GUNS AND SUPER-GUNS
When the news came that big shells were dropping into Paris from a gun
which must be at least seventy miles away, the world at first refused
to believe; then it imagined that some brand-new form of gun or shell
or powder had been invented by the Germans. However, while the public
marveled, ordnance experts were interested but not astonished. They
knew that it was perfectly feasible to build a gun that would hurl
a shell fifty, or seventy-five, or even a hundred miles, without
involving anything new in the science of gunnery.
SHOOTING AROUND THE EDGE OF THE EARTH
But if such ranges were known to be possible, why was no such
long-distance gun built before? Simply because none but the Germans
would ever think of shooting around the edge of the earth at a target
so far away that it would have to be as big as a whole city to be
hit at all. In a distance of seventy miles, the curve of the earth
is considerable. Paris is far below the horizon of a man standing at
St. Gobain, where the big German gun was located. And if a hole were
bored from St. Gobain straight to Paris, so that you could see the city
from the gun, it would pass, midway of its course, three thousand,
seven hundred and fifty feet below the surface of the earth. With the
target so far off, it was impossible to aim at any particular fort,
ammunition depot, or other point of military importance. There is
always some uncertainty as to just where a shell will fall, due to
slight differences in quality and quantity of the powder used, in the
density of the air, the direction of the wind, etc. This variation is
bad enough when a shell is to be fired ten miles, but when the missile
has to travel seventy miles, it is out of the question to try to hit a
target that is not miles in extent.
Twenty years before the war our Ordnance Department had designed a
fifty-mile gun, but it was not built, because we could see no possible
use for it. Our big guns were built for fighting naval battles or for
the defense of our coasts from naval attacks, and there is certainly
no use in firing at a ship that is so far below the horizon that we
cannot even see the tips of its masts; and so our big guns, though
they were capable of firing a shell twenty-seven miles, if aimed high
enough, were usually mounted in carriages that would not let them shoot
more than twelve or fifteen miles.
The distance to which a shell can be hurled depends to a large extent
upon the angle of the gun. If the gun is tilted up to an angle of 15
degrees, the shell will go only about half as far as if it were tilted
up to 43-1/2 degrees, which is the angle that will carry a shell to
its greatest distance. If the long-range German gun was fired at that
angle, the shell must have risen to a height of about twenty-four miles.
BEYOND THE EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE
Most of the air that surrounds our globe lies within four miles of
the surface. Few airplanes can rise to a greater height than this,
because the air is so thin that it gives no support to the wings of
the machine. The greatest height to which a man has ever ascended is
seven miles. A balloon once carried two men to such a height. One
of them lost consciousness, and the other, who was nearly paralyzed,
succeeded in pulling the safety-valve rope, with his teeth. That
brought the balloon down, and their instruments showed that they had
gone up thirty-six thousand feet. What the ocean of air contains above
that elevation, we do not know, but judging by the way the atmosphere
thins out as we rise from the surface of the earth, we reckon that nine
tenths of the air lies within ten miles of the surface of the earth. At
twenty-four miles, or the top of the curve described by the shell of
the German long-range guns, there must be an almost complete vacuum.
If only we could accompany a shell on its course, we should find a
strange condition of affairs. The higher we rose, the darker would the
heavens become, until the sun would shine like a fiery ball in a black
sky. All around, the stars would twinkle, and below would be the glare
of light reflected from the earth's surface and its atmosphere, while
the cold would be far more intense than anything suffered on earth. Up
at that height, there would be nothing to indicate that the shell was
moving--no rush of air against the ears. We should seem detached from
earth and out in the endless reaches of space.
It seems absurd to think that a shell weighing close to a quarter
of a ton could be retarded appreciably by mere air. But when we
realize that the shell left the gun at the rate of over half a mile a
second--traveling about thirty times faster than an express-train--we
know that the air-pressure mounts up to a respectable figure. The
pressure is the same whether a shell is moving through the air or the
air is blowing against the shell. When the wind blows at the rate of
100 to 120 miles per hour, it is strong enough to lift houses off their
foundations, to wrench trees out of the ground, to pick up cattle and
carry them sailing through the air. Imagine what it would do if its
velocity were increased to 1,800 miles per hour. That is what the shell
of a big gun has to contend with. As most of the air lies near the
earth, the shell of long-range guns meet with less and less resistance
the higher they rise, until they get up into such thin air that there
is virtually no obstruction. The main trouble is to pierce the blanket
of heavy air that lies near the earth.
