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The Battle-Cruiser Controversy To the Editor of the Scientific American: Your patriotic interest in the welfare of our Navy and your well-known desire to arrive at the truth in engineering matters prompts me to lay before you and your readers the main facts of a most extraordinary situation, involving our Navy Department and its decision to equip our battle-cruisers with the electric drive instead of with the geared drive. For those unfamiliar with these terms it may be said that with the electric drive the power of the steam turbines or engines is transmitted to the propeller shafts by first converting it into electricity in dynamos and then reconverting it into mechanical power in electric motors attached to the propeller shafts. With the geared drive the power of the turbines is transmitted to the propeller shafts directly through mechanical gearing. England and Germany have decided 1;he question against the electric drive, and the geared drive has been used by the British Navy and merchant marine in a vast number of ships including battleships of double the power of ours and battle-cruisers of 165,000 horse-power. Months ago at conferences held at the Navy Department the shipbuilders forcibly pointed out to Secretary Daniels that if geared drive were adopted in place of electric drive there would be a saving of about 200,000 in cost and about 300 tons in weight on each battleship with the same structural protection. They also pointed out that the advantages of the geared drive would be very much greater in the case of the battle-cruisers. In these vessels at least 1,300,000 saving in, cost and over 1,000 tons saving in weight will result with a better fuel 'economy and with better protection to the vitals of the ship. This better protection is secured by placing all the boilers below the protective deck in the same spaces occupied by the turbine generator sets in the Department's plan and by keeping the underwater protective bulkheads practically unchanged. The additional space required by the electric generating plant is so great that it necessitates placing half the boilers on an upper deck exposing them to shell fire and requiring seven smokestacks instead of the three required with all the boilers below. The shipbuilders also pointed out that the Jupiter, a small vessel of only 6,500 horse-power, was not a safe criterion to justify installing this drive in all our capital ship!!, including the 180,000 horse-power battle-cruisers, without waiting until at least one of the three large battleships already contracted for has been tried. Mr. Luther D. Lovekin, Chief Engineer of the New York Shipbuilding Company, wrote a forceful letter to the Secretary advising against the electric drive in these ships, and stating that the total weight of the ship would be over 1,000 tons more than if the geared drive was used. The Fore River Company, in a letter attached to their bid, formally stated that with the geared drive there would be a saving in weight of at least 1,000 tons and a saving in cost of at least 1,300,000, and that the boilers could all be placed below the protective deck without impairing the protection provided against torpedo attack. In the case of the scout-cruisers, vessels of 90,000 horse-power, the Navy Department did not even consider electric drive machinery, but designed them with geared drive and frankly stated that because of the space required and the weight it was not possible to use the electric. On December 19th last I wrote to the Secretary drawing his -attention to the views of the shipbuilders and saying that my own investigations had led to the same conclusions,' but although this letter related to a matter of great' engineering importance and involved ships costing about two'hundred million dollars, I have never received any reply--not even an acknowledgment. When these battle-cruisers were being first laid out, the engineers in the Bureau of Steam Engineering of the Navy were of the opinion that the electric drive would be lighter and would cost less than any other kind. In fact it was their belief that no other form of drive could be installed in the space allowed for boilers and machinery. The Engineering , Staff @f the Bureau is small considering the volume of work it must handle, and it was quite impossible for it to work out two complete sets of plans for comparison. The result was that the Bureau worked out, one complete set of plans only, based on- the electric drive and recommended their adoption. - The electric company that is active in advocating the electric drive has admittedly not laid' out a geared turbine design for comparison. I quote from a paper by Mr. Emmet, the expert of this company, recently published in the Electrical World- A just comparison,of this method with the electric equipment proposed would require a complete design and analytical study of the geared equip
