Chapter XIII: The Big Gun

Perhaps the most convincing speech I ever read was made impromptu by Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon at a meeting of the Institution of Naval Architects on March 12th, 1913.

First of all Admiral Bacon disposed of the fallacy brought forward by one of the speakers, as to which is more effective in disabling the enemy, to destroy the structure of the ship or destroy the guns--the fact being that both are bound up together--if you utterly destroy the hull of the ship you thereby practically destroy the gun-fire. (This is one of those things so obvious that one greatly wonders how these clever experts lose themselves.)

Then Admiral Bacon in a most lovely parable disposed of the “Bow and Arrow Party,” who want a lot of small guns instead of, as in the Dreadnought, but one type of gun and that the heaviest gun that can be made. This is Admiral Bacon:--

“I should like to draw your attention to some advice that was
given many years ago by an old Post Captain to a Midshipman.
He said, ‘Boy, if ever you are dining and after dinner, over
the wine, some subject like politics is discussed when men’s
passions are aroused, if a man throws a glass of wine in your
face, do not throw a glass of wine in his: _Throw the decanter
stopper!_’ And that is what we advocates of the Heavy Gun as
mounted in the Dreadnought propose to do--not to slop the
six-inch shot over the shirt-front of a battleship, but to go
for her with the heaviest guns we can get; and the heavier
the explosive charge you can get in your shell and the bigger
explosion you can wreak on the structure near the turrets and
the conning tower and over the armoured deck the more likely
you are to disable that ship. We object most strongly to the
fire of the big guns being interfered with by the use of
smaller guns at the same time with all the smoke and mess that
are engendered by them. The attention of the Observing Officers
is distracted; their sight is to a great extent obliterated,
and even the theoretical result of the small guns is not worth
the candle.... The ordinary six-inch gun in a battleship is,
as regards torpedo-boat attack, of just as much use as a stick
is to an old gentleman who is being snow-balled: it keeps his
enemy at a respectful distance but still within the vulnerable
range of the torpedo. In these days the locomotive torpedo
can be fired at ranges at which it is absolutely impossible
even to hope or think of hitting the Destroyer which fires
the torpedoes at you. You may try to do it, but it is quite
useless. Very well, then; the six-inch gun does keep the
Destroyer at a longer range than would be the case if the
six-inch gun were not there, that’s all.... Then the problem
of speed has been touched upon. I quite see from one point of
view that to lose two guns for an extra five-knot speed seems
a great loss; but there is one question which I should like
to ask, and that is whether you would send out to sea a whole
fleet, the whole strength of the nation, with no single ship of
sufficient superior speed to pick up a particular ship of the
enemy? That is the point to rivet your attention upon. We must
always in our Navy have ships of greatly superior speed to any
one particular ship in the enemy’s fleet, otherwise over the
face of the sea you will have ships of the enemy roaming about
that we cannot overhaul and that nothing can touch.”

The above words were spoken by Admiral Bacon two and three-quarter years before Admiral von Spee and his fast Squadron were caught up and destroyed by the British fast Battle Cruisers, “Invincible” and “Inflexible.” Admiral Bacon was a prophet! In other words, Admiral Bacon had Common Sense, and saw the Obvious.

It’s difficult for a shore-going person to realise things obvious to the sailor. For instance: in the case of a Big Gun, if twice two is four, then twice four isn’t eight, it’s sixteen, and twice eight isn’t sixteen, it’s sixty-four; that is to say, the bursting effect of a shell varies with the square. So the bigger the calibre of the gun the more immense is the desolating effect of the shell, and, incidentally, the longer the range at which you hit the enemy.

The projectile of the 20-inch gun that was ready to be made for H.M.S. “Incomparable” weighed _over two tons_, and the gun itself weighed 200 _tons_. Such a projectile, associated with a Howitzer, may effect vast changes in both Sea and Land War, because of the awful and immense craters such shell explosions would effect.

To illustrate the frightful devastating effect of such huge shell I will tell a story that I heard from a great friend of mine, a Japanese Admiral. He was a Lieutenant at the time of the Chino-Japanese War. The Chinese vessels mounted very heavy guns. One of their shells burst on the side of the Japanese ship in which my friend was. The Captain sent him down off the bridge to see what had happened, as the ship tottered under the effect of this shell. When he got down on the gun deck, he saw, as it were, the whole side of the ship open to the sea, and not a vestige of any of the crew could he see. They had all been blown to pieces. The only thing he rescued was the uniform cap of his friend, the Lieutenant who was in charge of that division of guns, blown up overhead between the beams. The huge rope mantlets that acted as splinter nettings hung between the guns had utterly disappeared and were resolved into tooth powder! (so he described it).

