98 
MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS OF 
It is clear, therefore, whether we take the “ Times” account or that 
given by Captain von Doppelmair, that the Krupp gun was very carefully 
nursed throughout—that whenever any injury appeared which could be 
remedied or removed, Mr. Krupp's workmen were at hand with their tools. 
The removal of an incipient crack is to a gun, what the removal of a speck 
of decay is to an unsound tooth. It is the proverbial “ stitch in timeand 
the advantage which Krupp's guns derived in an endurance trial from this 
treatment is incalculable. This cutting out of the crack, twice repeated, 
meant nothing less than the rescuing of the patient from destruction by the 
prompt application of the surgeon's knife. The renewal of the breech¬ 
loading apparatus speaks for itself. With regard to the final crack in the 
Krupp gun, Captain von Doppelmair is careful to assure us that it was 
occasioned by the bursting of a shell in the bore. In his extreme anxiety 
to save the reputation of Krupp's steel, he is at this point betrayed into an 
unfortunate argument. He declares that this serious injury—the splitting 
of the gun so severely as to necessitate the discontinuance of the endurance 
test—was occasioned by the explosion within it of a single shell; 1 but he 
has elsewhere, by way of making a point against the English projectiles, 
informed us that seven shells 2 broke up in the bore of the English gun, 3 
but “no damage was thereby occasioned" to the gun. 4 What grounds 
Captain von Doppelmair has for so confidently asserting that the Prussian 
gun was injured by a single shell, while the premature bursting of seven 
shells in the English gun caused no damage, we do not know; but if his 
statement be correct, we have only to observe that it tells not for but against 
the Krupp gun. The premature explosion of a shell is an accident which 
must be expected to occur sometimes on service, and if the Krupp gun is 
liable to be put hors de combat by one accident of this sort, it is pro tanto 
inferior to a gun which can endure seven such premature explosions without 
injury. 
What conclusions, then, may we draw from this test for endurance of the 
Prussian gun? These: that with a mild powder, a rear vent, careful 
nursing, the prompt application of tools to any incipient injury, a single 
Krupp gun can be made, at an extravagant cost, to exhibit a very fair, but 
by no means extraordinary, endurance. And behind all this is the signi¬ 
ficant fact, that the weight and dimensions of the Krupp 9J-inch gun have, 
since these Tegel trials, been increased from 14 \ to 16 \ tons. 5 The weights 
now adopted for the different calibres of Krupp guns are given in the table 
at p. 93. Why, we may ask, has this increase of weight been made, if the 
Tegel trials were wholly satisfactory? Mr. Krupp surely would not add 
two tons of steel for mere caprice. 
Let us now turn to the English gun. This weapon fired 43 lb. battering 
charges of the severe English powder, with a forward vent. At the 
1 Doppelmair, p. 54. 
2 "We say “shells,” although Captain yon Doppelmair does not expressly state that they were 
shells ; hut as he suggests that the friction of the powder against the insides may have caused the 
failures (p. 66 ), it is clear that shells are intended. 
3 Doppelmair, p. 66 . * ifad, p # 53 , 
5 In a Krupp gun recently supplied to Belgium for experiment, of which the calibre is only 223 
millimetres — almost exactly 9 ins. (9*1735 ins.), the weight is 17,000 kilos., or about 17 tons; 