WAYS OF INCREASING THE RANGE
The big 16-inch guns that protect our coasts fire a shell that weighs
2,400 pounds. Nine hundred pounds of smokeless powder is used to propel
the shell, which leaves the muzzle of the gun with a speed of 2,600
feet per second. Now, the larger the diameter of the shell, the greater
will be its speed at the muzzle of the gun, because there will be a
greater surface for the powder gases to press against. On the other
hand, the larger the shell, the more will it be retarded by the air,
because there will be a larger surface for the air to press against.
It has been proposed by some ordnance experts that a shell might be
provided with a disk at each end, which would make it fit a gun of
larger caliber. A 10-inch shell, for instance, could then be fired from
a 16-inch gun. Being lighter than the 16-inch shell, it would leave the
muzzle of the gun at a higher speed. The disks could be so arranged
that as soon as the shell left the gun they would be thrown off, and
then the 10-inch shell, although starting with a higher velocity than a
16-inch shell, would offer less resistance to the air. In that way it
could be made to cover a much greater range. By the way, the shell of
the German long-range gun was of but 8.2-inch caliber.
Another way of increasing the range is to lengthen the gun. Right here
we must become acquainted with the word "caliber." Caliber means the
diameter of the shell. A 16-inch gun, for instance, fires a shell of
16-inch caliber; but when we read that the gun is a 40-or 50-caliber
gun, it means that the length of the gun is forty or fifty times the
diameter of the shell. Our biggest coast-defense guns are 50-caliber
16-inch guns, which means that they are fifty times 16 inches long, or
66-2/3 feet in length. When a gun is as long as that, care has to be
taken to prevent it from sagging at the muzzle of its own weight. These
guns actually do sag a little, and when the shell is fired through the
long barrel it straightens up the gun, making the muzzle "whip" upward,
just as a drooping garden hose does when the water shoots through it.
[Illustration: Courtesy of "Scientific American"
The 121-Mile Gun designed by American Ordnance Officers]
Now the longer the caliber length of a gun, the farther it will send
a shell, because the powder gases will have a longer time to push the
shell. But we cannot lengthen our big guns much more without using
some special support for the muzzle end of the gun, to keep it from
"whipping" too much. It is likely that the long-range German gun was
provided with a substantial support at the muzzle to keep it from
sagging.
[Illustration: (C) Underwood & Underwood
American 16-Inch Rifle on a Railway Mount]
Every once in a while a man comes forth with a "new idea" for
increasing the range. One plan is to increase the powder-pressure. We
have powders that will produce far more pressure than an ordinary gun
can stand. But we have to use powders that will burn comparatively
slowly. We do not want too sudden a shock to start with, but we wish
the powder to give off an enormous quantity of gas which will keep
on pushing and speeding up the shell until the latter emerges from
the muzzle. The fifty-mile gun that was proposed twenty years ago was
designed to stand a much higher pressure than is commonly used, and it
would have fired a 10-inch shell weighing 600 pounds with a velocity of
4,000 feet per second at the muzzle.
The Allies built no "super-guns," because they knew that they could
drop a far greater quantity of explosives with much greater accuracy
from airplanes, and at a much lower cost. The German gun at St. Gobain
was spectacular and it did some damage, but it had no military value
and it did not intimidate the French as the Germans had hoped it would.
A GUN WITH A RANGE OF A HUNDRED AND TWENTY MILES
But although we built no such gun, after the Germans began shelling
Paris our Ordnance Department designed a gun that would fire a shell to
a distance of over 120 miles! There was no intention of constructing
the gun, but the design was worked out just as if it were actually
to be built. It was to fire a shell of 10-inch caliber, weighing 400
pounds. Now, an Elswick standard 10-inch gun is 42 feet long and its
shell weighs 500 pounds. Two hundred pounds of powder are used to
propel the shell, which leaves the muzzle with a velocity of 3,000
feet per second. If the gun is elevated to the proper angle, it will
send the shell 25 miles, and it will take the shell a minute and
thirty-seven seconds to cover that distance. But the long-range gun our
ordnance experts designed would have to be charged with 1,440 pounds
of powder and the shell would leave the muzzle of the gun with a
velocity of 8,500 feet per second. It would be in the air four minutes
and nine seconds and would travel 121.3 miles. Were the gun fired from
the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, near Baltimore, Maryland, its shell would
travel across three states and fall into New York Bay at Perth Amboy.
At the top of its trajectory it would rise 46 miles above the earth.
