14 NOTES ON THE ARMAMENTS OF BATTEESHIPS. 



overcome sufficiently for practical purposes, and that they must be accepted 

 in order to obtain the essential quality of a preponderating offensive power. 

 Even if this be granted, it still remains a matter for debate whether, on the 

 v/hole, it is desirable to mount ten or twelve heavy guns in pairs and in five 

 or six positions in any single ship. 



The main reason advanced in favor of mounting ten to twelve guns 

 in a battleship is that, in this manner, an overwhelming concentration of 

 offensive power is secured. It has been the fashion in some quarters to 

 adopt the simple method of assessing offensive power by counting the 

 number of 12 -inch guns carried. A ship carrying, say, twelve 12 -inch guns 

 has been reckoned equal to three ships each armed with four 12-inch guns 

 even when the latter have carried in addition powerful and well-protected 

 secondary armaments. It hardly seems necessary to deal with such a 

 method of comparison in this paper and before this Society, and it will be 

 more profitable to state certain governing conditions to which regard must 

 be had in reaching a reasonable conclusion on the point now under con- 

 sideration. 



No one questions the importance attaching to a highly concentrated 

 attack on an enemy : but it is equally certain that, in present circumstances — 

 as naval actions will frequently be fought at long range — the fire of twelve 

 12-inch guns carried by three ships can be as effectively concentrated on any 

 selected point in an enemy 's formation as it can be when the guns are mounted 

 in one ship. Again, three ships armed on the Michigan plan could concen- 

 trate the fire of twenty-four 12 -inch guns as efficiently on a selected position 

 in the enemy's formation as could be done by two ships of the Arkansas 

 class with an equal number of guns. Indeed under certain conditions the 

 three ships might have an advantage and be capable of keeping all their 

 guns bearing on an enemy in rapid motion longer than could be done with 

 all the guns in the two ships; because the provision of six stations instead 

 of four in the latter necessarily introduces greater limitations of the elTec- 

 tive arcs of command of some of the guns than are imposed on eight guns 

 mounted as in the Michigan. This latter consideration no doubt has had 

 much to do with recent advocacy of larger calibers than 12 -inch for battle- 

 ships, because it is realized that the multiplication of positions and guns 

 in a single ship is accompanied by increased interference and possibly with 

 diminished efficiency of fire control. 



Multiplication in the number of gun positions has been necessarily accom- 

 panied by considerable increase in the length of battleships even when the 

 protection and speeds have remained practically unchanged. As a contrast 

 we may take the Arkansas with a length of 545 feet and twelve 12-inch 



