Navy on the Western Front: The 14″ Railway Guns in WWI

[TinCan782]

Love those "big guns"...on a train!

Navy on the Western Front: The 14″ Railway Guns in WWI

 

[chakk]

Very interesting story. Not clear to me from the photos if the train was equipped with American-style couplers or European-style couplers with buffer posts. Locomotive looks like a 2-8-0 Consolidation.

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

14"/50 gun, that should have been the same model as the main armament of the New Mexico- and Tennessee-class battleships. Battleships were much more effective with those guns than trains. Military trains are generally easy targets during wartime.

 

[Ryan]

There's one of these in the park in front of my building at work. I'll have to wander outside and snap a picture.

 

[chakk]

I think my Navy son told me that the 16 inch guns on the Wisconsin-class battleships could fire off 6 salvos from a deck gun before the first of the six hit the target.

 

[Ryan]

Off by a factor of two, each tube would fire a round every 30 seconds or so. If my memory is correct, the max time of flight is on the order of 90 seconds, meaning it's theoretically possible to have 3 rounds in flight from each gun.

Of course, multiply that by 9 guns and you can have 27 shells in the air heading at you at the same time. Not something I would want to be on the receiving end of!