But the most astonishing part of the design was the length of the gun,
which worked out to 225 feet. An enormous powder-chamber would have
to be used, so that the powder gases would keep speeding up the shell
until it reached the required velocity at the muzzle. The weight of the
barrel alone was estimated at 325 tons.
It would have to be built up in four sections screwed together and
because of its great length and weight it would have to be supported on
a steel truss. The gun would be mounted like a roller lift-bridge with
a heavy counter-weight at its lower end so that it could be elevated or
depressed at will and a powerful hydraulic jack would be required to
raise it.
The recoil of a big gun is always a most important matter. Unless a gun
can recoil, it will be smashed by the shock of the powder explosion.
Usually, heavy springs are used to take up the shock, or cylinders
filled with oil in which pistons slide. The pistons have small holes
in them through which the oil is forced as the piston moves and this
retards the gun in its recoil. But this "super-gun" was designed to
be mounted on a carriage running on a set of tracks laid in a long
concrete pit. On the recoil the gun would run back along the tracks,
and its motion would be retarded by friction blocks between the
carriage and the tracks and also by a steel cable attached to the
forward end of the carriage and running over a pulley on the front wall
of the pit, to a friction drum.
The engraving facing page 68 gives some idea of the enormous size of
the gun. Note the man at the breech of the gun. The hydraulic jack is
collapsible, so that the gun may be brought to the horizontal position
for loading, as shown by the dotted lines. The cost of building this
gun is estimated at two and a half million dollars and its 400-pound
shell would land only about sixty pounds of high explosives on the
target. A bombing-plane costing but thirty thousand dollars could land
twenty-five times as big a charge of high explosives with far greater
accuracy. Aside from this, the gun lining would soon wear out because
of the tremendous erosion of the powder gases.
THE THREE-SECOND LIFE OF A GUN
Powder gases are very hot indeed--hot enough to melt steel. The greater
the pressure in the gun, the hotter they are. It is only because
they pass through the gun so quickly, that they do not melt it. As a
matter of fact, they do wear it out rapidly because of their heat and
velocity. They say that the life of a big gun is only three seconds.
Of course, a shell passes through the gun in a very minute part of a
second, but if we add up these tiny periods until we have a total of
three seconds, during which the gun may have fired two hundred rounds,
we shall find that the lining of the barrel is so badly eroded that the
gun is unfit for accurate shooting, and it must go back to the shops
for a new inner tube.
ELASTIC GUNS
We had better go back with it and learn something about the manufacture
of a big gun. Guns used to be cast as a solid chunk of metal. Now
they are built up in layers. To understand why this is necessary, we
must realize that steel is not a dead mass, but is highly elastic--far
more elastic than rubber, although, of course, it does not stretch nor
compress so far. When a charge of powder is exploded in the barrel of a
gun, it expands in all directions. Of course, the projectile yields to
the pressure of the powder gases and is sent kiting out of the muzzle
of the gun. But for an instant before the shell starts to move, an
enormous force is exerted against the walls of the bore of the gun,
and, because steel is elastic, the barrel is expanded by this pressure,
and the bore is actually made larger for a moment, only to spring back
in the next instant. You can picture this action if you imagine a gun
made of rubber; as soon as the powder was fired, the rubber gun would
bulge out around the powder-chamber, only to collapse to its normal
size when the pressure was relieved by the discharge of the bullet.
Now, every elastic body has what is called its elastic limit. If you
take a coil spring, you can pull it out or you can compress it, and
it will always return to its original shape, unless you pull it out
or compress it beyond a certain point; that point is its elastic
limit. The same is true of a piece of steel: if you stretch it beyond
a certain point, it will not return to its original shape. When the
charge of powder in a cannon exceeds a certain amount, it stretches the
steel beyond its elastic limit, so that the bore becomes permanently
larger. Making the walls of the gun heavier would not prevent this,
because steel is so elastic that the inside of the walls expands beyond
its elastic limit before the outside is affected at all.
Years ago an American inventor named Treadwell worked out a scheme for
allowing the bore to expand more without exceeding its elastic limit.
He built up his gun in layers, and shrunk the outer layers upon the
inner layers, just as a blacksmith shrinks a tire on a wheel, so that
the inner tube of the gun would be squeezed, or compressed. When the
powder was fired, this inner layer could expand farther without danger,
because it was compressed to start with. The built-up gun was also
independently invented by a British inventor. All modern big guns are
built up.
