GUN-MOUNTINGS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2571, 4 August 1909, Page 2

GUN-MOUNTINGS.

. WHY THEY TAKE SO LONG GUN-MAKING EXTRAORDINARY. “It would give you some idea of the size of tlie works that go in for making these big gun-mountings if you realise that the yard at Armstrong’s is about three miles long by three-quarters of a mile wide. We mislaid a 12m gun there once —nobody could find it. Fellows came into the shop asking, ‘Has anyone seen a 12in gun?’ It turned up after a while on a siding. It had got shunted there and had been lost track of. “They went better than that once. They mislaid a battleship. She was built for some South American Republic, I believe, but, it went bankrupt before she was delivered, and couluu’t ktump up for her. So she was moored down the river to wait until a buyer turned up. But when inquiries did come and tliev went to got her they cou.dn’t find her. People were running ah over the place, asking where a small American battleship had been put. It turned out after "she was moored some authorities caine along and shiited her. At least that’s the story. I wasn’t in tho yard then, so I can’t vouch for it. But I heard them asking for tho 12in gun myself. That will give you an idea of the size of the great businesses which make big gun mountings. I suppose in all their works Armstrongs normally employ about 50,000 men. That is more than Vickers, Maxim, but not so many as Krupps.” Those were the comments of an engineer from some of the great ship and gun building yards of the North of England,, who happened to be in Sydney recently, when a cable as to Armstrong’s having begun'to'design the long-promised gun mountings came to hand. “Gun-mountings—yes, they take some making/’ he said. “In tho first place you have to Begin with the ammunition boist, about 35 feet away down below the gun itself. They’d start making that in all its many pieces in out* of the shops in tho yard. On top of that, 10 feet below the gun, goes a swivel, and in the swivel is a joint for the hydraulic working. That swivel joint has not only to stand_ a pressure of 20001bs to the square inch; it has to work in every direction under the pressure. They’d be making that in another shop in tho yard. Next, still a good way before you get to the gun itself, there would be tlio rollers on which the turret revolves, and in all this arrangement there have to be fitted three different apparatus for working the turret —the hydraulic gcar }/ the electric gear, and the mechanical gear. ' Up, above the rollers, is the chair of the gun, in which it is elevated and depressed, and next the springs to take the immense recoil of a big gun. So the gun mounting is really a sort of tower built up with a place for the gun on top of it. For you know when a gun is fixed in a ship it is not just clamped flat on tlie deck and leit there. Its roots go right away into the ammunition passages, something in the shape of a carrot in the yard before we plant it in tlie ship. Each part of it, tlie hoist, the rollers, and the rest, has to bo tint together in its own shop first, and scraped and adjusted until the minute bits of it fit to the- most delicate perfection. Afterwards the parts arc taken down again and carried along to one of the gun pits, 30ft deep, for tlie. whole tower of the gun • mounting from top to bottom to be assembled. It is the most, intricate complicated business. When they’ve built it up bit by bit, pieced it together like a child’s puzzle, they bring along the gun and lower it on to the mounting ; mid thero i)j the turret/ and mounting and Sun standing' in the pit all complete, making a sorb of tower, oOit from top to bottom. “In the old times they had to ta'kd it all. to pieces again and pack it off to where the ship Was lying and set it together again insidd lier. But now they have a simpler way. They have the gun pits in a shop by the waterside. They bring the ship up outside, and they, with a jib crane, which is the biggest in the world, and has all arm 170 feet long, they lift the whole mass, turret, guns, and mountings and all. The roof of the shop slides aside, you see the jib of the old crane outside swing round in the skv over the opening, and then up it all goes through the r00f.., of the shop, and is planted in the ship. When they can’t do that, because the ship is building somewhere else, and can’t well bo sent round to'the Tyne, they have to pack the guns off to her. In that case the gun goes sailing out of the yard on about three railway trucks of its own.”