Salt Lake Tribune | 1916-01-15 | Page 7 | Navy Board Plans Two Big Warships

NAVY BOARD PLANS TWO BIG WARSHIPS WASHINGTON, Jan. 14. Main batteries bat-teries of ten sixteen-incb guns each and a cruising radius of at least 10,'Kn) miles are the general characteristics urged by the navy general board for the two new superd read nought. s congress has been asked to authorize tin's year. It was learned tonight tha t the boa rd proposes that the ships should cost ?1S,-OOn.000 ?1S,-OOn.000 each, displace "ti.orto tons and liao the highest speed attainable without sacrificing sac-rificing armament, armor or fuel capacity. ca-pacity. It would have them represent a 25 per cent increase in gun power and endurance over any American hattleship afloat or authorized and carry the biggest guns ever placed aboard a fighting ship by any power. Indications, however, are that adherence adher-ence to the 52,000-ton ship of the California Califor-nia class finally will be decided upon by Secretary Daniels. Opinions differ among Mr. Daniels's advisers-as to tbe advisability of increasing tbe size of hatileships, because of many limitations of yard facilities and channel depth. The general board rea ehed its conclusion conclu-sion on the necessity of bigger battleships battle-ships after a study of events abroad. The rea so n s for raising the cri i i s i n g radius from 8000 miles, as in the California class., to 10,000 have not been disclosed, but probably had to do with the great distances dis-tances of the Pacific ocean. The board did not recommend any specific spe-cific speed to be reached, advising merely mere-ly that the twenty -one-knot gait of tbe present first-line ships should be increased in-creased ns much as possible without reducing re-ducing the armament, armor or fuel -capacity.