f105d
Junior Member
Posts: 62
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Post by f105d on Jan 23, 2021 14:47:24 GMT -6
Since one can make a rapid fire 8 inch gun like on the Des Moines historically or fairly regularly late game. I had a question of is this possible for something like a 14 inch gun or if Admiral Fischer is around a version for an 18 inch gun since automation and more advanced systems even in the 50s would at least in theory make it possible to my knowledge. Is this possible?
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Post by director on Jan 23, 2021 20:20:44 GMT -6
As far as i know the concept was never seriously proposed for a capital-ship gun. The physical dimensions are so very much greater - an 8" shell weighs around 200 pounds while a 16" can weigh 2700 pounds, and with propellant the 16" shell-and-charge is a lot wider and longer - that the space required would probably force a reduction in number of guns per turret while not really providing a commensurate increase in rate-of-fire. Point two is that ammunition stowage space would have to increase... the Des Moines class CAs were almost the size of HMS Dreadnought, so extrapolating that up you might get 3 to 6-16" guns on a Montana-sized hull, or else build something you can't dock or repair. Point three is reliability: while the US Navy did more-or-less get the 8" gun working the 6" never panned out, and a gun that loads at a regular rate is far better than one that is broken. Point four is that autoloaders were the last gasp of gun power; even as they were developed, aircraft and missiles made them obsolete. There wouldn't be any use for a capital-ship gun except shore bombardment and you need accuracy, not speed, for that.
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Post by rimbecano on Jan 23, 2021 22:41:15 GMT -6
As far as i know the concept was never seriously proposed for a capital-ship gun. The physical dimensions are so very much greater - an 8" shell weighs around 200 pounds while a 16" can weigh 2700 pounds, and with propellant the 16" shell-and-charge is a lot wider and longer - that the space required would probably force a reduction in number of guns per turret while not really providing a commensurate increase in rate-of-fire. I'm not sure that the space required for the machinery would be all that much more: for shells of that size a fair bit of machinery was already necessary: I think the reliability of an autoloader is more the concern at that size.
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Post by director on Jan 24, 2021 7:52:54 GMT -6
That's a fair point. I was just making the assumption that, since Des Moines and Worcester (and the British equivalents) were so much larger, the increase had to do with size increases in turret, barbette, shell handling and magazine spaces.
I have always thought it was odd that the 8" version worked well while the 6" never did; I'd have expected it to be the other way 'round. Does anyone know why Worcester's guns never panned out? Could it be the all-angle loading and/or high angle for AA fire, or was it just running at unsustainable speeds?
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Post by nimrod on Jan 25, 2021 11:42:28 GMT -6
From www.navalanalyses.com/2016/10/warships-of-past-worcester-class-anti.html"Αccording to NavWeaps "These guns did not prove reliable in service, possibly because of the high rate of fire and need for any-elevation loading. Another contributing cause was that they used a dual projectile hoist system - one for AP and one for HC/AA shells - which proved to be a source of jamming."" I also think they didn't take the time to debug the system as the needs of the navy were changing: "At the same time, the technological developments were significant (anti-aircraft missiles, aircraft's' speed and maneuverability etc.) consequently the ships of the class become obsolete very quickly. Also the fire control fitted to the Worcester was optimized for anti aircraft fire rather than surface action or gun fire support and the Royal Navy 6 inch gun cruisers HMS Belfast and HMS Jamaica actually performed much better in this role during the Korean War. Worcester and Roanoke seemed to offer little more than the post-war group three Juneau-class light cruisers on 40% of the displacement, the USS Juneau (CL-119) as refitted in in 1951 with 6 twin Mk 38 5-inch (127 mm) guns and twelve (12) 50 3-inch (76 mm) guns on 6,000 ton displacement seeming a better answer. Moreover, the ships, had a maximum speed of 33knots speed, which means that they were no faster than the aircraft carriers they were designed to protect. The ship's complement was initially 1,070 men but actually the crew requirements in order to operate the ship was between 1,400-500 men!"
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Post by abclark on Feb 19, 2021 12:04:40 GMT -6
As to the Des Moines class, the automatic 8" triples weighed ~50% more than the 8" triples on the Baltimore class. They were, however, capable of any angle loading, could be used in the very long range anti aircraft role, carried radar antennas on the turrets, all in addition to having double the best rate of fire the USN had ever achieved (and that only briefly) with an 8" gun.
