ARD-3

ARMY & NAVY

ARD3

When a motorized military unit moves into the field, a complete repair unit follows not far behind to overhaul any piece of fouled equipment on the spot. Similarly, when a,battle fleet goes to sea the auxiliary service fleet that follows in its wake includes a repair ship ready to make repairs as best they can. The usefulness of modern repair ships is restricted since they can make only minor or temporary repairs on smaller craft. To correct such major difficulties on a capital ship as a broken propeller or rudder or a loosened plate below the waterline, the ship must be hauled into drydock, which may be thousands of miles away. Last week the Navy Department told how it proposed to overcome this difficulty with a $15,000,000 floating drydock, a strange craft that would not seem out of place among the weird illustrations of Popular Science Monthly.

The new craft, to be known as the ARD3 (Auxiliary Repair Dock), will be 1,016 ft. long, 165 ft. beam, 75 ft. high from keel to top deck. It will have a streamlined bow like any ordinary ship and steering equipment in the stern, so that it can be towed by one of the auxiliary train at a rate of ten knots. Also in its stern there will be a pair of huge dam gates that will reveal, when opened, a great rectangular chasm, 125 ft. wide and running almost the entire length of the craft, into which disabled ships will be pushed at sea. When an ailing battleship is brought into position before the ARD-3, the dock's great bottom tanks will be pumped full of water to sink its keel below that of the battleship.

When this is accomplished the cripple will be moved forward into the spacious midsection of the ARD-3. The water will then be pumped out of the bottom tanks and the ARD3 will rise, lifting the damaged battleship high and dry so that repairmen can get at its vital parts. The ARD3 will t>>e so big that it can take care of anything the U. S. Navy now has afloat, and almost anything smaller than the Queen Mary that it is likely to launch. _

The Navy Department bases its predictions of success for the ARD-3, which will cost about twice as much as a stationary drydock, on its experience with the ARD-1, a small experimental craft of some similar design, which it has been trying out for two years on small destroyers and submarines. When bids are opened this week for the construction of the ARD-3, shipbuilders will be preparing bids for the building of the ARD-2, a sister dock of the experimental ARD-1, which is 446 ft. long. The ARD3 is intended for use in the Pacific and will probably be built somewhere on the Pacific Coast, since it will be too large to pass through the Panama Canal.

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