The present legally authorized strength of the Regular Coast Artillery Corps is 701 officers (exclusive of chaplains) and 19,019 men. From the table it appears that the present authorized strength is short 530 officers and 10,828 enlisted men of the strength necessary to man our coast fortifications under this approved policy on the basis of the minimum number of officers and men necessary for an efficient service.

As the defenses outside of continental United States have been completed and made ready for their garrisons, it has been necessary to transfer to these a considerable number of Coast Artillery troops from the home fortifications to provide the requisite manning bodies. When the over-sea fortifications are complete, 291 officers and 6,800 men will be required for duty outside of the United States. This will leave in the United States only 410 officers and 12,219 men, which is approximately 44 per cent of the officers and 53 per cent of the enlisted men necessary for providing a minimum manning body for all mines and for that one-half of the guns and mortars which it is contemplated shall be manned by Regular troops.

Apart from this, the action of the coast States has been most discouraging in their failure to provide Coast Artillery personnel from the State forces for the manning body of the other half of the gun and mortar batteries in the United States. Of the 711 officers and 17,329 enlisted men, which it was hoped and expected the States would furnish for this purpose, there were, at the 1915 annual inspection, only 440 officers and 7,438 enlisted men organized and available, as indicated in the following table:

Militia Coast Artillery organized and available for service as reported at the last annual inspection, 1915.

The table following shows the total number of guns and mortars mounted in our coast fortifications (not including those batteries declared obsolete by the War Department Board of Review), and the number for which no manning body (Regulars or militia) is provided.

Guns now mounted or being mounted (after eliminating batterics declared obsolete by the War Department Board of Review).

Number for which manning

16- 14- 12- 10-
6- 5- 4.7- 4- 3- Mor-
inch. inch. inch. inch. inch. inch. inch. inch. inch. inch. tars.

bodies are now provided.... Number for which manning bodies are not provided.....

229

102

49 206

The approximate cost of the guns and mortars for which no manning bodies have been provided, including the cost of their emplacement, is $41,000,000.

66

The personnel required for manning the guns and mortars shown above may be determined from the accompanying manning table marked “A,”1 which is based upon the minimum number of men necessary to serve efficiently in action, batteries of different calibers and numbers of guns.

Attention is invited to the following statement of the personnel required for the gun and mine defenses of the United States, the same for the insular possessions, and a summary giving the totals and showing the shortage of the Regular Coast Artillery:

Coast Artillery personnel required after eliminating batteries declared obsolete by the War Department Board of Review.

Coast Artillery personnel required after eliminating batteries declared obsolete by the War Department Board of Review-Continued.

If Congress will provide for the shortage shown above, the Regular Coast Artillery will be able to man efficiently all mine defenses and its share of the gun defenses. To provide for this shortage will involve an annual cost of approximately $5,750,000, which is a com

paratively small cost for the efficient use of armament which has cost so much more. The cost of providing this shortage is shown in the following table:

Based on the personnel necessities of the Coast Artillery Corps, the Secretary of War submitted to the Sixty-third Congress, third session, a bill to provide for the deficiencies.

In the hearings before the Senate Military Committee, the Secretary of War said, when asked by the chairman of the committee as to which of the bills presented he considered the most important:

'I consider the Coast Artillery the most important, and for this reason, that, isolated as we are on all sides by water, none of our great centers of population where these great Coast Artillery forts are can be attacked successfully from the sea and laid under tribute if we have efficient Coast Artillery defenses. In other words, if you assume that an over-sea enemy-and all our enemies will be practically over-sea-attempts to militarily destroy or invade this country, they first would have either to destroy our fleet, or if they did not destroy our fleet to appear at various points along our coast and bombard our cities."

It is indeed essential that this trained personnel of Regular Coast Artillery be provided if our system of coast defenses is to be efficient on the outbreak of war with any maritime power. It must be had in mind that in any such event the coast line would, immediately on the declaration of war, or even before the declaration of war, become the threatened line. There will not then be time available to train men to serve the coast armament. It were better that coast batteries not manned at that time by trained troops had not been constructed. The armament mounted therein, in such case, might even be made use of against us by the enemy.

The arguments used by those who advocate skeletonizing regiments, battalions, and companies of the mobile Army do not apply to the Coast Artillery. The personnel required to serve the ammunition to the guns, that required to serve the range-finding equipment, that required to serve the power plants, searchlights, etc., and to plant and operate the mines are to be considered as operating crews, and there is a precise function for each officer and each enlisted man on the basis of the minimum number necessary for efficient service. Any number less than that given above would not be able to get that degree of efficiency out of the armament of which it is capable.

Again, it should be kept in mind that the numbers called for in the bill which was presented by the Secretary of War in 1914 were those necessary for only one-half of the guns and mortars of the home fortifications. That feature of the policy which looks to the seaboard States to supply the other half of the personnel necessary for the guns and mortars is regarded by many as one unlikely ever to be realized. Based on experience, it is feared that the States never will meet their obligations in this respect. It follows, therefore, that whatever shortage of State troops may result must be added to the

shortage mentioned above to obtain the resultant shortage on the basis of a full manning body for the home fortifications. If the home fortifications be supplied with only 60 per cent of the personnel required to man them, they can only be regarded as 60 per cent eflicient, with the additional danger that the unmanned armament may be appropriated by our enemies. Such a situation would be as illogical as would obtain if the municipal authorities of a city, estimating that an adequate protection of the property of its citizens against fire required 100 fire engines, and these engines had accordingly been provided, should then proceed to supply trained crews for but 60 of the engines.

At the present time many of the coast fortifications have been so stripped of the personnel that they have been placed in the hands of caretakers, who can only keep the matériel in serviceable condition. The garrisons for the Coast Defenses of Portsmouth, the Delaware, the Potomac, the Cape Fear, Charleston, Key West, Tampa, Mobile, Galveston, and the Columbia are greatly below what they should be under the policy which contemplates that one-half of the guns and mortars be manned by Regular troops.

In view of the foregoing, the recommendations made by the undersigned in previous reports are urgently renewed, that laws be enacted that shall provide an adequate Coast Artillery personnel for the home fortifications, and that legislation be sufficiently elastic to authorize the President to increase at any time the Coast Artillery forces by the numbers of officers and men necessary to man any new fortifications that may from time to time be authorized by Congress.

DESIRABILITY OF INCREASING CALIBER OF PRIMARY ARMAMENT.

In my report of last year I pointed out in connection with providing an armament for the coast fortifications at Cape Henry that the question of the size and power of the guns for these fortifications was under discussion, and it was stated that in view of the fact that foreign warships of the latest design are to carry guns larger than 14 inches in caliber and of the highest ballistic power, and in view of the fact that if the defenses at Cape Henry were subjected to a naval attack it would be possible for a naval enemy to bring many battleships carrying 8 to 12 large-caliber guns per ship and to concentrate their fire on the Cape Henry fortifications, and in view also of the fact that coast fortifications are not restricted by reason of weight or space in mounting and using effectively the largest caliber of guns, and guns of the highest power, the Chief of Coast Artillery has recommended that the type gun for the Cape Henry fortifications be a 16-inch 50-caliber gun. Otherwise these fortifications may be subjected not only to a very much greater volume of fire than can be delivered by them, but also have the disadvantage of replying to that fire with guns of inferior power, both by reason of the diameter of the bore of the gun and by reason of its shorter length, it being understood that for any given diameter of bore the power of the gun is a direct function of its length.

It is a matter of no little satisfaction to be able to report that this question was referred to a board composed of the Assistant Secretary of War, Commanding General Eastern Department, Chief of Ord

23871°-Ab. 1915-vol 1-28