Speaking of 'caliber' in the book 'Russian Battleship vs. Japanese Battleship' by Robert Forczyk, subtitled 'Yellow Sea 1904-05', it talks of 6-in/45-cal or of 12-in/30-cal guns.
I gather the 'cal' means 'caliber', but how is this spoken of?
They already gave the shell diameter, so what do they mean by 'cal'?
what do they mean by 'caliber'?
Re: what do they mean by 'caliber'?
The caliber typically represented the number of projectile-diameters the length of the gun was. If a shell was 12-inch diameter and the gun was 40 calibers in length, it would be 40 feet long (approximately). I say approximately, because not all nations defined their gun lengths the same way--for example, some counted all or part of the breech as "length", while the bore-length of the actual barrel was actually far less. See the NavWeaps.com site for details of many guns and how they were measured.
Re: what do they mean by 'caliber'?
hellosynthesim wrote:Speaking of 'caliber' in the book 'Russian Battleship vs. Japanese Battleship' by Robert Forczyk, subtitled 'Yellow Sea 1904-05', it talks of 6-in/45-cal or of 12-in/30-cal guns.
I gather the 'cal' means 'caliber', but how is this spoken of?
They already gave the shell diameter, so what do they mean by 'cal'?
the caliber in this case is about the lenght of the barrel.
example: 6-in/45-cal would be a gun that fires shells with a diameter of 6 inches, using a barrel that is 270 inches long (6 x 45).
hope it helps