ment of the corps of mechanical engineers, and then proposes to abolish another corps that represents an equally technical profession which existed before that of the mechanical engineer or the naval architect.

Laomi Baldwin, one of the leading civil engineers of his day, was employed by the Navy Department in the late twenties to design and build its first dry-dock, and from that day to this the naval establishment has found constantly increasing uses for civil engineers.

It is but a few years, comparatively, that the civil engineers have been formed into a corps of commissioned officers, and this step in development can but be followed by good results, as has been the case in the successive commissioning of surgeons, paymasters, the late mechanical engineers, and naval constructors. The giving of commissions to civil engineers will be as naturally followed by filling this corps with properly trained graduates of the Naval Academy as has been the case in the corps of constructors, and with equally good results. To abolish this corps and delegate its duties to the constructors, would be following exactly the lines that the essayist so greatly regrets in the abolishment of the mechanical engineer and the delegation of his work to the line officer.

The best reasons for the natural and logical existence of the corps of civil engineers will be found in the following quotations from the essay itself, for whatever can be said of mechanical engineering, or of naval architecture, as professions, can be as logically said of civil engineering:

"The duties of the navy are so varied that there is room for talent of all kinds.

". . . Its chief and assistants should be mechanical engineers of the highest order, and to be such can be nothing else.

At a time when science in all its branches is advancing with such rapid strides, and when perfection and thoroughness in any profession require the full and entire effort of even a superior mind, and when specialism is the watchword to eminence and success in all professions, to practically abolish one of the most absolutely necessary and most highly specialistic branches of a modern naval service would seem to be contrary to all reason, and the teachings of experience.

"Neither the passing of a law, nor the giving of a title makes the line officer, the engineer or the constructor.

"It will already have been observed that the writer is no great believer in the universal genius of man, and is firmly convinced that the best work is generally accomplished by men who devote their whole time and intellect to one profession."

It will be noted in the quotation at the beginning of this discussion in which the essayist characterizes the civil engineer in the navy as an anomaly, that he also recognizes the necessity of his work and its performance by experts.

Motto:-" Jack of all trades is master of none."

[COPYRIGHTED.]

U. S. NAVAL INSTITUTE, ANNAPOLIS, MD.

WARSHIP DESIGN FROM A TACTICAL STANDPOINT. BY LIEUTENANT JOHN M. ELLICOTT, U. S. N.

Four principal elements enter into warship design, viz., battery, protection, radius of action, and speed. When it is attempted to combine these on a given displacement each crowds the other for space to such an extent that the limitation in displacement has steadily given way, until many students of the subject have concluded that this tendency must be stopped, even at a sacrifice. It is possible, however, that those so concluding are becoming disheartened when almost in sight of the goal, and that only by persistently designing warships which combine the highest tactical elements of their class, on whatever displacement these demand, can we hope to excel.

The order of importance of the elements in the design differs according to the class of vessel. Thus, for battleships, we should consider

Ist. What combination of guns will produce the most efficient fighting battery?

This is not a question to be settled by the ordnance expert alone, but by the tactician as well, for the battery carried must be considered, in its distribution, weight of metal delivered and arc of fire, as one of the aggregation of batteries which by tactical movements must be concentrated upon the enemy. To arrive at a solution of this question the consideration of the weight, range, energy and rapidity of fire of modern guns should be combined with a careful study of the best arrangement of guns on shipboard for concentration of fire in fleet actions.

The correct tactical arrangement of guns in a ship's battery is that which will deliver the greatest concentrated energy of fire

upon a vessel of the enemy, but where guns are mounted on shipboard, the necessarily elongated form of the ship makes such concentration possible only in a direction divergent from that of her length. The ship being mobile and dirigible, however, this concentration can be brought to bear toward any point of the compass with the aid of helm and screw. Hence, the strongest tactical arrangement of guns for a single ship's battery is that which gives the greatest possible energy of broadside fire.

A battleship is a unit of a squadron. She is, or should be, designed to fight in tactical combinations with other battleships; to add her greatest concentrated energy of fire to that of other battleships while executing with them similar movements. Being in squadron, she is no longer free to do this by means of helm and screw, for she is constrained to make only such turnings as will harmonize with those of other vessels engaged in the same tactical evolutions. Her battery itself must, then, be capable of the utmost arc of train in order to concentrate upon the same object as the batteries of other vessels. Thus the ideal tactical disposition would be one giving an all-round fire to every gun in a ship's battery and making it possible for every gun to bear in the same direction at once. There is but one way in which this is mechanically possible-to mount all the guns in turrets superposed one above the other in a single vertical column. This, of course, is practically impossible, but it shows that as far as we can superpose turrets we are following the dictates of tactics.