HOW BIG GUNS ARE MADE
The inside tube, known as the lining, is cast roughly to shape, then
it is bored out, after which it is forged by the blows of a powerful
steam-hammer. Of course, while under the hammer, the tube is mounted on
a mandrel, or bar, that just fits the bore. The metal is then softened
in an annealing furnace, after which it is turned down to the proper
diameter and re-bored to the exact caliber. The diameter of the lining
is made three ten-thousandths of an inch larger than the inside of the
hoop or sleeve that fits over it. This sleeve, which is formed in the
same way, is heated up to 800 degrees, or until its inside diameter is
eight tenths of an inch larger than the outside diameter of the lining.
The lining is stood up on end and the sleeve is fitted over it. Then it
is cooled by means of water, so that it grips the lining and compresses
it. In this way, layer after layer is added until the gun is built up
to the proper size.
[Illustration: Photograph from Underwood & Underwood
A Long-distance Sub-calibered French Gun on a Railway Mount]
Instead of having a lining that is compressed by means of sleeves or
jackets, many big guns are wound with wire which is pulled so tight
as to compress the lining. The gun-tube is placed in a lathe, and
is turned so as to wind up the wire upon it. A heavy brake on the wire
keeps it drawn very tight. This wire, also, is put on in layers, so
that each layer can expand considerably without exceeding its elastic
limit. Our big 16-inch coast-defense guns are wound with wire that
is one tenth of an inch square. The length of wire on one gun is
sufficient to reach all the way from New York to Boston with fifty or
sixty miles of wire left over.
[Illustration: Courtesy of "Scientific American"
Inside of a Shrapnel Shell and Details of the Fuse Cap
Search-light Shell and one of its Candles]
GUNS THAT PLAY HIDE-AND-SEEK
A very ingenious invention is the disappearing-mount which is used
on our coast fortifications. By means of this a gun is hidden beyond
its breastworks so that it is absolutely invisible to the enemy. In
this sheltered position it is loaded and aimed. It is not necessary
to sight the gun on the target as you would sight a rifle. The aiming
is done mathematically. Off at some convenient observation post,
an observer gets the range of the target and telephones this range
to the plotting-room, where a rapid calculation is made as to how
much the gun should be elevated and swung to the right or the left.
This calculation is then sent on to the gunners, who adjust the
gun accordingly. When all is ready, the gun is raised by hydraulic
pressure, and just as it rises above the parapet it is automatically
fired. The recoil throws the gun back to its crouching position behind
the breastworks. All that the enemy sees, if anything, is the flash of
the discharge.
Now that airplanes have been invented, the disappearing-mount has lost
much of its usefulness. Big guns have to be hidden from above. They are
usually located behind a hill, five or six miles back of the trenches,
where the enemy cannot see them from the ground, and they are carefully
hidden under trees or a canopy of foliage or are disguised with paint.
The huge guns recently built to defend our coasts are intended to fire
a shell that will pierce the heavy armor of a modern dreadnought. The
shell is arranged to explode after it has penetrated the armor, and
the penetrating-power is a very important matter. About thirty years
ago the British built three battle-ships, each fitted with two guns
of 16-1/4-inch caliber and 30-caliber length. In order to test the
penetrating-power of this gun a target was built, consisting first of
twenty inches of steel armor and eight inches of wrought-iron; this
was backed by twenty feet of oak, five feet of granite, eleven feet
of concrete, and six feet of brick. When the shell struck this target
it passed through the steel, the iron, the oak, the granite, and the
concrete, and did not stop until it had penetrated three feet of the
brick. We have not subjected our 16-inch gun to such a test, but we
know that it would go through two such targets and still have plenty of
energy left. Incidentally, it costs us $1,680 each time the big gun is
fired.
THE FAMOUS FORTY-TWO-CENTIMETER GUN
One of the early surprises of the war was the huge gun used by the
Germans to destroy the powerful Belgian forts. Properly speaking,
this was not a gun, but a howitzer; and right here we must learn the
difference between mortars, howitzers, and guns. What we usually mean
by "gun" is a piece of long caliber which is designed to hurl its
shell with a flat trajectory. But long ago it was found advantageous
to throw a projectile not at but upon a fortification, and for this
purpose short pieces of large bore were built. These would fire at a
high angle, so that the projectile would fall almost vertically on the
target.
