FLOATING HOMES FOR NAVAL PLANES
NO EXISTING BATTLE-SHIP, nor any that it is possible to build within the next ten years, can be kept afloat when attacked by airplanes using gas and highexplosive bombs. At any rate, this is the announcement made by Gen. Amos E. Fries, chief of the chemical warfare service, to the Engineers Club of Baltimore. We should not include aircraft carriers in any plan to limit warship construction, General Fries thinks; but our naval architects should design these carriers to make a speed of fifty to sixty knots, and to accommodate as many bombing planes as possible. There should be several fleets of these speedy and roomy carriers. Realizing the importance of such vessels, Secretary Denby, on October 12th, list, notified the House Naval Committee that the Navy Department would ask Congress to build aircraft carriers for the Navy. Both England and America have already reconstructed existing ships to save the time required to build. The first British experimental carrier is the Eagle, while our first mother ship is known as the Langley. Regarding the former, Mr. C. G. Grey, editor of The Aeroplane (London), remarks as follows:
“This ship was in commission in 1920 for experimental work. She was built by Armstrong-Whitworths, as the Chilean Dreadnought Almirante Cochrane, but was taken over by the British Navy. She has a displacement of 26,200 tons and can steam at 24 knots. It was in connection with this ship that the Admiralty distinguished itself by forbidding the visit to her of a number of the leading British aeroplane designers, who had been invited by the Royal Air Force to go on board and study the problems surrounding the alighting of aeroplanes on ships, on the grounds that civilians must not be permitted to see the secrets of the Navy. The funnel and superstructure are on the off, right, far, or starboard side of the ship, leaving a more or less clear run from bow to stern.”
In January of this year the work was begun at the Norfolk Navy Yard of remodeling the collier Jupiter and changing her into our first aircraft carrier. In order to do this, her entire coal-handling machinery was removed and her coal bunkers were converted into storage space for planes and their accessories, ammunition, machine and wing repair shops, and various other storerooms. There are two decks—a lower assembling or hangar deck, and an upper, or flying deck. Beneath the latter there are traveling cranes, which hoist the planes from the hold and transfer them to the shop spaces and elevator. This raises them to the flying deck as they are wanted. On this upper deck, which is 65 feet wide amidships and has a length of 525 feet, there are catapults for starting machines and suitable stopping devices. The regular smokestack has been done away with and two short smoke conveyors substituted, one on each side of the deck, adapted to turn upwards or downwards. When placed in a downward position, the smoke is passed through a water spray. By taking advantage of the two pipes the smoke may always be discharged to leeward.