Building a 12" Naval Gun

halcyon said:
Watched a programme on the sinking, appears the doors were open due to the Admralty, they were obsessed with how fast they could reload. This resulted in short cuts, I think now the cordite, and leaving blast doors open to bye-pass the anti-blast system. Then sod's law, you get hit in just the wrong place and good-bye ship.


Brian
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Not so much the Admiralty as the Fleet Commander. The Admiralty had insured that appropriate safety was built into the ships and procedures, however the Fleet deliberately bypassed the safety mechs and procedures. Sadly similar things still happen today - this was almost exactly the same in cause (wanting to increase rate of fire, thus ignoring safe practice and this becoming 'the way we do things') and effect (unnecessarily dead people) on a much smaller scale.:

https://assets.publishing.service.g...23-Challenger_SI_Castlemartin_Redacted_RT.pdf
 
Blue Sunray said:
Not so much the Admiralty as the Fleet Commander. The Admiralty had insured that appropriate safety was built into the ships and procedures, however the Fleet deliberately bypassed the safety mechs and procedures. Sadly similar things still happen today - this was almost exactly the same in cause (wanting to increase rate of fire, thus ignoring safe practice and this becoming 'the way we do things') and effect (unnecessarily dead people) on a much smaller scale.:

https://assets.publishing.service.g...23-Challenger_SI_Castlemartin_Redacted_RT.pdf
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Admiralty was meant as not the shop floor, but management, but yes the same thing.

Brian
 
halcyon said:
Admiralty was meant as not the shop floor, but management, but yes the same thing.

Brian
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No, not the same thing at all. The Admiralty provided perfectly acceptable ship and procedures. Fleet from the Flag (nothing like shop floor) down chose to bypass those procedures and/or turn a blind eye thereto. You seem to be unaware of the then extant division of responsibilities or possibly what "The Admiralty" then was.

Ironically those who would have tried to enforce the correct procedures would these days be derided by the sort of low wattage intellects we get posting on here about "heath and safety gone mad" etc etc.
 
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Blue Sunray said:
No, not the same thing at all. The Admiralty provided perfectly acceptable ship and procedures. Fleet from the Flag (nothing like shop floor) down chose to bypass those procedures and/or turn a blind eye thereto. You seem to be unaware of the then extant division of responsibilities or possibly what "The Admiralty" then was.

Ironically those who would have tried to enforce the correct procedures would these days be derided by the sort of low wattage intellects we get posting on here about "heath and safety gone mad" etc etc.
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Its the old 'work to rule', nothing works efficiently under that regime.
 
capnsensible said:
Im afraid that your nautical knowledge has left me astern with that one, shipmate.
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Well I well remember being told, whilst visiting the torpedo place (Proddy's Hard?) Gosport many years ago, that the old ww2 'iron' dumb version displayed near the entrance, was what you guys had to resort to, when sinking the Belgrano, because the hitec version failed. Not sure if the meant wire guided, my memory can't dredge that out.
 
Blue Sunray said:
Not so much the Admiralty as the Fleet Commander. The Admiralty had insured that appropriate safety was built into the ships and procedures, however the Fleet deliberately bypassed the safety mechs and procedures. Sadly similar things still happen today - this was almost exactly the same in cause (wanting to increase rate of fire, thus ignoring safe practice and this becoming 'the way we do things') and effect (unnecessarily dead people) on a much smaller scale.:

https://assets.publishing.service.g...23-Challenger_SI_Castlemartin_Redacted_RT.pdf
Click to expand...

A sobering document. Thank you. The parallel is very close.

Another factor besides the rate of fire issue (which is understandable - it had been RN doctrine since Anson’s day that the highest rate of fire was wanted since a gun firing twice as fast is as good as another gun, etc) was the often expressed (and often implemented) wish of commanding officers to carry more ammunition than their ship was designed to carry, since they thought that they would expend a lot on a fleet action. This view may have been based on the experience of practice firing exercises which returned a shockingly low level of accuracy.

(The Barr and Stroud rangefinder was still being fitted to the ships of the Grand Fleet and fire control was still in its infancy.)

