OCR Text |
Show I, 0. ML KLfllJ I Men Working Night and Day in Preparation for the Fight to Come. WITH THE UNITED STATES ATLANTIC AT-LANTIC FLEET, May 24. The big ships of the most powerful" fleet over under the American flag, when visited by a correspondent of the Associated Press, though arrangement with the committee on public information, were working night and day to bring about the defeat of Germany on the sea. Ready for battle, they are spending the waiting period turning out men. Tho fleet temporarily Is a great workshop of war. Already it is turning turn-ing out one of its finished products men who can fight. They are serving the guns on American armed merchant ships Its other product men who can run the great merchant fleet the United States will use to feed the allies al-lies will be ready as soon as the ships. Five-inch guns, the kind principally used against submarines, are there by tho hundreds. On the decks great turrets tur-rets house long fourteen and twelve-Inch twelve-Inch rifles three or two to a turret. On high platforms guns used for de fense against airplanes point to tno sky. Brass is always shining, steel is always polished, paint is always new, decks are always white with scrubbing. scrub-bing. The men behind the guns have lost shipmates In the war they were guns' crews on merchantment sunk by German Ger-man submarines. And other shipmates now are on duty aboard the destroyers operating with the British and French fleets. The men with the Atlantic fleet are working to prepare themselves to avenge the killing of their mates. Here's what happened the other day. A crew was practicing with a five-Inch gun. A bluejacket about 17 he still had down on his chin was pointing. He grasped handles on a broad brass wheel; his eye was steady at a rubber cup at the end of a long sight through which he saw the target His duty was to keep tho gun on the target so it might be fired any time. Around this beardless youth were grouped other guns' crews to fire when his crow had completed its period. The breach snapped open, tho load was thrown homo, the breach was hurled back in place and then a buzzer, buz-zer, operated from the fire control station, sta-tion, sounded; there was a flash, a roar, the hiss of the projectile speeding speed-ing through the air and the louder hiss of compressed air blowing smoke froni out the gun. Miles away tho projectile projec-tile struck the target, "Guess that's bad," said an old man-o'-war'sman, looking on admiringly nt the third shot, as tho gun's crew got tho range and the pillar of white water wa-ter leaped into the air. "How would that do for Frltzy? Suppose Sup-pose that has been a submarine, and" The buzzer, the roar of tho gun and tho hiss of air Interrupted him. "Another hit! Great whiskers, that's shooting." On tho after deck latest arrivals aboard tho Bhip were set to work that day, and ovory other day, in fact, upon up-on the loading machines. They consist con-sist principally of a breach and block and a slide that carries away dummy projectiles and powder bags. |