the field artillery journal - Fort Sill - U.S. Army

THE FIELD ARTILLERY JOURNAL
wherever it occurs; it prohibits the effective use of a method of
fire included in our drill regulations; it reduces the rapidity of
fire; it affects the accuracy of fire."
10. Extraneous devices and appliances or spring
components which take up this play have the objection that
they increase the wear and reduce the rapidity of operation. A
radical change in design should certainly not be resorted to
until evidence amounting to proof is at hand that it is worth
while. Troubles in interchangeability and large additional costs
occasioned by a change in design are especially to be avoided.
11. Pages 537 and 539. "If Captain Campana classes
carriages which fail to suppress the jump as only entitled to the
term accelerated fire, what should the classification be when
the operation of loading materially disturbes the laying?"
Apropos of the subject of the Deport type of carriage certain
experiments at Rock Island Arsenal in 1912 are pertinent. A
comparative road test of 300 miles was given a service 3-inch
carriage and a Deport carriage purchased by the Ordnance
Department, U. S. A. After the test the lost motion in elevating
traversing parts of the foreign carriage was more than twice as
much as that in ours; but more important still was the fact that
lost motion in the foreign carriage materially affected its
accuracy, as comparatively slight jolts of the gun would
derange the setting eight or ten mils, in both elevation and
traverse; such jolts as would have no measurable effect on
ours. Even before the road test a proof officer from his
experience at the Sandy Hook Proving Ground stated to the writer
that it was very difficult for him to obtain any regularity in the
firing of this Deport carriage owing to the lost motion in the
elevating and traversing mechanisms. These remarks are inserted
with no view of decrying acknowledged merits of the Deport
construction with regard to the facilities offered for rapid fire,—
the stability of the carriage itself, the independent line of sight,
the wide field of traverse and elevation, and the semi-automatic
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