine of
destruction, an automaton.
The most spectacular part of the shooting is with the smallest and
biggest guns. The small guns are shot at night. Great black targets with
white centres are put up, and then your own ship, or possibly another
anchored near, illuminates the targets with four or five great
searchlights. The guns boom, and soon a little curlicue of light is seen
curving through the air. It is what is called a tracer, a chemical set
on fire by the redhot projectile as it flies. You see it hit the target,
and then under the lights you see a splash.
Then the light goes curving up into the air and you know the projectile
is ricocheting. Down it comes. There is another leap and flight and then
another and another, and far off, two or three miles away, it
disappears. The projectile has made its last jump. So fast are the small
guns fired that frequently from five to ten of these rockets are leaping
and jumping toward the sky and curving back into the black water. It is
beautiful fireworks.
Although the small guns are fired at night, some of them are fired in
the daytime. The string of these guns is run off first. No noise of a
gun is quite so disturbing as that of the 3-inch weapons. You may stuff
your ears full of cotton--and nearly every one on ship does that--but
the terrible crack smites through it and gives you a jolt. The deck
feels an earthquake tremor, and you are glad when the ship goes off the
range. But this is getting ahead of the story. Suppose the ship has just
passed the outer buoy. Steadily she approaches the first firing mark.
Soon word is passed:
"Buoy on the bow!"
The umpires have their watches in hand, the crew prepares to load. Now
the buoy is abeam. A red flag goes up to the forward yardarm, the
whistle blows and then the command is heard:
"Commence firing!"
That is all the command that is given. For the small guns a given number
of shots must be fired as quickly as possible. For the big guns as many
shots may be fired as possible within a certain number of minutes. The
shots are counted carefully for the small guns, and when the given quota
is fired the order is given:
"Cease firing!"
When the time limit has expired for the big guns a whistle is blown by
the umpire who has the watch and the same command is given, but the crew
has the right to fire one more shot within a given number of seconds so
as to discharge any projectile that may have been in the gun when the
cease firing command was given.
As soon as the command to fire is given intense activity starts. Crack
goes the 3-pounder or 3-inch. Then comes the splash. A geyser jumps up
out of the bay, then another and another, as the projectile hits the
water. These geysers look as if Old Faithful of the Yellowstone had been
brought down to give a special performance. The spurts are not in a
straight line, for the curvature of a small wave deflects the course of
the projectile and sends it careening this way or that. You can tell
from the position of the spurt whether it was hit or not and you count
the hits and misses carefully. You forget the ear-smiting cracks of the
guns and the jolt of the decks. Did he make a hit? is what you want to
know. And is the pointer doing his work well? Cheers come from various
parts of the ship as hit after hit is made, and if it's a clean string
there is general jubilation.
But the ship is moving steadily along the course. There is always a
slight gap in the shooting when the pointers change positions and
telescopes, but bang, bang, crack, crack, come the reports, and before
you know it the whistle blows and the red flag is lowered and that
string is over. Then the ship slowly circles around to the targets, and
the repairing crew in the small boats dash over to mark the hits of the
small guns with red paint and to make repairs, change targets and fix
things up generally. Then comes another start for the range, and so hour
after hour the ship goes back and forth until every small gun has had
its say and every pointer has had his few minutes.
When the time comes for the target practice of the great guns no red
paint is needed to mark the hits. You can see the projectiles as they
near the target, needlelike things that seem to flee with the speed of
light. You can see the holes they make if you take a glass. Their roar
is dull and the shake of the ship is a powerful tremor. Your ears are
not smitten, as with the smaller guns, but the shock is tremendous. You
are close to the manifestation of a terrific force. But if you wish to
see the best part of the work you must go into the casemate, where the
firing is done. Ah, there's where team work is going on!
Take a 7-inch gun. The word to commence firing is passed. Powder and
projectiles are all ready. The gun captain throws open the breech
block. The men lift the projectile and place it in the breech. Scarcely
have they removed their tray before a long wooden rammer is thrust in
and the projectile, which has been carefully smoothed off and oiled, is
run home and seated. Get out of the way quick, rammer, for the powder
bags are being thrust in! Don't make a false step, for you may hinder
some one who has just one thing to do in the shortest possible time!
