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Will Prove Destructive

Will Prove Destructive image
Parent Issue
Day
6
Month
November
Year
1896
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

Experimente are now being tried with a view of combining torpedo boats and aerial machines in hostile operations against ships or forts. A boat has been designed to dive under water and fire a torpedo into a battle-ship hull. The proposed aerial gun will send a Shell of explosives through the air and drop it on an enemy's deck or into a fort. If the combination of these two machines should prove euccessful, the craft will be the most wonderful engine of destruction in modern warfare. The aerial gun is to be placed in the bow and to be operated as follows: The boat, for instance, is moving along the surface at a flfteen-knot speed. At the word of command her petroleum flres are put out, the electric engine started, the smokestack and air-shaft drawn inside the vessel and covered over. She is made to eink by admitting water to her tanks. At the same moment two horizontal rudders at the stern, and inclined upward, cause the eighty-llve foot steel cigar-shaped craft to dive like a porpoise. She runs, ordinarily, either three or thirty feet under the surface, but she is built to stand the pressure of a depth of seventy feet. She has a constant tendency to riee, but is kept below by the horizontal rudders on her stern. Should she accidentally sink, there are automatic arrangements, governed by the outside water pressure that empty the watertanks and compel the vessel to rise to the surface. The effect of the fire of this machine is the more appalling because it can be delivered without giving the Bllghtest sign to the enemy. When approaebing an enemy the vessel rises to within three feet of the surface, and a rev living looking-glass is raised above the water. This reflects down into the boat through a tube all the surroundings. When the range of a hostile fort is obtained the bow of the boat is allowed to come on a level with the eurface of the water, barely exposing the mouth of the aerial gun. The body of the gun is inside the boat. The pneumatic pressure sends a load of destruction into the air and down into the fort. The boat drops back into the depths of the sea, and the enemy cannot teil whence the shot comes. There is no smoke; nothing in sight but a few ripples on the water.- Pittsburg Dispatch.

Article

Subjects
Old News
Ann Arbor Democrat