So far as I know, the only times when RN capital ships expended all their primary armament ammunition were during shore bombardments.
 
scotty123 said:
Well I well remember being told, whilst visiting the torpedo place (Proddy's Hard?) Gosport many years ago, that the old ww2 'iron' dumb version displayed near the entrance, was what you guys had to resort to, when sinking the Belgrano, because the hitec version failed. Not sure if the meant wire guided, my memory can't dredge that out.
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OK, Gotcha!

Stand by to be enlightened. The Submarine involved all those years ago carried two types of torpedo. The somewhat older but supremely reliable fire and forget diesel powered Mk. 8. This also carried a large quantity of Torpex in its warhead designed to be an armour plated ship buster. Because of the lack of guidance, they were typically fired in salvos of four. That may have been dated, but the fire control solution to send them on their way was at the time, state of the art.

The other type was the Mk 24 wire guided torpedo. It had in its early days, an anti surface ship capability but a lot less bangy at the front Well, near the front. And was primarily designed as an anti submarine weapon hence battery propelled for stealth. It was also wire guided but would use its own homing electronis, both passive and active if the control wire broke. This was sometimes a problem in the earliest version but the weapon was still quite capable of prosecuting a surface target and would have homed in on the skimmers propellors to disable it.

Recognising the problems, the builders (at the time going from Plessy to Marconi -or something like that) put a big effort into rectification.

The RN established the Submarine Tactical Weapon Group of dedicated highly specialist experienced Submariners, handsom and charming, to oversee how the weapon could be improved and used to its maximum.

Every one of the hundreds of test firings on the range at BUTEC in Scotland (brr) and the range at AUTEC in the Bahamas (yay), after extensive analysis, ended up with an excellent weapon of its era with great effectiveness. Covenient to let it receive bad press for the obvious reasons.

However as the peak was being reached the new heavyweight torpedo, Spearfish entered its trials phase and subsequently replaced the Tigerfish in frontline service.

Long Live STWG.
 
capnsensible said:
OK, Gotcha!

Stand by to be enlightened. The Submarine involved all those years ago carried two types of torpedo. The somewhat older but supremely reliable fire and forget diesel powered Mk. 8. This also carried a large quantity of Torpex in its warhead designed to be an armour plated ship buster. Because of the lack of guidance, they were typically fired in salvos of four. That may have been dated, but the fire control solution to send them on their way was at the time, state of the art.

The other type was the Mk 24 wire guided torpedo. It had in its early days, an anti surface ship capability but a lot less bangy at the front Well, near the front. And was primarily designed as an anti submarine weapon hence battery propelled for stealth. It was also wire guided but would use its own homing electronis, both passive and active if the control wire broke. This was sometimes a problem in the earliest version but the weapon was still quite capable of prosecuting a surface target and would have homed in on the skimmers propellors to disable it.

Recognising the problems, the builders (at the time going from Plessy to Marconi -or something like that) put a big effort into rectification.

The RN established the Submarine Tactical Weapon Group of dedicated highly specialist experienced Submariners, handsom and charming, to oversee how the weapon could be improved and used to its maximum.

Every one of the hundreds of test firings on the range at BUTEC in Scotland (brr) and the range at AUTEC in the Bahamas (yay), after extensive analysis, ended up with an excellent weapon of its era with great effectiveness. Covenient to let it receive bad press for the obvious reasons.

However as the peak was being reached the new heavyweight torpedo, Spearfish entered its trials phase and subsequently replaced the Tigerfish in frontline service.

Long Live STWG.
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Don't know much about it then.
 
Blue Sunray said:
No, not the same thing at all. The Admiralty provided perfectly acceptable ship and procedures. Fleet from the Flag (nothing like shop floor) down chose to bypass those procedures and/or turn a blind eye thereto. You seem to be unaware of the then extant division of responsibilities or possibly what "The Admiralty" then was.

Ironically those who would have tried to enforce the correct procedures would these days be derided by the sort of low wattage intellects we get posting on here about "heath and safety gone mad" etc etc.
Click to expand...

I promise not to try and inject a little humor, into replies in future.

