Posted on 11/05/2009 5:47:44 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
I looked it up and you are correct. It makes me feel like an old guy.
“The gun system has been retired from US Army service; howitzers above 155 mm caliber are no longer effective as technology has closed the range and firepower gap, and heavier weapon systems require more resources to operate. Gun barrels from retired M110s were initially used as the outer casing in the manufacture of the GBU-28 bunker buster bomb.”
Hmmm.
I used to live Charleston, SC. I would swear I saw some Army Corps of Engineers ships that were responsible for maintenance in the Inland Waterways. Including some tugs, IIRC.
Guess it is too expensive to ever build one of these again. But NOTHING get the attention of the locals like a real battleship sitting a few miles off shore.
12.5 mm = 50 caliber.
127mm = 500 caliber or 5 inches.
25.4mm/inch.
port, starboard, bulkhead, deck, swab, ladder, ensign
It’s fun using 300 year old language on a modern warship.
that is because you do not understand what “caliber” means. a “five inch/38” means the bore is 5 inches and the barrel is 38 bore diameters in length. a 127/54 means the bore is 127 mm and the barrel is 127 mm time 54 mm long. the 127/62 is just using a bit longer barrel.
I was along as crew chief flying fire control at about 5,000 feet for the New Jersey in ‘Nam 1968....NJ was sitting about 3 miles offshore, the 16” guns made blast ripples all the way to shore, and the shell in flight was clearly visible with the naked eye...big BOOM at the end of the trajectory, too. Awesome!
My favorite for this was the 20mm Vulcan. Electrically fired with the rounds in a vast track like magazine, it could fire (IIRC) 3000 rounds a minute. Sounded like a double A fueler at full throttle. Each HE round had a killing radius of 3 meters. I watched one vaporize a truck and a few cars in about 20 seconds.
The Corps of Engineers is large and diverse. I was a Combat Engineer which is the U.S. Army's equivalent to the guys who lugged rocks across the sands for the pyramids.
J/K!!!!
Hey, don’t you dare knock P/M magazine. Sometimes it was all I had to read!
I an a land lubber.
Don’t know. They USED to have some pretty big-bore nuclear artillery.
We fired many a 5””/38 shell off the coast of South and North Vietman from an old WWII DD.
/mark
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