Flaws

The treaty-bound U. S. Navy cannot start building another battleship before 1936. Its new 10,000-ton cruisers with 8-in. guns--light, swift, hard-hitting war machines--are the pride of its modern fleet. In the last 30 months eight of these vessels (Salt Lake City, Pensacola, Chicago, Augusta, Northampton, Chester, Houston and Louisville) have been commissioned. Seven more (New Orleans, San Francisco, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Portland, Astoria, and Tuscaloosa) are abuilding. Three others are still in blue prints.

Dismayed was the Navy last month to discover that the heavy sternposts of five of these new men-o-war were defective, that their rudders might rip away on turns made at high speed. But downright disheartening was the discovery last week that all eight cruisers at sea have such a short, jerky roll as to interfere with the accuracy of their gunfire. The sternpost flaws might have been the fault of the shipbuilders or of the subcontractor who supplied all the castings. The choppy roll was directly attributable to the Navy's own design.

Into drydock had gone the Pensacola at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the Northampton at Norfolk. Bilge keels were doubled; anti-roll tanks were installed; the low centre of gravity was raised. If upon sea tests the roll is longer, smoother, more calculable, the same improvements will be made on the other six cruisers. Alteration costs: $100,000 per ship.

Meanwhile in Washington naval architects explained that these new cruisers had been given a low centre of gravity so they could take more punishment in battle without turning over and sinking. Secretary of the Navy Adams, minimizing the effect of the roll on their "excellent" gunfire record, declared: "No ship, yacht or cruiser is ever exactly right at first. We've been building yachts under racing rules for 25 years and haven't yet gotten the limit of speed possible. Warships are even harder. The way to build ships is to constantly keep building them instead of trying to build all of them at once."

Under six-month guarantees the faulty sternposts in four cruisers will be made good by the contractors. Cost: $20,000 each. The Navy borrowed half a gram of radium from Johns Hopkins University to discover the flaws. Capable of penetrating 16 in. armor plate, the radium's gammarays were used to photograph the rudder castings much as a dentist x-rays a tooth. Flaws or pockets in the steel showed as distinct blotches in the finished pictures.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.