Barrel angle at firing

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José M. Rico
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Barrel angle at firing

Post by José M. Rico »

This topic has been moved here from the old forum. Feel free to continue the discussion.
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05 Oct 2004 21:00:25 - Gerard Heimann

Although there are numerous photos of turrets with their barrels at varying levels of elevation or depression, it appears to me that whenever I see photos of turrets firing their barrels, all of the barrels are usually shown at the same angle.

Are barrels uniformly angled because of a complexity issue in terms of machinery? Is ammunition handling made more difficult when barrels are individually angled? I thought perhaps if the barrels were aimed at different angles, then a salvo might provide better range information but then realized that it would be difficult to assign shell fall from a particular barrel. Are there any tactical advantages to differing barrel angles?

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06 Oct 2004 04:15:39 - Bill Jurens

In some older battleships etc. all of the guns in a given turret were installed in a single sleeve which meant that all of the guns elevated and depressed together. Newer ships generally allowed separate elevation of each of the guns. This worked much better.

It's usually no problem shooting with the tubes at various elevations. In fact, it's usually advantageous to do so, and most battleships did this routinely in order to adjust for small differences in the initial velocities of the guns, etc. In many cases it doesn't take much of a change in elevation to adjust the range quite a bit, and so gun tubes which may appear to be 'in-line' in photos may actually be at slightly different elevations, with the difference to small to see. It's usually no problem assigning a given projectile to a given gun if the elevation is different for adjacent gun tubes, as the change in range is often quite dramatic. In unusual cases, one can simply assign one tube in the turret a different colored dye-load.

Bill Jurens
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Post by Bgile »

It seems to me that a “missed salvo” by one gun in a turret would be a real problem if the guns were sleeved together. Instead of continuing to load the gun or clear the problem at the fixed loading angle, the loading tray would have to be retracted and the breech closed to permit elevation and firing of the other guns in the turret.

The British seem to have routinely fired salvoes with half the guns in each turret.

Finally, wasn’t it common to fire several guns each with different ranges to help observe the actual range of the target for spotting?

Steve Crandell
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