a ship gun question for you ship buffs

shorty · a ship gun question for you ship buffs

I am at the moment planning a Guns of Navarone diorama, and have after much reaserch and reading found that the guns are most likely to be some form of german ex-battleship guns, some where in the range of a 12'' bore. (no one seems to know exactly the guns are supposed to be - as it is only a fictional story)

I have found a few pictures of some 12" ex-ship, coatal artillery guns but they all look similar if not the same to me. what I was wondering was, are there different types, or just the one, and if there are different ones, which is the most likely to have been used i the fortress.

cheers

shorty

Ratch

Shore based guns would've been whatever they could get hold of, usually excess to Navy requirements

The coastal defence fort has two ex-naval type guns

Beaufighter

Wasn't the story set in the Aegean somewhere? If so, the likeliest counterfactual big-calibre guns might be German 28cm L/50 (=14m barrel length), which were fitted to the battlecruiser Goeben. She was sold to Turkey in 1914 and became the Yavuz Sultan Selim. I suppose a pair (or a pair of spares) could plausibly have been pinched from her. This is a colour photo of her, which probably means it was taken post-war (post-WW2 conceivably - she survived until 1973).

Turkey didn't have any pre-dreadnought battleships as far as I know, just some really, really ancient ironclads. That said, so many pre-dreadnoughts were scrapped before, during and after WW1 that almost any calibre - 8.2", 9.2", 10", 11", 12", 13.5" or even 14" might conceivably have been available second-hand at a knockdown price. It depends whether we're talking about a battery built pre-war or during it. IIRC, Hitler was so cheesed off at the uselessness of his BBs that he took the guns out, or thought about it.

Sgt.Squarehead

I believe the Germans may have installed a few of these in coastal batteries too:

http://www.acemodel.com.ua/?p=model&id=278&s=&l=en

HTH & All the best
Sgt.S

DavidM

Some of these guns were used in a battery in the Atlantic Wall, not quite the Med though

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNGER_12-50_skc12_pics.htm

David

Beaufighter

Oddly enough, I saw a colour photo in a second-hand bookshop recently of a German soldier standing under the guns of an Atlantic Wall battery. They did indeed look consistent in size with the guns on the Airfix Coastal Defence Fort.

The photo was from the front, so tube length was hard to make out. The Airfix gun is certainly too short, though - if it's an 11" or 12", then it would be around 8" long in 1/76 scale. From memory, the CD fort guns are a lot shorter than that.

Rather interestingly the German fortification had a sort of art deco style inverted buttress in one of the angles, like concentric quarter-cylinders atop one another and flaring as they went up. Very hard to describe but very architect-like.

DavidM

Batterie Todt?

http://redtears.free.fr/Galerie%20photos%201.html

David

shorty

Cheers guys, I am indeed actually planning on using the Airfix Coatal Defence Fort guns, i wanted some different names, and possabilities so that I might be able to find some diagrams for conversion. I had also noticed the the Airfix guns do look to be a lot too short, and i plan to adjust this with dowel.

cheers

shorty

shorty

Right been back on the research this evening and have deciced upon the 28 cm/50 (11") SK L/50 guns. I am pretty sure that I can convert the airfix CD fort guns into these, but have hit a problem. I have some measurements - mainly whole gun length and barrel length, but the problem is that i don't really know how much is included in 'total gun length' and also where does the barrel supposedly start? does anyone have any good diagrams of similar guns (or even the right guns) that might be a good scale drawing of the gun, or just some basic reference? I do plan on watching navarone on my PC and teal some stills off it, but to have a good side view of a similar or same good would be even better.

cheers

shorty

DavidM

Barrel length refers (I think) to the length of the rifled section and doesn't really have much to do with the external appearance of the gun. I tried Navweaps.com for the 28cm SK L50 but they only have external views of the gun fitted in turrets and none of the breech area.

From the little I remember of the Guns of Navarone I thought the designers had been looking at railway guns when they built their mockups.

David

Beaufighter

Barrel length does indeed refer to the rifled section, to which you have to add the breech section and usually a bit beyond the end of the rifling.

One of Gneisenau's removed turrets became a shore battery in Norway that one can visit (photo-heavy but useful link).

Naval guns sit atop a barbette, on which they rotate and up which ammunition etc is hoisted. When turrets were remounted ashore, the engineers must have either replaced these underpinnings in situ with something similar, or moved the whole shebang lock stock and barrel and fitted it into a suitably powered and hardened hole in the ground.

The most obvious design compromise made by Airfix with the coastal defence fort is the absence of this barbette. There is, of course, no way to show it in a single storey model.

If your dio shows the guns mounted well up a cliffside, however, then you've got the height to mock this stuff up. Interior details showing the lower-level innards will look terrific. Shore batteries (as opposed to beach defence batteries) were usually placed as high up as possible - it added range, enabled plunging fire onto ships' decks, and ensured that incoming rounds that fell short hit the cliffs below, while rounds that went high simply fell somewhere inland.

If it helps with the scratchbuilding, shorter versions of the 28cm weapon of 35 and 40 calibre lengths also existed. These were fitted to, among others, the coastal battleships of the Brandenburg class, which were not scrapped until 1919. These would also be plausible candidates for your coastal installation.

If you rummage around that site, you may be able find evidence of some older weapon that's closer to the dimensions of the Airfix model, or easier to scratchbuild, and a plausible fit for a shore battery. A few months ago we worked out, from measurements of his fort that planefixer posted, that the Airfix guns are either 32.4cm or 13.5", depending on whether one thinks it's a 1/76 or 1/72 model. In 1/76 it's close to a standard German WW1 calibre, in 1/72 it matches a British WW1 standard calibre.

hth!

shorty

I have mocked up a gun on a 3d graphical design program, so do you think its anything like the navarone guns:

Its not perfect I will update when i get round to it, I will work on tapering the barrel sections as it looks a little chunky at the mo.

cheers

shorty

Ratch

Looks like the right type of thing

shorty

cheers Ratch, heres another, I have now tapered the barrel sections, added the mounts and also some sort of weird box thing on top - don't know what it is.

cheers

shorty

viperstickbomb

I've got a magazine with from the classic war movies collection with pictures of the guns used in the film from various angles if that's of any use.
But I'm under moderation so PM's probably won't reach me and I can't PM anyone.

shorty

that would be great viper stick, if you can't Pm, you could email them, if its not too much trouble, use th email tab at the bottom of my post.

cheers

shorty

daniel7891

Thats looking alot better and very realistic. As i remeber there was a sort of a platform around the guns, will you be modeling them aswell?

shorty

oh yes i'm modelling the lot, i am making it all on the PC as the only sources i have at the mo is lots of camera picture i took while watching the movie on my PC. i will pop another pic up shortly.

cheers

shorty

shorty

I will now be carrying on from this thread in a new thread in the demo builds forum, for my whole dio build.

cheers

shorty