Range of Naval Gunfire

[LoboGunLeather]

Like "Mr. Joe" mentioned above, I served as a Pathfinder, also with the 101st Airborne Division, but my experience came a bit later in Vietnam.

For those unfamiliar with the Pathfinders, our basic function was to secure a landing zone (LZ) prior to troop insertions, mark the preferred insertion points (smoke, flares, panels), then perform air traffic control for helicopters inserting troops, resupply, and medi-vac operations during the operation. Usually the Pathfinder teams were the first guys to go in and the last guys to leave.

I recall being inserted one night in preparation for a troop insertion the next day, and we found ourselves unable to orient ourselves by map to the terrain features in the area. Simply put, we had been dropped off miles from the intended LZ. Our field radio (PRC-25) was barely able to make contact with another unit, who relayed our problem to our HQ staff. After a few hours we were told to watch for impact on hilltops, identified by number and shown on our map. A Navy ship fired spotting rounds at hilltops, then waited to see if we could identify the impact. It took a couple of hours as the Navy sent round after round (probably a dozen or more) before we finally saw a hit several miles away. Another shot went to another hilltop and that allowed us to triangulate our position. A time consuming process, especially with the radio relay for message back and forth, and one round at a time fired by the Navy.

We were so far from the planned LZ that the operation was cancelled and we were extracted that night.

I don't know which Navy ship or what type of gun, but I do know that we were at least 15 miles inland from the South China Sea. Of course, we were sitting on a hilltop to provide enough visibility to the surrounding hills, so it was lucky that "our hill" hadn't been selected for a spotting round before we were able to figure out our location.

I think about that little incident frequently while using my GPS to guide me around an unfamiliar area. I expect modern technology has made a lot of difference for the guys doing that work today!

 

[Old TexMex]

It's amazing how strong the effect is at seven yards.

That’ll be the Coriolic Anomaly. It’s vastly increased when projectiles are approaching you...at near or above 800fps.

 

[JackM]

Granted, they were talking about an anti-sub missile, but I like what the captain of the Bedford told the reporter in "The Bedford Incident", when asked how far the missile could travel: "Quite a ways," answers the captain, with a half smile. Richard Widmark, Syney Poitier, Wally Cox, Donald Sutherland. Great movie.

 

[CajunBass]

Granted, they were talking about an anti-sub missile, but I like what the captain of the Bedford told the reporter in "The Bedford Incident", when asked how far the missile could travel: "Quite a ways," answers the captain, with a half smile. Richard Widmark, Syney Poitier, Wally Cox, Donald Sutherland. Great movie.

My uncle served aboard a guided missile cruiser back in the '60's. It seems he told me that they hit a drone at 150 miles with a ship to air missile. Not the same as gunfire, I'm sure the missile was radar guided, but it sure impressed me as a 14 year old. Still does now that I think about it.

 

[RGVshooter]

The HMS Hood opened fire on the Bismark at around 15 miles and closed in to 9 miles before Bismark blew it out of the water. Bismark was armed with 15" guns.

 

[STCM(SW)]

I was the CMC of a repair unit and we did work on some ammo ships in Earl, N.J. On the pier was a 16" dummy projectile next to the USS Nitro, AE23.
Interesting thing was a half red circle at the beginning of the pier with large print of "End Of Blast Zone"

 

[kwselke]

So, is it safe to say that a 5" 38 caliber naval gun would be effective on a charging Kodiak Bear at say 8 miles? Those things can cover a lot of distance fast, so I would not want to let one get too close.



By the way, my late father had great respect for the 5" 38s using proximity fused projectiles on incoming aircraft at the Battle of Okinawa.

 

[DWalt]

"The Norden bombsight is another WWII era device that is jaw dropping in its precision and complexity."

It was another mechanical computer which took into account airspeed, wind speed, altitude, etc., and even the type of bomb being dropped. However it produced nowhere near the accuracy on target as legend has described it. During WWII the Norden bombsight was treated as ultra top secret, but in fact the Germans already possessed drawings of it, obtained by a Nazi spy working at the plant. Most of the bombings of German targets was simply mass random bombings from a large number of aircraft. A flight leader would drop his bombs on target as best as he could aim on it (sometimes guided by flares dropped from pathfinder aircraft if it was a night mission), and all the other planes in the flight would drop their bombs at the same time without aiming for the most part. The bombing process was very inefficient but ultimately somewhat effective.

 

[Sistema1927]

Would one of you Navy types please explain the whole inch/caliber nomenclature of naval guns, such as the 16"/50 caliber designation of the guns used on the Iowa class battleships?

