Battleship GIF Deconsructed

[Big Frank]

I have a GIF file of a battleship that's way too big to post, 1.27 MB, even though it's only 498x300 pixels. Don't ask me why it's not 500x300, or which ship it is, because I don't know. I think it's the USS Iowa. The muzzle blast is so great it pushes a large bowl shaped depression into the ocean under each set of guns. That's one wave you wouldn't want to surf! I used the free IrfanView graphic viewer app to extract all 17 frames from the GIF so I can post them as JPGs. Many years ago I read that when a battleship fired it's 16" guns, the whole ship moved sideways 6'. I don't know if that's true or not, but the edge of it's barely in the picture by the last frame. It looks like it moved at least that far plus rocked so it looks like it moved even farther. Wikipedia lists the weight as 48,110 long tons (48,880 t) Standard, 57,540 long tons (58,460 t) full load. That averages out to well over 100 million pounds. Think about the worst recoil of any gun you've ever fired, then try to imagine how bad the recoil must be to move a 100,000,000+ pound ship sideways!

The first picture is the Iowa firing a full broadside of nine 16-inch/50-caliber and six 5-inch/38 cal guns. If the 16" guns are 50 calibers long, that means they're 800", or 66'8" long. I heard that when they clean the barrels, a guy with a mop goes in. No wonder they're called swabbies. One of my platoon sergeants said that when he was in Vietnam, you could see the shells flying overhead and they looked as big as Volkswagen Beetles. Even though they were "only" 16" in diameter, the shells actually weighed more than car!

https://www.irfanview.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Iowa_(BB-61)

[Big Frank]

Pics 6-11.

[Big Frank]

Pics 12-17.  Look at the left side of pictures 1 and 17 to see how much the ship moved sideways.

[PegLeg45]

Ten or so years ago I visited the USS Alabama at Battleship Park in Mobile, Alabama. It was cool to see the size of those guns first-hand. Her guns were shorter than those in your photos, but were still 16"... The Alabama used nine 16-inch/45-caliber Mark 6 guns.
They had posters of the cut-away for the multi-level gun turrets. I didn't have the mobility to enter into the confines of the turret housing, so pics had to do. I'll attach one of the cut-away pics.
The powder charges were in silk bags...and if i remember correctly, the number of bags used was six per shot.

The Mark 6 and 7 guns were originally intended to fire the relatively light 2,240-pound Mark 5 armor-piercing shell. However, the shell-handling system for these guns was redesigned to use the "super-heavy" 2,700-pound APCBC (armor-piercing, capped, ballistic capped) Mark 8 shell before any of the Iowa-class battleships were laid down.
The large-caliber guns were designed to fire two different 16-inch (406 mm) shells: an armor-piercing round for anti-ship and anti-structure work, and a high-explosive round designed for use against unarmored targets and shore bombardment.
The Mark 8 shells gave the North Carolina, South Dakota, and Iowa classes the second heaviest broadside of all battleship classes, despite the fact that the North Carolina and South Dakota ships were treaty battleships. Only the Yamato-class could throw more weight.
The Mark 6's disadvantage relative to other contemporary battleship classes was its comparatively shorter range.
The propellant consists of small cylindrical grains of smokeless powder with an extremely high burning rate. A maximum charge consists of six silk bags, each filled with 110 pounds (50 kg) of propellant.

[Pathfinder]

Couple of points:

IIRC, there are no recoil mechanisms for those guns, so basically the ship in the water IS the recoil mechanism.

I just saw a video on the Iowa turret 2 explosion in the late 80s, and the massive Navy coverup that ensued. The Navy put an admiral in charge of the initial "investigation" who was solely responsible for the Navy's powder, projectiles and guns. He had knowledge, yes, but he also had turf to protect. That is why they leveled those whole homosexual and self-destructive charges against one poor gunner's mate who died in the blast. The poor kid was eventually exonerated in the explosion, but the Navy never retracted any of the other allegations.

[Sponsor]

[crusader rabbit]

I was stationed on a ship in Long Beach, CA when the USS New Jersey came in to go through re-commissioning to aid in the Vietnam war effort.  She had those 16" guns, and I remember thinking those suckers are BIG.  The size of the projectile being fired was big, too: approximately the weight of a VW Bug (1,900 to 2,700 lb).  And those guns could throw that thing 24 miles. 

But with all that going for her, she was pretty much a waste of time in Vietnam.  The coastal waters were too shallow to allow that deep draft ship to get in close enough to do any real damage.  Charlie just moved his important stuff a little further inland and he was good. 

The other thing I remember about the New Jersey was the wooden decks.  Those decks needed regular holystoning by their deck crew to keep them looking white.  That's where you get down on your knees with a soft and brittle sandstone and rub out any stains, from foc'sle to fantail, while simultaneously rubbing all the hide off your hands.  Boatswains (bosons) were in charge of that and Deck Department swab jockeys really hated that duty.   I was in Operations so I would have escaped that foul duty.

FWIW,
Crusader Rabbit

[Rastus]

  Nice addition Crusader.  BTW, what state do you live in now?

[PegLeg45]

Couple of points:
I just saw a video on the Iowa turret 2 explosion in the late 80s, and the massive Navy coverup that ensued. The Navy put an admiral in charge of the initial "investigation" who was solely responsible for the Navy's powder, projectiles and guns. He had knowledge, yes, but he also had turf to protect. That is why they leveled those whole homosexual and self-destructive charges against one poor gunner's mate who died in the blast. The poor kid was eventually exonerated in the explosion, but the Navy never retracted any of the other allegations.

As a side note on the Iowa explosion, I had a high school friend who was aboard when that happened.
He never got over it and PTSD haunted him for years and finally caught up with him a couple months ago when he took his own life. I hadn't seen him in years since he was living in south Florida, but found out about it when my daughter-in-law was telling us about her cousin passing away and it turned out to be him.

Collateral casualty.

[Big Frank]

One sergeant I was stationed with in Germany had PTSD. BAD! He told me that one time he was found with his face painted with camo after low crawling across a field at Aberdeen Proving Ground. I don't remember any details, but my friend Sarge said he was in the power plant, ready to take the reactor offline. I guess he was part of a death squad or kill team, whatever you call it, in Vietnam, and had a necklace of human ears. A whole LOT of ears but I didn't see that picture. You can't go through stuff like that and not be affected by it in a seriously bad way when you get back home.