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February, 1919 The staff train which operates in conjunction with five battery trains is made up of the following: Loco- motive, staff quarters car, staff kitch- en and dispensary car, spare parts car, machine shop car, staff construc- tion car, staff workshop car, staff commissary car and_ staff berthing car. The locomotives and cars were de- signed to conform with the stand- ards of the French They were also made to comply with American regulations to permit of transportation from erecting shops to tidewater. Exclusive of the gun car, ‘the various cars are standard flat cars, gondolas and box cars, sim- ilar to those supplied to the Amer- ican expeditionary forces, and may be used in conjunction with Euro- pean equipment. HEN the question of how to use available 14-inch naval rifles was raised, of how their tre- mendous destructive power might be turned to advantage, the project was in no more tangible form than a mere suggestion of the possibility of some sort of a. shore mounting. For months naval ordnance design- ers had been analyzing the reports of the 15-4inch German naval gun that at regular intervals fired into the town of Dunkirk. The steady de- crease in range of this gun proved that it was mounted on a fixed mount- ing and thus limited in its effective- ness, until at last it was harmless. A mobile mounting was the answer to the American problem. The project was outlined by the naval gun fac- tory and a prospectus was submit- ted to the bureau of ordnance with the estimate that designs could be made and five complete units ready in every respect for service in six months. ; On Jan. 25, 1918, 27 working days after orders for the project were issued, all data necessary for bid- ders were completed. These data consisted of 136 standard bureau of ordnance drawings, 30 assembly lists, 11 sketches and 18 specifications. Bids were opened. Feb. 8, but as these were unsatisfactory, chiefly because the bidders hesitated to assume the responsibility of completing such a large contract within the prescribed time, bids were again called for and contracts were placed with the Bald- win Locomotive Works for five gun cars, seven sets of foundations and six locomotives. The Standard Steel Car Co. was awarded a contract for the 72 auxiliary cars for the bat- tery trains and staff train. Actual work was started by the contractors Feb. 20. Five days iater the naval state railroads. THE MARINE REVIEW 101 gun factory forwarded to them the completed set of drawings comprising 163 drawings, 11 sketches, 30 assem- bly lists and 21 specifications. On April 25 the country learned through newspaper reports that American genius had again triumphed, for on that day the first 14-inch naval rail- way battery was successfully proved at Sandy Hook. URPRISING as it may seem, dur- ing three years of warfare in which heavy artillery had played such a prominent role, the allies had de- veloped no railway mountings for high-powered, long-range guns. Rail- way mounts in use carried only me- dium-size guns of comparatively short range, or guns of the howitzer type. Both the English and French had developed designs of mountings for large caliber rifles; these plans, however, left unsolved many impor- tant features of absorbing the recoil forces, and consequently the guns and mountings were not built. At the outset the American de- sign was restricted by three funda- mental factors: The batteries had to be completed within six months; - the gun car had to be so designed as to permit of quick transportation over the entire system of French railways, and the battery had to be as free as possible from dependence upon power-driven auxiliaries. When the naval gun factory began its in- vestigations it was confronted by an amazing lack of coherence in the in- formation obtained: from the many sources available. But fittle assist- ance could be rendered by precedent; therefore it was necessary to create a design unlike anything in existence. The time factor dictated the use of as many standard 14-inch gun fittings as possible. The huge steel supporting plates or deck lugs were already cast and the gun slides for battleships under construction were already completed and in store at the Washington. navy yard. Since, for example, the enormous steel casting for a gun slide, weighing nearly 25 tons, takes months to cast and ma- chine it was decided to use the fin- ished slides available. These slides, intended for turret mountings on bat- tleships, are designed to _ provide for a 44-inch recoil of the guns. Provision had to be made in de- signing the railway mounts for ele- vating the iguns to 45 degrees to se- cure maximum range, hence, in adapt- ing these slides with the accompany- ing long recoil of the guns it was necessary to. provide a pit beneath the gun car when firing at angles above 15 degrees. When firing on the track, the recoil forces are ab- sorbed by the resistance of tightened brakes as the car rolls back on the rails for a distance of approximately 25 feet. N designing the two 34-ton side girders which, with suitable trans- verse struts, comprise the main frame of the car, two factors, other than the usual consideration of stresses impiosed by live and dead loads, had to be considered. Although bridge and tunnel clearances of the French state railways indicated certain pro- portions of the girders, it was learned that despite the fact that a car might clear these obstacles, the platforms and switch towers imposed additional limiting restrictions on the design. The girders also had to be designed to accommodate the deck lugs, since they were to become an integral part of the car structure. : The designers at the naval gun factory were in frequent consultation with structural engineers and fabri- cators while the girders were being designed, and: it is interesting to senote that although the design was approved by the foremost experts in the country, when the bids were awarded the contractor immediately requested revision since no mill de- sired to attempt to roll the required shapes. The revisions were worked cut iover night by the gun factory and the special shapes originally re- quired were eliminated. In their place were employed commercial 8 x 8-inch angles fabricated at ‘the . Pittsburgh plant of the American Bridge Co. The assembled girders are approxi- mately 85 feet long, 13 feet high, and 9 feet wide. Originally it. was considered prac- ticable to apply standard locomotive trucks with modifications to the gun car, essentially a.truck builder’s job. Here again the assistance of the ord- nance designers was necessary and a satisfactory 12-wheel truck weighing cver 20 tons was developed to carry the total weight of the car, 535,000 pounds, so that it could safely pass over any railroad in France or this country. LEVATION of the gun to 45 degrees demanded a modification of the counter-recoil system, since this angle exceeded the maximum then obtaining in turrets. The gun slides to be used provided for spring counter-recoil which was incapable of holding the gun on battery at 45 degrees elevation, much less return- ing it after full recoil. A spring-pneu- matic system was quickly designed and functioned perfectly on prelim- inary test. As previously pointed out, when the PREIS aie ta es Te Da De eS eS Sey eee eater poe ee x ae of % ; - 4