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Updated: June 24, 2025
At the moment when the mine exploded, the monitor was just about to fire her 15-inch bow gun; but the catastrophe of course threw everything into confusion, and the weapon, flung from its trunnions in the very act of firing, discharged its deadly missile high into the air, where it exploded, sending out a blaze of flame like a miniature firework display.
Amand with its open square in front of the church, the meeting-place of the villagers, now deserted save for two or three soldiers; Gaudiempré, the headquarters of an Army Service Corps park, with its lines of roughly made stables. At one part of the journey a 15-inch gun let fly just over the road. We had endured quite enough noise for that day, and I was glad that it did not occur again.
The Horsfall 13-inch gun sent a round 270-pound shot, with 74 pounds of powder, entirely through the Warrior target at 200 yards, making an irregular hole about 2 feet in diameter. The same charge at 800 yards did not make a clean breach. The Whitworth shell burst in the backing of the same target has been referred to. Experiments on the effect of the 15-inch gun are now in progress.
Some people said they came from the sea, but the houses I saw hadn't been hit from the sea, which lies north, but from the east. Others talked of an armoured train, but armoured trains don't carry 15-inch shells. So all anyone could do was to gape with sheer astonishment. Dunkirk, that safest of places, the haven to which we were all to fly when Furnes or La Panne were bombarded!
He wheeled it across the hall, as no one could lift it, and this was only the base of a 15-inch shell. It was picked up in the garden of the hospital, and had travelled fifteen miles! The other day I went to see for myself some of the poor refugees at Coxide. There were twenty-five people in one small cottage. Some were sleeping in a cart.
The Cloth Hall, and the Cathedral, looked exactly as if some mighty scythe had swept across the ground, levelling everything in its path. The monster 15-inch German shells had dismembered and torn open the buildings brick by brick. Confusion and devastation reigned everywhere, no matter in what direction you looked.
Howitzers sent high explosive shells, containing lyddite, of 15-inch, 9.2-inch and 6-inch caliber into the doomed trenches and later into the ruined village. It was eight o'clock in the morning, one-half hour after the beginning of the artillery action, that the village was bombarded.
Soon after the bombardment began it became known that the allied fleets were led by the great new British superdreadnaught Queen Elizabeth, launched after the war began and armed with 15-inch guns of immense range which proved most effective in reducing the forts at the mouth of the straits.
Just as Jim spoke, a red rocket leaped up into the still night air with a whistling roar, bursting high up in the sky with a shower of brilliant red stars. "A signal to the patrols in the bay!" cried Jim; and at the same moment the huge 15-inch gun on board the Manco Capac roared out its vengeful message. "We shall have to hurry to get clear now, and no mistake."
The Onondaga, now constructing, is an iron vessel of 222 feet length, 48 feet beam, and 13 feet depth, with 4-1/2-inch solid armor having no backing, and without the overhanging top-works of the Monitors. She has two turrets, like those of the Roanoke, and four 15-inch guns.
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