As we have said, the bore of a gun is rifled; that is, it is provided
with spiral grooves that will set the shell spinning, so as to keep
its nose pointing in the direction of its flight. Mortars, on the
other hand, were originally intended for short-range firing, and their
bore was not rifled. In recent years, however, mortars have been made
longer and with rifled bores, so as to increase their range, and such
long mortars are called "howitzers." The German 42-centimeter howitzer
fired a shell that was 2,108 pounds in weight and was about 1-1/2 yards
long. The diameter of the shell was 42 centimeters, which is about
16-1/2 inches. It carried an enormous amount of high explosive, which
was designed to go off after the shell had penetrated its target. The
marvel of this howitzer was not that it could fire so big a shell
but that so large a piece of artillery could be transported over the
highroads and be set for use in battle. But although the 42-centimeter
gun was widely advertised, the real work of smashing the Belgian forts
was done by the Austrian "Skoda" howitzers, which fired a shell of
30.5-centimeter (12-inch) caliber, and not by the 42-centimeter gun.
The Skoda howitzer could be taken apart and transported by three
motor-cars of 100 horse-power each. The cars traveled at a rate of
about twelve miles per hour. It is claimed the gun could be put
together in twenty-four minutes, and would fire at the rate of one shot
per minute.
FIELD-GUNS
So far, we have talked only of the big guns, but in a modern battle
the field-gun plays a very important part. This fires a shell that
weighs between fourteen and eighteen pounds and is about three inches
in diameter. The shell and the powder that fires it are contained in a
cartridge that is just like the cartridge of a shoulder rifle. These
field-pieces are built to be fired rapidly. The French 75-millimeter
gun, which is considered one of the best, will fire at the rate of
twenty shots per minute, and its effective range is considerably over
three miles. The French supplied us with all 75-millimeter guns we
needed in the war, while we concentrated our efforts on the manufacture
of ammunition.
GUNS THAT FIRE GUNS
During the War of the Revolution, cannon were fired at short range, and
it was the custom to load them with grape-shot, or small iron balls,
when firing against a charging enemy, because the grape would scatter
like the shot of a shot-gun and tear a bigger gap in the ranks of the
enemy than would a single solid cannon-ball. In modern warfare, guns
are fired from a greater distance, so that there will be little danger
of their capture. It is impossible for them to fire grape, because
the ranges are far too great; besides, it would be impossible to aim
a charge of grape-shot over any considerable distance, because the
shot would start spreading as soon as they left the muzzle of the gun
and would scatter too far and wide to be of much service. But this
difficulty has been overcome by the making of a shell which is really a
gun in itself. Within this shell is the grape-shot, which consists of
two hundred and fifty half-inch balls of lead. The shell is fired over
the lines of the enemy, and just at the right moment it explodes and
scatters a hail of leaden balls over a fairly wide area.
It is not a simple matter to time a shrapnel shell so that it will
explode at just the right moment. Spring-driven clockwork has been
tried, which would explode a cap after the lapse of a certain amount
of time; but this way of timing shells has not proved satisfactory.
Nowadays a train of gunpowder is used. When the shell is fired, the
shock makes a cap (see drawing facing page 77) strike a pin, _E_, which
ignites the train of powder, _A_. The head of the shell is made of two
parts, in each of which there is a powder-fuse. There is a vent, or
short cut, leading from one fuse to the other, and, by the turning of
one part of the fuse-head with respect to the other, this short cut
is made to carry the train of fire from the upper to the lower fuse
sooner or later, according to the adjustment. The fire burns along
one powder-train _A_, and then jumps through the short cut _B_ to the
other, or movable train, as it is called, until it finally reaches,
through hole _C_, the main charge _F_, in the shell. The movable part
of the fuse-head is graduated so that the fuse may be set to explode
the shell at any desired distance. In the fuse-head there is also a
detonating-pin _K_, which will strike the primer _L_ and explode the
shell when the latter strikes the ground, if the time-fuse has failed
to act.
When attacking airplanes, it is important to be able to follow the
flight of the shell, so some shrapnel shell are provided with a
smoke-producing mixture, which is set on fire when the shell is
discharged, so as to produce a trail of smoke.
[Illustration: (C) Committee on Public Information
Putting on the Gas Masks to Meet a Gas Cloud Attack]
In meeting the attack of any enemy at night, search-light shell are
sometimes used. On exploding they discharge a number of "candles,"
each provided with a tiny parachute that lets the candle drop
slowly to the ground. Their brilliant light lasts fifteen or twenty
minutes. Obviously, ordinary search-lights could not be used on the
battle-field, because the lamp would at once be a target for enemy
batteries, but with search-light shell the gun that fires them can
remain hidden and one's own lines be shrouded in darkness while the
enemy lines are brilliantly illuminated.