 

[DWalt]

Caliber is simply the barrel length. For example, a 5"-50 caliber means that the barrel is 50 x 5" = 250" = approximately 21 feet long.

 

[DWalt]

Granted, they were talking about an anti-sub missile, but I like what the captain of the Bedford told the reporter in "The Bedford Incident", when asked how far the missile could travel: "Quite a ways," answers the captain, with a half smile. Richard Widmark, Syney Poitier, Wally Cox, Donald Sutherland. Great movie.

I worked with a retired Navy Captain for awhile who saw considerable sea service commanding several types of combat ships. He told me that The Bedford Incident ASROC missile launch could never have happened the way it was shown but he wouldn't tell me why. [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOll3v55Dmo[/ame]

 

[muddocktor]

At 1000 yards the Coriolis Effect is less than 2"! With a 5" shell, they wouldn't waste the time the to figure it at less than 2.5 to 3 miles! (it also depends on the direction you are shooting) Another factor in calculating where any projectile is aimed at distance is called Spin Drift. It has to do with weather you have left hand or right hand twist to the rifling. It is not dependent on the direction you are shooting.

Temperature, humidity, and Barometric Pressure as well as wind speed, all figure into the ballistics.

Impact size is based on blast radius. (which is bigger than crater size!) on the 16" shell from a Missouri class battle wagon, the blast radius from a HE (high explosive) round would cover 15 to 20 VW Beetles. But from the AP armor piercing) round, there is no blast from the solid metal projectile. and the crater is rather deep! (A friend of mine shower pictures of Vietnam shelled by the USS New Jersey, these were slightly less than 20 miles inland and about 35 to 40 feet across. The impact zone was several hundred acres.

What was the cost of each shot? They use 80 to 120 pounds of Smokeless powder plus 10 pounds of Black Powder to get that burning. The HE round has well over 2000 pounds of high explosive in it! This material was all made in the early 1940's and TNT is a byproduct of baking coke (charcoal from coal for smelting steel) or direct refining of oil.

In the 1980's (I think) the Navy ordered a friend of mine to have modern steel barrels for the 16" guns made. There was not one foundry in the world capable or interested in casting them, nor is any of the rifling machinery left! So for the last few deployments the battle wagons went out without their huge gun turrets! Cruise Missile Launchers replaced the 16" turrets. They still had their small arms though, 8" guns. (Cruise Missiles run about $1.5 million each! plus system development costs.

Just a fun fact: The 120mm smooth bore cannon used on the M1-A tank was originally developed by Krupp during WWII but was put on the shelf because it penetrates around 34" of armor and US battle ships only had 16" and Yamamoto class had 22" of lessor quality armor. Modern Main Battle tanks are tougher than Battleships!

Ivan

Sorry Ivan, I'm going to call you out on some of your "facts", as they are just wrong and will provide a reference to you to look at. This is in dealing with the Mark 7 gun as mounted on the Iowa Class ships and the Mark 8 and Mark 13/Mark 14 rounds that it shoots.

According to data I have found, the 1900 lb HC round can make a crater 50 ft wide and 20 ft deep. In Vietnam, the New Jersey was occasionally used to make an LZ by firing 1 HC round into the jungle, which would clear a 200 yard LZ and defoliate trees for 300 yards beyond that. The article doesn't say, but I would hazard a guess that they used a VT fuse to make it go off as a very low altitude airburst for maximum ground clearing action instead of a crater. BTW, the bursting charge (actual explosive) in an HC round was 153.6 lbs for the Mark 13, not over 2000 lbs. The mark 13 also had some armor penetration capability for shore bombardment. It would penetrate up to 16' at 0 degrees at 10k yards and up to 13 ft at 30 degree angle of impact. That made it good for knocking out concrete bunkers on the shoreline.

The 2700 lb Mark 8 "heavy" AP round was capable of penetrating nearly 30 feet of concrete and over 32 inches of side armor at point blank range and deck armor penetration of up to 14 inches at 42,345 yards. The bursting charge in the mark 8 was 40.9 lbs of explosive.

There were also some other shells designed and/or deployed during the 50's up through the Gulf War. And others designed and even tested but not further pursued. One such was an updated HC round which would have been the same length as the Mark 8 AP and would have weighed 2,240 lbs and capable of a range of over 51,000 yards. There was also a submunition round that had 400 M43A1 anti-personnel "Bouncing Betty" grenades with time-fuzes, which was actually deployed.

The standard full propellant charge for both HC and AP rounds was 6 bags weighing 110 lbs each for a total charge of 660 lbs of propellant. They were ignited with a charge of black powder, like you said Ivan. Even the reduced charge for the shells was over 300 lbs of propellant.

