Mine with an Imitation Periscope
Item
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Title (Dublin Core)
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Mine with an Imitation Periscope
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Article Title and/or Image Caption (Dublin Core)
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A Floating Invitation to Suicide. It's a mine with an imitation periscope projecting from the water
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Caption 1: Ships will do well to steer clear of this imitation of a periscope; to ram it means exit
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Caption 2: Charged with T. N.T., wet gUn-cotton or dynamite
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extracted text (Extract Text)
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" PERISCOPE in sight!” calls one of
P the lookouts on the starboard side,
excitedly pointing to a small object
a few hundred yards away, which his keen
and well-trained
eye has just dis-
cerned. A dozen
glasses are trained
upon that object
a moment later
and as many ob-
servers, firmly con-
vinced by what
they see, that they
have the periscope
of a hostile sub-
marine before
them, begin to fid-
get in anticipation
of the coming
events. The first
impulse of the offi-
cers of the ship is
to head straight
for the periscope
and to ram the
submarine to
which it belongs.
The captain,
knowing that in
the early months
of the war eighty
British ships were
sunk because their impetu-
ous commanders thought
that periscopes are always
associated with submarines,
does not yield to the rash |
impulse of his officers, but
decides to try a shot at the
periscope first. The second
shot hits it squarely ‘and
there is a terrific explosion.
It was a mine—not a sub- |
marine—a mine, equipped
with a seductive imitation of
a periscope designed to lure
on overbold vessels, An at-
tempt to ram the suppozed
submarine would have been
fatal to the ship. The mine
is the invention of a foreign officer now
working for the United States Govern-
ment and proved to be highly effective in
the early part of the war, until the com-
manders of vessels
had learned to
curb their impetu-
ous impulse to ram
everything that
looked like a peri-
scope.
A large metal
cylinder holds a
firing charge of
five hundred
pounds of tri-nitro-
toluol, wet gun-
cotton or dyna-
mite. Bolted to
the lower end of
the cylinder is a
weight to keep the
mine upright and
so far submerged
that only the tubu-
lar firing device,
simulating a peri-
scope, shows
above the surface.
The’ trigger ends
are in the top of
the periscope-like
device. The trig-
ger is so arranged that any
pressure upon it causes it to
break a bottle filled with
sulphuric acid. The acid
sets off the priming charge in
the lower part of the tube,
and this causes the explosion
of the main charge of the
mine. Of great importance
is the vertical fin attached to
the outside of the mine. It
acts like the rudder of a ship
and prevents the mine from
spinning around under the
influence of wind and wave
action, which adds in a large
measure to the value of the
invention.
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Language (Dublin Core)
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eng
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Date Issued (Dublin Core)
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1918-05
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pages (Bibliographic Ontology)
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705
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Rights (Dublin Core)
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Public Domain (Google digitized)
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Archived by (Dublin Core)
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Filippo Valle
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Alberto Bordignon (Supervisor)
Popular Science Monthly, v. 92, n. 5, 1918