The charge is now home, the gun captain whisks the breech block into
place, the primer is attached and then the captain slaps the pointer on
the back or cries ready. All this time the gun is being trained, the
range and deflection have been changed, and instantly there is a roar, a
blinding flash. The members of the crew close to the gun move just far
enough back to escape the recoil, like a prizefighter when he throws his
head back and escapes a blow by the fraction of an inch.
Open comes the breech in a flash, then another charge on it by the
various men, another slap on the back, another roar and it's a hit or a
miss. Then a third charge, and another and another. The men sweat and
breathe hard, their faces become strained and some of them white. The
fight is on, and the work, second by second, every one of them as
valuable as hours would be ordinarily, saps the strength and energy of
the men in their supreme effort.
"Every shot a hit!" cries one of the crew exultingly.
"What was the time?" asks another.
"So many seconds," says the umpire.
"That beats all records!" shouts another, and then there are cheers and
great rejoicing. After the first fire scarcely a man hears the noise of
the gun. It is a mere pop to them. Sometimes they overreach themselves
in the desire to be quick and they make a miss. They don't hear the last
of that for some time, but it's all in the work and part of the general
eagerness to do well.
Then come the 8-inch guns. The rumble and roar is only a little worse
than the 7-inch guns. The geysers shoot a little higher and the echoes
from the report come back to the ship like so many sharp thunderclaps,
where the lightning is close. Indeed, if you want to have a better
reproduction of thunder than any theatre can produce just manage to be
on a battleship while it fires off its 8-inch guns in rapid succession.
It's the kind of thunder that comes when lightning hits and you look out
to see if the tree in your front yard has been split. Crash after crash
comes back to make you duck and dodge until the projectile has finished
its thunderbolt career and darts into the water with perhaps the
ignominious mission of killing a fish instead of shattering a
battleship.
But the 12-inch guns! Pack the cotton well into your ears! Keep your
mouth open! Stand as far away from the muzzle as you can on the ship!
Secure all the things in your stateroom, for if you don't you may find
your shaving mug on the floor and your hairbrush mixed up with the
fragments of your soap dish! Close your port or else your trinkets may
be whisked into a heap and some of them broken into pieces! The whistle
has blown. The seconds go by, oh how slowly! Will they never get that
gun loaded? Then comes a blast. The white flame seems brighter than
sunlight, the roar runs through you like an electric shock, the decks
seem to sink and you wonder if the eruption of Mont Pelée had more force
than that. You look toward the target. There goes the projectile,
straight through the bullseye. Then an enormous geyser leaps into the
air more than a hundred feet high. Surely that is Old Faithful! Then
comes another half a mile away. Then another and another and you wonder
if the projectile is going clear over to Europe.
And with this comes that peculiar roar that no other agent of power
produces. It is more like the rush of a limited express into and out of
the mouth of a tunnel. You can hear the chug, chug of the locomotive.
You hear the rumble of a fast train on a still night through a valley.
You can almost see the hills and the little river as the train dashes
over bridges and noisy trestles. There it goes into the tunnel again,
and before you can speak of it out it comes with another roar! More
bridges and trestles, more tunnels, more chugs, and then there comes a
steady roar. The train is going over the hill and out of the last
tunnel, and you take a long breath. Before you expel it from your lungs
there is another smiting flash and you are dancing on your toes again.
The ship seems to settle and you get the geysers, the roar of the
fastest train that ever ran. And so it goes until the whistle blows and
you swing around to look at the target and then repeat the performance.
You now begin to realize what a battleship means, and you are
speculating about it when an officer comes around and says:
"Pretty fine, eh? Well, that's nothing to battle practice! when for a
certain number of minutes we let all the guns go together. That's real
noise! This is just pop-gun work."
Well, if it is not noise you begin to think that if there is ever
another war you know one place where you don't want to be, and that is
on a battleship. Every one of the ships had to go through this work, and
when it was all over then it was that the men on these ships felt the
sense of relief that none of them experienced over their safe arrival
and the performance of the fleet on the way to this bay. They were ready
to drop in their tracks. They were worn out, as the expression goes.
There is one moment of great suspense at every gun in such practice as
this. It is when some adjustment has gone wrong, when some accident has
occurred, and when there is real danger. Then the officer in charge
cries sharply:
"Silence!"
That means that no more shots must be fired from that gun on that run.