Unlike what you posted, the guns on the Iowa Class were fully operational during their reactivation during the 80's until they were retired in the early 90's. One reason they were reactivated was the fact that they had found a bunch of barrel liners stockpiled in some out of the way place, making reactivation economically possible. If they would have had to make new barrel liners from scratch it probably wouldn't have been economically feasible to reactivate them because as you say, the ability to make these liners had been scrapped. Your friend might very well have been contacted about making new liners, but the guns themselves were not replaced totally, just the liners. And I don't doubt that he couldn't find anyone to make the liners either as that tech was scrapped after WWII. But the guns themselves were fully operational until they were finally retired. Wisconsin and Missouri did fire them during Desert Storm in 1991.

Here is a link for you to read about the Mark 7 guns and the shells that went with it if you are interested. <<<LINK TO MARK 7 GUN>>>

 

[kwselke]

Caliber is simply the barrel length. For example, a 5"-50 caliber means that the barrel is 50 x 5" = 250" = approximately 21 feet long.

You're spot on, but for our math challenged members I'll state the math differently. The caliber of a naval gun is the barrel length divided by the bore diameter.

 

[VaTom]

Sorry for thread drift but I understand 8" howitzers used tubes like the Navy 8" guns.

Dad served with 780th FA Battalion during the Korea War. 8" towed howitzers. Often talked of fire missions of up to 20 miles. 200 lb. shell. Once they mounted an 8" tube on a tracked vehicle and pulled it up a narrow mountain road in winter to use it for direct fire to take out a Chinese command bunker compound on an opposite ridgeline. Story can be found on-line. They had heard a similar thing had been done in WWII during city fighting in Germany.

Some pictures of 8" Howitzers in action in Korea in 1951. Note size of the shell in one picture. Two men held it up to the breach on a rack and the others pushed it into the tube.

 

[DWalt]

You're spot on, but for our math challenged members I'll state the math differently. The caliber of a naval gun is the barrel length divided by the bore diameter.

The caliber is the nominal bore diameter. The barrel length is stated in terms of the number of calibers. I think 16" guns used by the U. S. Navy during WWII had both 45- and 50-caliber length barrels. And there were several different Marks.

 

[jack the toad]

Not to drift and I didn't do a search so going strictly from memory but didn't an explosion mishap occur onboard the Wisconsin (#2 main turret IIRC) that may have expedited the decommissioning of the Iowa class? And I think may have ultimately been investigated more due to crew than mechanical failure???

 

[kwselke]

Not to drift and I didn't do a search so going strictly from memory but didn't an explosion mishap occur onboard the Wisconsin (#2 main turret IIRC) that may have expedited the decommissioning of the Iowa class? And I think may have ultimately been investigated more due to crew than mechanical failure???

As I recall the accident was originally blamed on the crew, but with further investigation it was found to have been caused by powder which was unstable due to poor storage for years on a barge.

 

[Faulkner]

The Japanese built a battleship with 20" guns. They didn't have enough fuel at the end of the war to send it out.

The Imperial Japanese Navy battleships Musashi and Yamato were the largest battleships ever built. They carried nine 18.1 inch guns.

 

[Farmer17]

So why didn't the Battleship 16" guns knock out the big bunkers at Omaha beach that are still there?

 

[k22fan]

First, I was not in the military. I only read a lot of books about WW II naval battles.

While it did not turn out to be their most important use later in WW II, capitol ships were designed and built to fight each other. During WW II battleships fired on each other a dozen times.

Battleships and heavy cruisers carried catapult launched sea planes that it was hoped could act as spotters. That seldom worked out. All eight or nine battleship rifles were fired simultaneously at the location it was hoped the opposing ship would continue to steam toward. For a ship with nine rifles the hoped for report from the observer was "straddle eight," eight towers of water and one projectile disappearing into the opposing ship. Dye was added to the explosive to color the splashes so that ships in a squadron could see who's splashes were who's. A common tactic was chasing splashes. Captains turned their ship toward the last pattern of splashes hopping the incoming pattern was fired at where they'd be if they had not turned. The mechanical computers required range and wind estimation and estimation of the enemy's coarse and speed. Additionally, the ships pitched and rolled on the waves. An officer in the lead turret flipped the switch to fire all the rifles as the ship's roll neared level.

A seldom used exception was ordering rapid rife at close range. When that was ordered gun crews fired their rifles individually immediately after completing loading. USN heavy cruisers used rapid fire in the naval battles for Guadalcanal.

The first use of radar by a battleship was by the USS Washington sinking the IJN battleship Kirishima in the dark Nov. 14/15 1942. Thereafter radar helped greatly.