Gunnery in the Gulf

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 263, 27 January 1928, Page 8

Gunnery in the Gulf

REHEARSAL OF BATTLE How Diomede Won the Shield A SCOW that edged lazily across Hauraki Gulf on Tuesday was for all the world like one of those North Sea tishing craft that found themselves suddenly on the fringe, if not in the centre, of vigorous naval actions fought during the war. Like the astonished crews of Danish smacks at Jutland, her men saw the peace of a placid seascape shattered by gunfire and the thunder of exploding cordite.

*JiHUS will run the course of battle if attackers and defenders ever Contend for the seaway to Auckland. Across the spacious waters of the Gulf will flicker the pale, menacing flare that speaks of gunfire, and into the vortex of hostilities will be plunged any slow-moying merchantmen that may lie in the path of war. There was a rehearsal of the grim drama when Diomede and Dunedin, of the Ipjw Zealand Naval Division, carried out gunnery tests on Tuesday.

Back and forth across the wide blue sea swept the fast cruisers, the one laying a black and blinding smokescreen, the other bursting through it to pound with merciless salvoes a distant target showing faint and far on the rim of the sea. HIGHER MATHEMATICS Gunnery is an abstruse and complicated science, and the essence of Tuesday’s tests was speed and accuracy in completing the advanced calculations necessary before the range of a distant target can be positively discovered. The introduction of smoke-screens served to reproduce low visibility conditions. Until they were through the smoke, and cculd sight the target, the gunnery officers of neither ship were-aware of the distance, direction or pace of the object at which they had to fire. Having ascertained these factors, they consider such other influences as wind, barometrical pressure, the speed of their own ship, and the rate at which the traget is advancing or retreating, and a host of ingenious in- - Lruments, starting with the range-

finders, allows them to reach and transmit their conclusions in an amazingly short space of time. Before the Dunedin emerged from the smoke screen her officers could not see the target. But within 25 seconds they had swung their ship and opened fire with their heaviest metal.

Seen from the Diomede, the Dunedin, as she came through the smoke screen, not 60 varls from the Diomede’s stern, was an unforgettable picture. For a moment she was lost in the murky pall; then her tapering mastheads pierced the smoke, and suddenly her lean and rakish prow shot forth into the sunlight, with fountains of spray playing about it as the cruiser cut the water at 22 knots. TARGET ON HORIZON The target, towed by the Veronica on a 500-yard- wire, was moving slowly along the eastern horizon. Through glasses it looked like nothing less prosaic than a giant two-barred gate. A flicker of flame played above the Dunedin’s gun muzzles as she swung to port and opened fire, and the crash of the opening salvo rolled out like a thunderclap. Sixteen salvoes sped from the racing war vessel, and for every salvo there was a great answering eruption of spray in the neighbourhood of the distant target. Torpedo attacks accompanied the gunnery—attacks delivered by innocuous torpedoes, fitted with floating heads, but menacing and warlike, nevertheless, as they shot from the tubes. Then followed anti-aircraft measures. One of the other ships hoisted into the high sky two shells that burst into smoke puffs. These, white and conspicuous, served as tar gets for the anti-aircraft guns of the Dunedin and Diomede. The shells of the cruisers burst black, easily distinguished from the targets, and so permitted observers to take accu rate records from which the score was computed.

Bach cruiser, racing at a speed that set her frame a-quiver, completed her demonstration in a matter of moments, in a feverish period when every man of the complement was playing some part in the production of the devastating results. For the uninitiated observer it was a period stamped with profoundly vivid impressions, of smoke and fire, and fury, of deafening blasts and hard-hitting concussion, of new and terrific spectacles, a revelation of the mightiness of war. But for the men of the Diomede and the men of the Dunedin it was but a culmination of years of training—a test reduced to terms of sporting rivalry. The standards .of both were high, but Diomede’s supremacy was clear. Her long-range shooting was so accurate that she crippled the tar get, and her high-elevation work was correspondingly effective. Consequently, with a score of 1,162 to 1,037 (of a possible 1,400), she won the historic shield set apart for the tests, an'd the treasured trophy will for the next 12 months be enshrined upon her quarterdeck.