Fifteen-Inch Guns For Kaiser's Ships.

New York Times 100 years ago today, October 20, 1912:
Huge Weapons of American Superdreadnoughts to be Surpassed by Germany.
LONG LIFE ALSO CLAIMED
They Will Last for 200 Rounds, It Is Said, While British Gun Limit Is Put at 60.
Special Cable to The New York Times.
    BERLIN, Oct. 19.— From an authoritative official quarter The New York Times correspondent learns that the German Navy, has decided to surpass the 14-inch guns, mounted on the latest type United States superdreadnoughts of the Texas class, and to install 15-inch weapons on its own latest superdreadnoughts.
    The guns, which will be of 50 calibre length, will throw a projectile weighing 165 pounds and will be far and away the most powerful weapons ever placed on a warship.
    According to the same information, which is based on confidential official memoranda issued by the Admiralties of Italy and Austria, Germany's allies, the latest completed type of German battleship, the so-called Kaiser class, already carries 14-inch guns. Two of them, the Kaiser and the Friedrich der Grosse, are ready for service, and three others will be completed by April, 1913.
    The vessels, which are to carry 15-inch guns, are now on the stocks and are expected to be completed by June, 1915.
    Statements issued by the Italian and Austrian naval authorities in reference to the big guns of the world's navies show that Germany and the United States are the only countries which have so far gone in for weapons of 14 inches and over. Great Britain's biggest are said to be 13 1/2 inches, in the Lion class. Japan is mounting guns of the same size in her newest Fuso class.
    The tabulation not only discloses for the first time that Germany is arming her newest dreadnoughts with the biggest guns on record, but also shows that these weapons, which are, of course manufactured by the Krupps, will be of vastly longer life than the most powerful Vickers and Armstrong guns employed by England. The latter are credited with a life of only 60 rounds, while the German 14 and 15 inch guns, it is said, can fire 200 rounds.
    If these remarkable figures are correct, it would mean that after an action the entire heavy battery of a British dreadnought would have to be replaced or laid off to be retubed.
    None of these facts has been allowed thus far to become public in Germany, where the fiction is assiduously propagated that 12-inchers are the biggest guns that Germany is using.