Is there any ordnance left? Don’t forget the gun mechanical stuff and barrel liners. I doubt any is left that is remotely usable. Sad in a way.
The 16” rounds and powderbags used in d first Gulf War were produced in the 1940s. With proper storage, munitions will pretty much have an unlimited shelf life.
Is there any ordnance left? Don’t forget the gun mechanical stuff and barrel liners. I doubt any is left that is remotely usable. Sad in a way.
Finally, all four of these arguably antique ships and their remaining 20,000 rounds of 16-inch shells were stood back up in the 1980s
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The Navy held on to 22 of these giant, slightly used barrels as late as 2011, when it decided that it just didn’t need them anymore. These barrels had all seen wartime service and were rotated out into storage during refits. In a fit of spring-cleaning on a massive scale, 14 of the barrels, stored in Hawthorne, Nevada, were cut into 8-foot sections and sold for scrap. Eight barrels, located at the St Juliens Creek Naval Annex in Chesapeake, Virginia, were given a brief reprieve to see if anyone wanted them or they would suffer the same fate.
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the last two remaining barrels at St Juliens are only being held on a month to month basis.
Each gun weighs 120-tons and is over 68-feet long, which would require special lift cranes and a dedicated oversize hauler or rail flatbed that could transport the immense load from Chesapeake, Virginia.
Some 1,500 inert 16-inch projectiles, each 65 inches tall and weighing 1,750 pounds, are also up for donation. More centrally located, they are stored at Crane Naval Weapons Center in Indiana. If you know some organization that could take a shell or twenty, that’s good, if you know one that can take a cannon, that’s great. Contact Terry McGovern with the CSDG at tcmgovern@att.net or 703-934-3661.
The largest battleship ever put to sea, the Japanese mega warships of the Yamato class, carried armor up to 26-inches thick. While no Iowa class battleship ever fought a Yamato, a section of 26-inch armor plate for these Japanese beasts was found at Kure Naval Base after World War 2. Settling a great historic ‘what if’, the plate was shipped to the US Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren, Virginia and in tests, was shot at by a 16-inch/50cal armor-piercing round. The results? Zipped right through it like butter. To ensure bragging rights, the armor is on display at the US Navy Museum just in case anyone asked to see the math.
There were nine different types of shells used over the 50-year lifespan of the guns, the smallest were 1750-pound inert target rounds, and the largest were 2700-pound super heavy Armor Piercing Mk 8 battleship killers.
interesting training video here:
Keep in mind that they’re not firing “real” 5” ordinance
They’re either using blanks - empty shell casings loaded with black powder or some other explosive (the shell casings are saved and reloaded) or the guns have been converted to mimick firing using pneumatics. This is how the Fletcher-class Destroyer “Kidd” in Baton Rouge LA “fires” her guns.