NEW NAVAL GUN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 3 September 1907, Page 4

NEW NAVAL GUN.

MIGHTY WEAPONS FOR TUB NEXT DREADNOUGHTS. London, July 12. The new battleships provided for in the Naval intimates' for the current year are to embody many improvements on the Dreadnought. They will not carry so many heavy guns as the earlier ship, but the weapons will be of a larger calibre than the Dreadnought's weapons—l3.sin as compared with 12in— and they will fire a shot weighing 12501b against the smaller gun's 8501b.

At the same time a secondary battery of medium quick-firing guns will be added, a feature which is entirely missing in the Dreadnought Lieutenant Domville, in the essay which won the gold medal of the Royal United Service Institution tliia year, advocated as an "ideal" ship one carrying eight 12in and sixteen Gin guns, and it is not unlikely that this plan will be followed, so far at least as numbers are concerned.

In that case the new vessels would have a broadside fire of 93001b, against the Dreadnought's 08001b. One of the new ships will be begun at Portsmouth and one at Devonport as soon as the vessels at present occupying the stocks have been launched —one this month auiT one in August. Their displacement will be about 20,000 tons—--2000 tons larger than the Dreadnought —and their cost will exceed two millions sterling. A third ship of the class is to be built if The Hague Conference' prove abortive."