Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 21, 2025
In the interval, as you know, the town had been shelled by fifteen-inch guns from a distance of twenty-three miles. Many buildings in the main streets had been reduced to ruins, and nearly all the windows in the town had been smashed." There is, or was, a converted Channel steamer at Dunkirk that is now a hospital. Men in all stages of mutilation are there.
Our "Higher Command" had learned a lesson from the St. Eloi experience and had brought up many new batteries, including a fair sprinkling of the "super-heavies" of twelve and fifteen-inch calibers.
Where flights of arrows hid the sun, barrages now blanket the earth. The improvement in shell fire is revolutionary enough of itself. Steadily the power of the guns has increased. What they may accomplish is well illustrated by the account of a German battalion on the Somme. When it was ten miles from the front a fifteen-inch shell struck in its billets just before it was ordered forward.
On the right everything seemed quiet, but there was tremendous Allied shelling of San Gabriele, Santa Catarina and San Marco. French Gunners also were here with fifteen-inch guns firing on San Marco, and two of their officers were at Maria O.P. that day.
It seemed to be feared, however, that the two bridges across the Vippacco might go. That day we were shelled heavily with every kind of weapon, from fifteen-inch downwards, especially the Left Section in the afternoon. We had, as usual, marvellously good luck, and only had one casualty, and that a slight wound. The spirit and endurance of the men were wonderful.
Here and there over the surface of the jam single logs could be seen popping suddenly into the air, propelled as an apple seed is projected from between a boy's thumb and forefinger. Some of the fifteen-inch cables stretched to the shore parted. One, which passed once around an oak tree before reaching its shore anchorage, actually buried itself out of sight in the hard wood.
The fifteen-inch guns of the monitors pierced her armor, and in a few minutes she surrendered. The Albemarle proved a more dangerous foe. The last of April, 1864, it descended Roanoke River, smashed the gunboats at the mouth, and compelled the surrender of the forts and the town of Plymouth. A few days later it attacked a fleet of gunboats below the mouth of the river.
It is astonishing to see how regularly the 'scatter' of a barrel will work out. Every barrel, of course, is stamped with the number of shots it has put into the fifteen-inch circle." "And you make cartridges, too, don't you?" Hamilton asked.
Fifteen-inch howitzer dukes or nine-inch howitzer earls, with their big, ugly mouths and their deliberate and powerful fire, fought alone, each in his own lair, whether under a tree or in the midst of the ruins of a village. The long naval guns, though of smaller caliber, had a still greater reach and were sending their shells five to ten miles beyond the German trenches.
But said Commander Nicholson of the Manhattan, in his official report: "Of the six fifteen-inch projectiles fired from this vessel at the rebel ironclad Tennessee, I claim four as having struck, doing most of the real injuries that she has sustained"; then enumerating the injuries inflicted, which included most of those claimed for the Chickasaw.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking