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Show oo THE DEPTH BOMB. W hen the depth bomb was first re- ferred to in public print, the average American said it was the veapon Which our war board had sent across the Atlantic with our torpedo boat destroyers, de-stroyers, and since then many have held to that view. But the Scientific American gives a history of the depth bomb, according full credit to the Brit ' ish, as follows: Very characteristic of the develop- ment of many successful inventions is , jhe story recently told b Admiral Jel-jlicoe Jel-jlicoe of the incident out of which ! iprang the greatly dreaded depth )omb a weapon that, was mainlv re Sponsible for the defeat of the U-boat. V It seems that early in the war a fast British cruiser, on sighting a subma-1 jlne on the surface, dashed for the enemy at full speed in an attempt to Vam her. The submarine submerged last in time to escape the blow, and Ihe officers and crew of the cruiser ivere chagrined to realize that, al-1 ihough they could clearly see the submarine sub-marine below them as they swept over I her, they were unable to do anything j io destroy or damage her. 1 One of the officers of the ship, on tiarrating the incident exclaimed: "It 1 had only possessed some form of bomb which I could have dropped on the enemy, we could have destroyed her." This led to the construction of Various devices, one of which was the so-called submarine dart, consisting of t high explosive Bhell with a shaft attached at-tached for throwing it. The trouble j with this and any similar form of di-ttct-contact shell was that it was only j once in a very long while that a charging charg-ing cruiser or destroyer passed imme- " diately over the submerged enemy , ship. When she made her rush she I lot near, of course, but seldom near j Enough for a direct hit with a shell or II tomb. . I The next step, then, was to aim at the destruction of the submarine by ! means of a heavy concussion, trans-; trans-; flitted through the incompressible ( Water from a bomb detonated below ! the surface and in the vicinity of tho jj Submarine. Then followed the cylin-j cylin-j Jrical-shaped bomb with its fuse set I to function by hydrostatic pressure at I 'j y desired depth. From sixty pounds', I freight, it rapidly rose to two hui J Chreo hundred, and at the close of the : '- ' ar' the cnRrEe was six hundred pounds, this last a bomb that would , ftstroy any submarine within a hun- dred and seventy feet of it and was i almost certain to disable one at three hundred yards. oo |