OF BATTLESHIP DESIGN. 107 
As to the point of shooting as far as you can see, it is quite well known to everybody, 
I think, that a 14-inch gun will penetrate all that is necessary to penetrate. It will penetrate 
as far as you can see. A 16-inch gun, while it may penetrate a little bit more, has the ad- 
vantage that its exterior ballistics are usually greatly superior to the 14-inch gun. That 
is a phase of the situation that very few people take account of, and the two most important 
features of the exterior ballistics are the destructive effect and the dispersion. Now the dis- 
persion is something which is not spoken of much, but is of immense importance in consider- 
ing any gunfire installation. 
I cannot talk too much about dispersion, and I am not supposed to say too much about 
it, but I can make it plain by saying that in the case of our 12-inch, 50-caliber gun in shoot- 
ing as far as you can see, as the Captain so well expressed it, you are straining that gun to 
get the last atom of strength out of it. The result is when you straddle the target that the 
salvos have a dispersion of the order of 600 or 800 yards, or even higher, but by going to a 
16-inch gun and straddling the target at the same range, you are not straining the gun— 
you are shooting well within the exterior ballistics of the gun, the straddle is of the order 
of 200 or 300 yards, and the result is a materially greater number of hits, even if you give 
the 16-inch gun a much less muzzle velocity, which you would do to take advantage of the 
larger caliber. 
That point is a most important one. You must consider the dispersion of the gun 
strained to its limit, and you have to strain a 12-inch or even a 14-inch gun to its limit, but 
you do not have to strain the 16-inch gun. The increased destructive effect is simply ex- 
pressed by saying that if the two shells hit the same place, the 16-inch shell will do one- 
third more damage than the 14-inch shell. That should be quite enough for the destructive 
effect of the 16-inch gun to justify putting it on the ship. 
As regards the guarded feature, there is nothing particularly guarded about the paper. 
It was passed on by the Department. All of the material prepared for the paper was 
passed on by the Department, and nothing of moment was eliminated, except such as might 
give definite figures and statistics in support of the statements made in the paper. 
THE PRESIDENT :—We have certainly listened to a most interesting paper, and quite as 
interesting a discussion, and on behalf of the Society I tender to Naval Constructor Gate- 
wood sincere thanks for the paper. 
We will now take up paper No. 10, entitled, “On the Suitability of Current Designs of 
Submarines to the Needs of the U. S. Navy,” by Captain W. L. Rodgers, U. S. Navy, 
Associate. 
Captain Rodgers presented the paper. 
