Their Marvellous Accuracy Only Attained by Constant Practice With Most Ingenious Mechanical Aids.
Almost simultaneously with the publication of a statement by a British general that the practice of English naval gunners was so bad that he offered to take girls out of school who could do as well. The United State battleship Indiana sailed into this port with the boast that her gunners had broken the world record. With an eight-inch gun of the Indiana a seaman named Treanor had hit a bull’s-eye four times consecutively. The mark was four feet square and at a distance of 1600 yards. The four shots were made in the record breaking time of two minutes and sixteen seconds. Had the target practice occurred in Fifth avenue, the cannon might have stood at Forty-second street and the target could have been represented by an umbrella near the Flatiron Building.
Many attaches who are stationed in this country have been instructed to learn the secret of American marksmanship and to report to their home governments; and to the attaches has been accorded every opportunity to carry out their mission. But they have learned no secret. They found no new mechanism, no novel combination of levers and wheels which were not already known to the naval experts of Europe. As one expressed it:
“It’s the American gunner: not the American gun. The American sailor practices until he can’t miss. The European gunner too often practices until he is tired.”
Although the United States Government does not spend so much for new battleships as England or Germany, it lays more emphasis upon marksmanship than any other country in the world. More time and ammunition are exhausted in the American Navy in proportion to its size than in any of its rivals. There are seven practices a year for full calibre ammunition, six sea practices when the number of hits is not recorded except for the immediate instruction of the gunners, and one record practice, which is reported in detail to Washington, so that the head naval officials know what every gunner can and cannot do. Still further to encourage expert marksmanship, the Navy Department, on the recommendation of President Roosevelt, has now provided that men who qualify as first class gunners shall obtain $10 more a month. Second class gunners are to get an additional $6. This order went into effect on November 1.
Although sham battles and deep sea target practice are important in training the gunner, nevertheless, these are not the chief contributors to his skill. When a visitor boards a warship and chances to ask the “man behind the gun” what has done most to train his eye. lie will answer:
“It’s the little popgun up there.” and he will point to an apparatus on board which looks more than anything else like a Coney Island shooting gallery. “That gives me daily practice. A man can never get stale with a Morris tube aboard.”
Every day on board American men-of-war at the present time the men practice with the big guns and the little guns, by means of the Morris tube. The rivalry is so keen between the different ships, and between gunners on the same ship, that every man in the crew is eager and anxious to excel as a marksman. Every one has a chance, the cook as well as the seaman, the stoker the same as the Annapolis lieutenant: and if the cook and the stoker prove that they can “hit.’’ they are the men who point the cannon in the big test maneuvres.
A party of Westerners chanced to be aboard the Indiana the other day at the navy yard, when one of them exclaimed:
“What is that popping I hear? I thought first that some one was roasting corn, but the pops don’t come often enough for that.”
“That is the target practice on the after deck.” replied an officer.
“And what are they shooting with?” asked a St. Louis man. “That sounds like bottles popping.”
“The men are practicing with the thirteen-inch guns,” was the reply. “They are the largest we have on board.”
The visitors looked as if they had bought a gold brick. They saw they must have blundered, but wondered how.
“Just come this way. and I’ll show you,” said the officer.
On the barrel of a huge gun which, with its prim partner, projected far out of the after turret, sat a sailor astride. He was as far back from the muzzle as he could get. and was so intent on loading a small rifle that he did not notice he was being watched. The rifle was supported by two steel up rights, bound fast to the cannon. It looked like any shooting gallery rifle of .22-calibre, except that an electric wire hung from its trigger. The wire ran into the turret.
Just above the gun’s muzzle hung a miniature target, on the face of which, were nine black squares at regular distances one from another. At first glance they looked like a tiny checker board. Each black square was .7 Inch by .9 inch in size.
“You see those black spots up there,” said the officer. “Well, each one of them is a target. We put up nine all at once, so we don’t have to stop after each shot and put up a new mark. Now. you notice that the collection of targets is by no means stationary. It hangs from the end of a boom, which one set of ropes makes roll up and down to imitate the roll of a ship, and which another pulley swings sideways in place of the longitudinal motion of the ship as it speeds on its course.”
At this moment there was a puff of smoke from the toy rifle. It was the same sort of pop they had heard before. At the same instant the sailor astride the cannon ejected an empty shell and thrust a fresh cartridge into its place. Then the Westerner, who had finished studying the target through some heavy spectacles, exclaimed:
“Say, but I don’t see where the bullet struck!”
“It went through one of the black spots,” was the officer’s answer. “That toy rifle, which is made fast to the cannon, is called a Morris tube. Its barrel is exactly parallel with that of the thirteen-inch gun. Its muzzle is twenty-nine feet away from the target. which is so small that it is no easier to hit it with this .22-caiibre gun than to hit a twenty-foot target 1600 yards away with a thirteen-inch cannon.”
“But how does the gunner aim so exactly’:” interrupted the Chicago man.
“Do you see those three hoods at the top of the turret’:” replied the navy man. “The gun pointers of the two guns are in the end hoods. The gun trainer for both guns is in the central hood. That little hole in the front of each hood is where the marksman looks out through his sighting telescope. The gun pointer elevates and lowers his gun and tries to keep on his target all the time. The gun trainer swings the cannon horizontally by turning the turret. It is he who turns the cannon to follow a moving object. The gun pointer, however, is the man who fires the cannon. In his hand is the firing key. Just now the little rifle answers exactly the same purpose as the big gun itself. Both gun pointer and gun trainer are now working the mechanism of the thirteen-inch gun and using the same sights. The only difference is that the electric spark explodes a .22-calibre cartridge instead of 520 pounds of powder inside the big cannon. Firing with big guns costs thousands of dollars a shot. This Morris tube costs practically nothing.”
The party then inspected the interior of the turret. It was a contracted place, where a tall man would bump his head continually. All inspected the labyrinthine mechanism which opened and closed the great breech of each of the two guns. Beneath was a sort of chasm, where one could look down into the ammunition room of the hold, and out of which in time of war or actual gun practice the titanic charges of powder and shell come vomiting up.
Passaic City Record, Passaic, NJ, December 12, 1903