Our Big Guns and How They Are Made 



It is the most powerful thing on earth, is a great gun, but 

 its actual firing life is not as long as the life of a butterfly 



Illustrations by Kadel and Herbert 



IT is not easy to understand what the 

 power of a gun really is — its penetrat- 

 ing and destructive power. What we 

 call a 15-inch gun — which means one whose 

 muzzle or hollow part is 15 inches in diam- 

 eter — will hurl a shell right through a plate 

 or wall of the hardest steel 12 inches thick 

 seven miles from the muzzle. The power 

 of the very largest land guns ever made — 

 the German howitzers or 16.5-inch guns — 

 is such that one of their missiles cracks open 

 a steel and concrete fort as if it were a nut. 



"Built-up" and Wire- wound Guns 

 and What They Are 

 There are two classes of guns — naval 

 guns and army or land guns. Because they 

 can be manipulated more easily than those 

 of a ship, land guns are the heavier. 

 From eight to ten miles is the greatest 

 distance that a gunner can cover success- 

 fully at sea. The largest naval gun is the 

 15-inch English gun on the famous super- 

 dreadnought, and the largest land gun is 

 the German howitzer. Of the two the 

 naval gun fires a shell weighing over half 

 a ton, while the other fires a projectile a 

 ton in weight. But the new giant 16-inch 



guns of the United States defending the 

 Panama Canal and New York at Sandy 

 Hook shoot projectiles weighing 2,370 

 pounds, which is over a ton. These im- 

 mense steel guns can sink a ship before it 

 has really come into sight on the horizon, 

 the location of the battleship having been 

 determined by airplane or tower. 



How are these huge pieces made? The 

 first step is the making of the pig iron from 

 iron ore in large furnaces like towers, 

 called blast furnaces. Then the pig iron 

 is melted with other steel in large steel 

 furnaces called "open hearth," until it is 

 freed of its impurities and converted into 

 steel. - 



The melted steel, thin as water, is run 

 from these furnaces into big iron molds 

 where it is allowed to cool into large solid 

 cylindrical or corrugated blocks. After 

 cooling these are reheated and reduced in 

 size by pounding them with big steam ham- 

 mers and squeezing them in rolls until at 

 last the steel is pressed into a long barrel- 

 like mass, the embryo of a real gun. This 

 long skeleton of the inside of a gun must 

 be bored out from one end to the other on 

 immense lathes, some over 



The man is leaning against his completed work — an immense steel gun — the 

 most powerful product of his skill. The various hoops that go to make up 

 such a weapon are easily picked out — large steel bands which are put on 

 one after another as described in the article. It is impossible to determine 

 whether this is a built-up or wire-wound gun. The breech is clearly shown 



