The USS Vesuvius of the United States Navy was the only ship of the dynamite cannon cruiser or dynamite cruiser type designated.
The Vesuvius was used in the Spanish-American War off Cuba and converted due to inaccuracy of the pneumatic guns. Since the ship was unsuitable as a normal cruiser, it was finally converted into a torpedo test ship and later decommissioned. The ship was one of the participants in the Columbian Naval Review in 1893 .
Pneumatic guns
The main feature of this ship was the main armament, which consisted of three rigidly mounted, pneumatic cannons on the forecastle . The 2 m long bullets with a caliber of 38 cm, filled with up to 250 kg of gelatin dynamite , were ejected by means of a compressed air pulse that was dosed according to the firing range. The use of pneumatic cannons was chosen because the explosive charge was too sensitive to be fired from firearms. These guns were developed by the Pneumatic Dynamite Gun Co. of New York, NY. Against this background, the name "Dynamite Gun Cruiser" was created, which is the origin of the German name "Dynamitkanonenkreuzer". The firing ranges, depending on the strength of the compressed air pulse and the mass of the projectiles, were between 1,600 m and 3,700 m. During the bombardment of Santiago de Cuba in the Spanish-American War in 1898, the cannons proved to be inaccurate and were replaced by conventional smaller guns. Since the pneumatic firing principle had not proven itself, no further dynamite cannon cruisers were built and no further developments of this type of ship were carried out.
Footnotes
^ Alfred Sidney Johnson, Clarence A. Bickford, William W. Hudson, Nathan Haskell Dole: The Cyclopedic review of current history , Volume 3, Garretson, Cox & Co., Buffalo (NY) 1894, pp. 296 f.
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