The Worcester class didn't have the same kind of automation that the Des Moines Class had. Where the Des Moines class had fully automatic shell handling, the Worcesters only had increased mechanization and an increased (theoretical) rate of ammunition supply. There was a plan to replace the twin turrets on the next ships with fully automatic triple turrets that were scaled down versions of the Des Moines class turrets.
In short, the fully automatic loading on the Des Moines class was considered excellent by the USN, but the partially automatic loading, combined with the dual projectile hoists on the Worcesters was considered a failure.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Feb 19, 2021 14:57:18 GMT -6
USA 8__55 20.3 cm RF Mark 16.pdf (708.85 KB) For Your Reference and Information: From Navweaps, BTW Also, the idea of the rapid fire guns for the Des Moines, came from the 6 inch guns of the Worcester class light cruisers.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Feb 20, 2021 11:32:36 GMT -6
Just some more information for you on the Worchester 6 inch guns. Their rapid-fire system had a firing cycle of 5-seconds. The Des Moines 8-inch guns with the same rapid-fire system could fire 6-seconds at 41 degrees. The USN designed a three gun triple mount with each gun firing twenty rounds per minute but post war development sort of eliminated the concept and made it obsolete.
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Post by thomasmacmoragh on Feb 20, 2021 22:12:03 GMT -6
I could be wrong but I thought, HMS Vanguard used an auto loader for her 16 inch main battery?
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f105d
Junior Member
Posts: 62
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Post by f105d on Feb 20, 2021 23:13:58 GMT -6
I could be wrong but I thought, HMS Vanguard used an auto loader for her 16 inch main battery? As awesome as that would be sadly Vanguard only had old 15inch 42s so no autoloader sadly.
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Post by thomasmacmoragh on Feb 20, 2021 23:21:48 GMT -6
I thought she had 16 inch... humm ok I stand corrected, I know the British could build 16 in guns (the lord Nelsons) but with with 15 inch in the king Gorge V Because of the need to build them quickly I though for sure the would have the time between them and Vanguard they would have had time to retool for the 16s
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f105d
Junior Member
Posts: 62
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Post by f105d on Feb 21, 2021 0:37:50 GMT -6
I thought she had 16 inch... humm ok I stand corrected, I know the British could build 16 in guns (the lord Nelsons) but with with 15 inch in the king Gorge V Because of the need to build them quickly I though for sure the would have the time between them and Vanguard they would have had time to retool for the 16s Sadly King George Vs only had 14 inchers. And the guns they used were old spares from things like the Queen Elizabeth's, Revenges, Renown's, and Hood.
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Post by aeson on Feb 21, 2021 13:20:21 GMT -6
I thought she had 16 inch... humm ok I stand corrected, I know the British could build 16 in guns (the lord Nelsons) but with with 15 inch in the king Gorge V Because of the need to build them quickly I though for sure the would have the time between them and Vanguard they would have had time to retool for the 16s You might be thinking of the Lion class, which was supposed to succeed the King George V class and of which Vanguard is something of a subclass; the Lions would have been armed with 16" triple turrets and there is apparently a claim that one of the proposed mountings for the guns that these ships would have carried would have been capable of supporting a rate of fire of about one round every 20 seconds, but:
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Post by wlbjork on Feb 22, 2021 0:40:13 GMT -6
I thought she had 16 inch... humm ok I stand corrected, I know the British could build 16 in guns (the lord Nelsons) but with with 15 inch in the king Gorge V Because of the need to build them quickly I though for sure the would have the time between them and Vanguard they would have had time to retool for the 16s You might be thinking of the Lion class, which was supposed to succeed the King George V class and of which Vanguard is something of a subclass; the Lions would have been armed with 16" triple turrets and there is apparently a claim that one of the proposed mountings for the guns that these ships would have carried would have been capable of supporting a rate of fire of about one round every 20 seconds, but: Interesting. No indication of how they intended to reach that RoF though. NavWeaps notes on the 16" MkI as used on Nelson and Rodney indicate that the limit to the RoF there was in the handling room time:
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Post by victormagnus on Feb 25, 2021 13:12:40 GMT -6
For what it's worth, later BB-size guns really *can* be said to be autoloaders. That's why they can (theoretically) fire ~1-2 shots per minute, instead of ~1 shot every 3 minutes. So much of the work of shell handling & loading for those large guns was done with machinery (and human labor, but lots of machinery) that I would argue they're effectively semi-autoloaders already.
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