OCR Text |
Show j Rubber Armor Platel If the present war has proved anything any-thing It has proved the inadequacy of the protection afforded by armor plate covering the under-water vital parts ' of a ship. The armor does not extend sufficiently far below the water line to assure complete protection when ' the vessel is rolling, and in this respect re-spect a suggestion put forward by a ' writer in Popular Science Siftings might be worth serious consideration. ' Describing an experiment made in 1 1860 on the recoiling strength of rub- ber, he says that a piece of rubber two inches thick and a foot square . was placed under a steam hammer and a six-inch round shot was placed ot it- The hammer fell with tremen-' tremen-' dous force and broke the shot to pieces, the rubber remaining elastic and unimpaired. Results from great explosive force on rubber flooring and , buffers have shown that beyond fusing by heat the rubber remained unln-; unln-; jured, so apparently, rubber would make a ship more shot-proof than ar-t ar-t mor plate. |