NAVAL EXERCISES

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1006, 24 June 1930, Page 14

NAVAL EXERCISES

BATTLE PRACTICE IN THE GULF AIR FORCE CO-OPERATES Auckland is the only port in New Zealand where a target and a suitable practice area for the Navy are available, and a very great deal of work has to be crammed into very short time to enable the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy to maintain the same standard of fighting efficiency as the sister divisions at Home. After having spent two weeks in exercises in the Hauraki Gulf H.M.S. Dunedin returned ta Auckland on Saturday morning. The navy was assisted in a number of its practices by machines of the New Zealand Air Force.

On returning to port the Dunedin was delayed through the battle practice target she had in tow breaking adrift. The mishap occurred in the dark in a heavy easterly swell off Tiri and had been the cause of considerable delay, as manoeuvring the ship to pick up a massive structure weighing 275 tons in a heavy sea was a difficult and dangerous business. H.M.S. Dunedin was under way during 12 days and carried out a comprehensive programme of day and night gunnery and torpedo firings The gunnery programme * included three “sub-calibre” shoots at a small target towed by H.M.S. ‘Laburnum, four 6in full-calibre shoots, and seven 4in full-calibre shoots, two of which were at a “drogue target” towed by an airplane. DIFFICULT SHOOTING

Naval gunnery presents an entirely different problem from any other form of shooting, because both the target and the firing ship are moving through the water and the firing ship is probably rolling and pitching to an uncomfortable degree, making a very unsteady “gun platform.” The firing ship may be travelling at any speed up to 28 knots (31 £ miles an hour) and tho target is usually from 15,000 to 12,000 yards away and also moving, so it can be realised that a very high degree of skill and constant training of every officer and man on board is needed, to ensure that hits are obtained quickly and continuously. “Live” shells are not fired from the 6in guns for these practices; they wou.d be too expensive, and do too much damage to the target, so “practice shells” of the same weight, lOUlbs, filled with salt, are used instead; they do not burst and do very little damage. For the preliminary “sub-calibre” practices a small gun firing a 31b shell is put inside the Gin guns, again as an economy.

The three 4in high-angle guns were fully exercised in their two principal functions —illuminating a target at night and repelling hostile aircraft. In the first case a steady stream of “starshells” is fired. These burst high in the air behind the target , and release a brilliant parachute-supported “star,” which glides slowly into the sea, silhouetting anything that may be between its reflection in the water and the ship. When firing against a target towed by aircraft “live” high explosive shells are used. The plane must, therefore, tow the target on a very long spun. This was the first time that “drogue target” firing had ever been carried out in New Zealand, and the New Zealand Air Force deserves congratulations for the thoroughly efficient way in which it tackled this new and difficult job. During the practice period all 12 torpedoes were fired with success. Torpedoes have to be recovered at their end of their run for use again (they cost £2,000), and so their high explosive war-heads are replaced by practice heads, filled with cork, which prevent damage to the target or the torpedo itself. In peace time the charge of compressed air is so regulated that the torpedo will float at the end of its run and so allow it to be picked up. The last practice before coming in was a bombardment shoot, the ship being anchored west of Motuora and the target placed about five miles east of the island, out of sight from the ship. The shots had to whine their way over the island, and, as their fail could not be seen from the ship, an observer reported their position by wireless from an airplane.