THE QUEEN ELIZABETH FIRES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 318, 18 June 1915, Page 6

THE QUEEN ELIZABETH FIRES.

A MINUTE BETWEEN EACH .SIIOT. The correspondent of the Melbourne Age writes:—At noon I had seen the Queen Elizabeth. There is no mistaking her great length and huge squat funnels. She was going up outside the peninsula to get into position for shelling tlie forts at the Narrows over th? land. She was accompanied by a lestroyer. Her speed was slowed down when she came to the transports, and she anchored inshore. Just then a mono, plane returned from a reconnaissance, over the forts, flying well out of gun range, and swooping down in graceful spirals until it touched the surface of the water, and a strongle-looking thing began to rise from the decks of the Ark Royal. It had been lying across the bows of the parent ship to the hydroplanes, but now was lifting up from the decks. It was a dirigible balloon, nfl feet long, with side cushions at one end colored the brightest yellow. The sun's ravs glittered on it as it rose above the dark cliffs like a huge finger pointing up to the heavens. A string of signals floated from the car attached. The balloon must have risen at least 3000 feet over the ship which held it captiv. At U?.;SO p.m. it was anchored, and an hour later it descended, but almost immediately rose again with another observer. Twice" during- the afternoon it returned, but on the second occasion it broke fme from the ship and sailed over the forts. T could see the message being sent back to the Qnecn Elizabeth by heliograph, and reflected in'-the water. With these to guide her guns, the Queen Elizabeth was firing with itbont a minute between each shot. As a shot left it gun it was as if for a fraction of a second one looked, into a furnace bloodred in the centre, with a tongue stretelled out some !) feet enveloped in a sheet of yellow fire, and the whole enclosed in a cloud of rolling black smoke. Then a projectile weighing nearly a ton went rumbling away in the distance, the sound growing, like thunder, louder and louder as it soared into the sky. Then it fell with a dying roar and a muffled explosion as it' struck. It was sometimes 2.5 seconds after the reports of the Willis were heard before the shells were heard to reach their mark. Vast columns of smoke rose from the ground at the point of impact, rapidly followed o.V clouds of sand and earth that obscured large stretches of country. Sometimes, when a house or magazine was struck, a column of black smoke was followed rapidly by white, clouds, rising generally in spiral fashion.