Brian
 
Just seen this thread whilst on holiday, but no-one seems to have answered some of the questions. As a Sea Cadet over 60 years ago I spent a week on HMS Belfast whilst she was working up after refit then going to the Far East as Flagship of the C in C Far East. Main armament was four triple 6" turrets. I was assigned to a shell hoist in A turret, where one climbed down the barbette behind the breach and up again between two of the three barrels. No ear muffs were issued at that time and according to a specialist 25 years ago, my hearing was damaged at that time. The officer gun captain suggested cotton wool in the ears, but had no spare for me! He sat in a small compartment, with his sidekick, at the front separated by a sliding door, shut during firing, which he said reduced the noise for us, considerably. As someone has already pointed out the blast and noise emanated from the barrel, not from the breach, and he said we were firing broadsides. Firing ahead the muzzles of B turret were right above A, so far more noisy. Compressed air was blown down the barrel after firing to clear remnants of the charge, I cannot remember the exact procedure, but the compressed air circulated around the turret in a very uncomfortable manner, and was apparently worse behind the breech than in my location.

Each gun had its own separate crew so all three fired at once. I do not know about before, but certainly after the refit they were trained by radar and fired electrically from the Fighting Top by the Gunnery Officer, although of course they could also be fired and the turret circulation and gun elevation by the Gun Captain.

We did two separate firings of four salvos and before the first one X or Y turret was having problems. The Commander was getting rather irate and sarcastically announced over the tannoy, "Gentlemen, if we had been at war we would have been sunk by now!" Not true as there were still nine of the 12 guns capable of firing, plus all the secondary armament! Soon after the recalcitrant turret reported fit and I shall never forget a trilling of a bell and wondering what that meant when I nearly jumped out of my skin as a gun barrel about 9" from one shoulder and the centre gun about 18-24" from my other shoulder recoiled with a tremendous din.

What a wonderful week that was for a 15 year old.
 
Going back to the original posting I’m surprised 12” naval guns were being built at the time of the film. 13.5” became the standard a few iterations after Dreadnought in 1906 and 15” by WW1
 
Zarro said:
Just seen this thread whilst on holiday, but no-one seems to have answered some of the questions. As a Sea Cadet over 60 years ago I spent a week on HMS Belfast whilst she was working up after refit then going to the Far East as Flagship of the C in C Far East. Main armament was four triple 6" turrets. I was assigned to a shell hoist in A turret, where one climbed down the barbette behind the breach and up again between two of the three barrels. No ear muffs were issued at that time and according to a specialist 25 years ago, my hearing was damaged at that time. The officer gun captain suggested cotton wool in the ears, but had no spare for me! He sat in a small compartment, with his sidekick, at the front separated by a sliding door, shut during firing, which he said reduced the noise for us, considerably. As someone has already pointed out the blast and noise emanated from the barrel, not from the breach, and he said we were firing broadsides. Firing ahead the muzzles of B turret were right above A, so far more noisy. Compressed air was blown down the barrel after firing to clear remnants of the charge, I cannot remember the exact procedure, but the compressed air circulated around the turret in a very uncomfortable manner, and was apparently worse behind the breech than in my location.

Each gun had its own separate crew so all three fired at once. I do not know about before, but certainly after the refit they were trained by radar and fired electrically from the Fighting Top by the Gunnery Officer, although of course they could also be fired and the turret circulation and gun elevation by the Gun Captain.

We did two separate firings of four salvos and before the first one X or Y turret was having problems. The Commander was getting rather irate and sarcastically announced over the tannoy, "Gentlemen, if we had been at war we would have been sunk by now!" Not true as there were still nine of the 12 guns capable of firing, plus all the secondary armament! Soon after the recalcitrant turret reported fit and I shall never forget a trilling of a bell and wondering what that meant when I nearly jumped out of my skin as a gun barrel about 9" from one shoulder and the centre gun about 18-24" from my other shoulder recoiled with a tremendous din.

What a wonderful week that was for a 15 year old.
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You mention "all three guns fired at once", but hasn't Belfast only got twin gun turrets?
 
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