An evolution which brings to bear one ship's greatest energy of fire should not waste part of the energy of some other ship. In battleship design, the first effort should be to attain that assignment and arrangement of battery which will permit the greatest possible concentration of energy of fire in any one direction, then to give similar batteries to every ship of the same class built.

By superimposing 8-inch upon 13-inch turrets in our battleships Kearsarge and Kentucky, we have obtained a concentrated energy of broadside fire superior to that of any ship of their class in the world, and at the same time we have insured a better endon-fire than seems possible with guns otherwise disposed in any battleships we have yet built. It is such a vast gain in tactical arrangement of battery that we should not recede from it because it is novel and has not had the test of battle; but should rather

strive to improve upon, or add to it. The structural and mechanical difficulties in installing the superimposed turrets seem to have been successfully overcome, but there is still one defect in them, more apparent than real. That is the rigid connection between the 8-inch and 13-inch turret. It is this seeming defect which opponents of the system strive to bring out by supposing the Kearsarge attacked by a vessel on each quarter, one of these assailants needing the attention of her 8-inch guns. These guns would, it is claimed, take the 13-inch guns with them and leave the Kearsarge's other side to sustain an unequal combat. Such a divided attack, however, even upon the Kearsarge, would be a cardinal tactical error, permitting her to use all her guns; whereas a combined attack of her two assailants from one general direction would permit the heaviest concentration of both their batteries upon a portion only of the total battery of the Kearsarge. For illustration, let us suppose this ship attacked by a Kentucky and an armored cruiser. The two battleships would be matching gun for gun, and the cruiser, if concentrating on the same side as the Kentucky, would be delivering her whole broadside unopposed, whereas on the other side she would be receiving the fire of seven additional 5-inch guns. Now replace the Kentucky with another armored cruiser and we have the Kearsarge attacked by two armored cruisers of, say, fifty per cent of her battery power each. If they concentrate on one side of her they will fight her on about equal terms. If they attack on different sides the Kearsarge will be able to concentrate her whole energy of fire upon one of them while using against the other seven 5-inch guns, otherwise idle. It seems hardly necessary to carry the illustrations farther in order to prove that the divided attack proposed is tactically unsound, and should be encouraged by the Kearsarge (if caught in such an emergency) rather than avoided. Nevertheless it can always be rejected by a shift of the helm.

I believe it to be mechanically possible to so arrange the superimposed turrets in new models as to make them turn separately, and thus restore independent mobility, if it is really desirable, to the 8-inch guns.

2d. What protection must be given to the battery to make it as invulnerable as possible?

This again is a question for the tactician as well as the ordnance expert, and although fights between armored vessels have not

been numerous, they point very decidedly to the value of protection and the necessity for more of it, especially protection of the personnel.

A vast weight of armor is now devoted to a water-line belt, yet in all the history of naval warfare since guns have been used, it is the rarest thing to find recorded a ship sunk by gun-fire. In the days of sails, battleships were placed hors de combat by the destruction of their motive and directive power, i. e., their sails, masts and rudders; or by the destruction of their personnel. Now, the motive and directive power can be invulnerably disposed below an armored deck. Should we not devote the further disposition of armor chiefly to the protection of the personnel, instead of so largely to insuring flotation, which history shows us has so seldom been destroyed by gun-fire under any circumstances?

3d. How far must this battery be carried to attack our most distant possible adversary?

This is a matter of geographic measurement, and coal-consumption per mile at economic speed, adding sufficient fuel capacity to sustain the ship while establishing a base on the hostile coast.

4th. At what speed must this battery be carried to insure its coping with any of its class afloat?

This is a question of boiler, engine and structural design with a view always to equal foreign models, and to excel them when it can be done on the same weight and space, for while an excess of speed in battle is unquestionably advantageous, it certainly would not be so at the sacrifice of any other offensive element in a battleship. Speed is of more value in strategy than in tactics.

The four considerations enumerated become, when settled, elements of volume and weight, and it remains to determine5th. What structure must be built to carry them?

The aggregate of these five items gives the size of the tactical unit of battle afloat-the battleship. The number of these units must be determined from the strategic features of our coasts and the naval force of our strongest possible adversary, and legislators must be kept fully informed as to this need.

This method does not suggest indefinite increase in size, for each item has its limit; in fact, seems to have already reached its limit in the directions of volume and weight. In these respects. guns reached and passed the limit some years ago and have