Eleven-inch shells for the "Osaka Babies"

Eleven-inch shells for the "Osaka Babies"

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Each of these shells weigh 5oo pounds. Its cost is $175, and the cost of each discharge, including that of the impelling power, is about $400. During the heavy bombardment preceding each successive assault each gun was fired once every eight minutes, and as the grand bombardment lasted in every case about four hours, the cost of these eighteen mortars alone must have been $200,000, and for the whole of the batteries, including the smaller naval guns, machine guns, etc., the cost of each bombardment was approximately half a million dollars. The eleven-inch mortar has a maxinim range, with moderate degree of elevation, of seven or eight miles; but as none of these, batteries was more than three miles distant from the objects aimed at, they had to be fired at an angle of as great as 6o degrees, the huge shells hurtling into the heavens, passing over two, three ranges of hills, and falling like thunderbolts out of the blue sky, vertically upon the doomed city, or fort or warship.

1 stereograph. 2 photomechanical prints on stereo card : halftone, stereograph, color ; 9 x 18 cm

1905 Ingersoll, T.W.

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