I digress here with an anecdote that comes to my mind and which greatly impressed me with the extraordinary humility of the Japanese mind. I had remonstrated with my Japanese friend as to Admiral Togo not having been suitably rewarded for his wonderful victory over the Russian Admiral Rozhdestvensky. He replied: “Sir, Admiral Togo has received the Second Class of the Order of the Golden Kite!” We should have made him a Duke straight off! Togo was made a Count afterwards, but not all at once--for fear, I suppose, of giving him a swelled head. He was a great man, Togo; he was extremely diffident about accepting the English Order of Merit, and even then he wore the Order the wrong way out, so that the inscription “For Merit” should not be seen. The Mikado asked him, after the great battle, to bring to him the bravest man in the Fleet; the Mikado expecting to see a Japanese of some sort. I am told that Admiral Togo brought Admiral Pakenham, who was alongside him during the action. I quite believe it; but I have always been too shy to ask my friend if it was true. All I know is that I never read better Despatches anywhere than those of Admiral Pakenham.

_Reproduced by courtesy of_ “_The Graphic_”

LORD FISHER’S PROPOSED SHIP, H.M.S. “INCOMPARABLE,” SHOWN ALONGSIDE H.M.S. “DREADNOUGHT.”]

Somewhat is said in my “Memories” of the unmistakable astoundingness of huge bursting charges in the shell of big guns. (I should be sorry to limit the effects to even Geometrical Progression!) I don’t think Science has as yet more than mathematically investigated the amazing quality of Detonation. Here is a picture (see opposite p. 176) of only eighteen inch gun shells, such as the Battle Cruiser “Furious” was designed and built to fire. Her guns with their enormous shells were built to make it impossible for the Germans to prevent the Russian Millions from landing on the Pomeranian Coast! In this connection I append a rough sketch by Oscar Parkes of a twenty-inch gun ship (see opposite). The sketch will offend the critical eye of my very talented friend, Sir Eustace Tennyson d’Eyncourt, but it’s good enough for shoregoing people to give them the idea of what, but for the prodigious development of Air-craft, would have been as great a New Departure as was the “Dreadnought.” The shells of the “Incomparable” fired from her twenty-inch guns would each have weighed over two tons! Imagine two tons being hurled by each of these guns to a height above the summit of the Matterhorn, or any other mountain you like to take, and bursting on its reaching the ground far out of human sight, but yet with exact accuracy as to where it should fall, causing in its explosion a crater somewhat like that of Vesuvius or Mount Etna, and consequently you can then easily imagine the German Army fleeing for its life from Pomerania to Berlin. The “Furious” (and all her breed) was not built for Salvoes! They were built for Berlin, and that’s why they drew so little water and were built so fragile, so as to weigh as little as possible, and so go faster.

It is very silly indeed to build vessels of War so strong as to last a hundred years. They are obsolete in less than ten years. But the Navy is just one mass of Tories! In the old days a Sailing Line of Battleship never became obsolete; the winds of Heaven remained as in the days of Noah. I staggered one Old Admiral by telling him that it blew twice as hard now as when he was at sea; he couldn’t go head-to-wind in his day with sails only, now with the wind forty miles against you you can go forty miles dead against it, and therefore the wind is equal to eighty miles an hour. He didn’t quite take it in. I heard one First Sea Lord say to the Second Sea Lord, when scandalised at seeing in a new ship a bathroom for the midshipmen, that he never washed when he went to sea and he didn’t see why the midshipmen should now! But what most upset him was that the seat of the water-closet was mahogany French-polished, instead of good old oak holystoned every morning and so always nice and damp to sit on. (Another improvement is unmentionable!)

I must not leave this chapter without expressing my unbounded delight in having to do business with so splendid a man as Major A. G. Hadcock, the Head of the Ordnance Department at the Elswick Works, who fought out single-handed all the difficulties connected with the inception of the eighteen-inch and the twenty-inch guns of the “Furious” and “Incomparable.” I have another friend of the same calibre, who has consistently been in the forefront of the Battle for the adoption of the biggest possible gun that could be constructed--Admiral Sir Sydney Eardley-Wilmot; he was also the most efficient Chief of the Munitions Department of the Admiralty. When I was gasping with Hadcock over a 20-inch gun, Wilmot had a 22-inch gun! I really felt small (quite unusual with me!). Now I hope no one is going to quote this line when they review this book:--“Some men grow great, others only swell.”