With it goes a penalty that works against the ship's record. More than
once such command has been heard on these ships, but it is wise, for all
too sad have been the records of accidents at target practice not only
in our own ships but in those of every other navy. It would have pleased
any one to observe all the precautions that were taken this time. The
navy has learned some lessons. Safer and safer the turrets are becoming
all the time. And this element of speed which enters into all contests
with the firing of guns conduces to that end. You see, it is not only
the hits that count but the time in which they are made.
But why this haste, you ask. Well, it trains the men to get the drop on
the enemy and also, and perhaps of just as much importance, it reveals
the defects in the system. In other words, it tends more to make turrets
and ordnance what the experts call "foolproof." It may be said that
nearly all of our ordnance on these ships has reached that stage, the
stage where some man by some unforeseen fool action, one that no one
could guess would happen, endangers and probably costs the lives of
himself and several others. Every breakdown of a gun on this practice
has had its value and it all goes toward speeding the day when these
faults will be corrected and a ship may go into action with a reasonable
assurance that all its mechanism will do the work it was intended to do.
Yes, speed has its advantages, very great advantages.
What a change in twenty years! There are men on this ship who used to
take part in the old practice on such ships as the Saratoga or the
Quinnebaugh, the one that was on the European station so long that some
one in the Navy Department forgot for a year or two to put it in the
Naval Register. The Saratoga had one 8-inch muzzle loading rifle that
had formerly been a smooth bore 11-inch Dahlgren gun, the kind of gun
that resembled a soda water bottle and was called such. It was mounted
amidships between the fireroom hatch and the break of the to'gallant
fo'c's'le. The bulwarks at that place were pierced by pivot gun ports
that could be secured as part of the bulwarks when the gun was not in
action.
The gun swung on circles and pivot bolts by using hauling and training
tackles, and could be used on either broadside and about ten points
forward and abaft the beam. The ship had also four 9-inch smoothbore
Dahlgrens to complete its main battery. It required about twenty-two men
to handle such a gun. The charges of powder were in canvas bags and
rammed home. The guns could be sighted up to 2,000 yards. The recoil
was taken up by a heavy hempen hawser fastened to the bulwarks and
passed through the cascabel of the gun. The range for target practice
was 1,000 yards, and lucky was the gunner if he made 30 per cent. of
hits.
In those days the men at the guns were not half stripped, as they are
now. One-half of them were armed with cutlass and pistol and the other
half with magazine rifles and bayonets. This was to repel boarders.
That's all gone. No battleship ever expects to repel boarders in these
days. Protection for the gunners was made by piling up hammocks and
bags--about the last thing that would be thought of, with its danger
from fire, in these days, even if all else failed. Nowadays the recoil
is taken up hydraulically, and the gun is shot back into place with
springs. Even fewer men are required to handle an 8-inch gun than twenty
years ago. One of these guns will shoot five times further and do ten
times--yes, one might say almost a hundredfold--more damage than the old
ones. And there are eight of these on a ship like the Louisiana, to say
nothing of twelve 7-inch guns, four 12-inch, twenty 3-inch and twelve
3-pounders.
In target practice on one of these ships ten shots are fired from each
7-inch gun, twenty from each 3-inch gun, twenty from each 3-pounder and
as many from each 8-inch and 12-inch as can be got off in a given time.
It may be stretching the proprieties to tell even that much, and to get
back to generalities it may be said that about twenty-five tons of metal
were fired from all the guns. The cost? Well, put it for convenience
sake at $300,000 for the fleet. Expensive? Not a bit of it! That
expenditure is the best money spent by the United States Navy. It is the
premium of insurance paid annually for efficiency, and it will prove its
value if these ships ever get into war. There'll be no hit or miss or
reckless helter-skelter shooting then. To make the practice record here
each ship has to steam about 100 miles in going over the course and in a
general way it may be said that each ship made from thirty-five to forty
runs on the range. There, that's about all to be said in print or
elsewhere about target practice by this fleet.
Well now honest, you say, didn't the ships do well, pretty well, just a
little better than ever before, perhaps a great deal better? Just that
much is what you want to know? Well, you'll have to ask the Navy
Department about that. In its own good time and in its own way it may
decide to give out such information and it may not. You'll never get an
answer from the Sun's correspondent on this trip.