EVOLUTION OF THE MODERN HEAVY GUN. 159 



tance of five and a half miles, and it pierces through armor a yard 

 thick at a distance of a mile and a quarter. Another rifle, twenty- 

 eight centimetres (eleven inches) in caliber and forty calibers 

 (thirty-seven feet) in length, when elevated forty degrees sends a 

 seven hundred and sixty pound projectile over twelve and a half 

 miles. This is the distance from the Battery to Fordham in New 

 York city. The shot reaches an extreme height of a trifle over 

 four .miles. It could thus be easily made to clear the highest 

 mountain peak in North America. 



The power of endurance of a gun diminishes rapidly with in- 

 crease of projectile power. The life of the American twelve-inch 

 rifle has been given as only five hundred or six hundred rounds, 

 while a field gun of modern make may be fired thousands of times 

 if used with reasonable care. Within the next two years a new 

 rifle of sixteen-inch caliber will be constructed at Watervliet. 

 This is nearly equal in size to the monster Krupp gun at Chicago. 

 Such immense guns can be employed only for seacoast defense. 

 In handling them complex machinery is necessary, not only for 

 moving and adjusting the gun but for loading it. No group of 

 soldiers could without machinery lift and put into place a projec- 

 tile weighing a ton. It seems doubtful whether any real advan- 

 tage can be gained by going beyond the limits of size already 



TWELVE-INCH RIFLE, WITH BREECH-LOADING MECHANISM OPEN. 



reached. The difficulty at present is not confined to that of ma- 

 nipulation, but extends to the quality of the forgings made on 

 so large a scale. Krupp makes his guns entirely of " crucible " 

 steel, such as is employed for cutlery. Made by this method, 

 steel is indeed the most uniform in composition, but nowhere 

 outside of the Krupp works has it been manufactured on a 

 scale large enough for great gun forgings. In France, in Eng- 

 land, and in America, the "open-hearth" process is depended 



