BL 18 Inch Mk I Naval Gun
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The BL 18-inch Mk I naval gun was a
breech-loading A breechloader is a firearm in which the user loads the ammunition from the breech end of the barrel (i.e., from the rearward, open end of the gun's barrel), as opposed to a muzzleloader, in which the user loads the ammunition from the ( muzzle ...
naval rifle Naval artillery is artillery mounted on a warship, originally used only for naval warfare and then subsequently used for more specialized roles in surface warfare such as naval gunfire support (NGFS) and anti-aircraft warfare (AAW) engagements. T ...
used by the
Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...
during
World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
. It was the largest and heaviest gun ever used by the British. Only the Second-World-War Japanese 46 cm/45 Type 94 had a larger calibre, , but it fired a lighter shell. The gun was a scaled-up version of the
BL 15 inch Mk I naval gun The BL 15-inch Mark I succeeded the BL 13.5-inch Mk V naval gun. It was the first British gun design and the most widely used and longest lasting of any British designs, and arguably the most successful heavy gun ever developed by the Royal Na ...
and was developed to equip the "large light cruiser" (a form of battlecruiser) . Its barrel length of was just 40 calibres, slightly limiting its muzzle velocity. Only three guns were built, but they did not see combat with ''Furious'' before they were removed from her and transferred to the s and for coast-bombardment duties. Only 85 rounds were fired in combat operations before the war ended. All three were removed from service in 1920 and served as proving guns for
cordite Cordite is a family of smokeless propellants developed and produced in Britain since 1889 to replace black powder as a military firearm propellant. Like modern gunpowder, cordite is classified as a low explosive because of its slow burni ...
tests. Two were scrapped in 1933 and the last one survived until it was scrapped in 1947.


Design and development

The 18-inch gun had its genesis in the insistence of the
First Lord of the Admiralty First Lord of the Admiralty, or formally the Office of the First Lord of the Admiralty, was the title of the political head of the English and later British Royal Navy. He was the government's senior adviser on all naval affairs, responsible f ...
,
Admiral Fisher Admiral of the Fleet John Arbuthnot Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher, (25 January 1841 – 10 July 1920), commonly known as Jacky or Jackie Fisher, was a British Admiral of the Fleet. His efforts to reform the Royal Navy helped to usher in an era of m ...
, for the biggest possible gun mounted on the fastest possible ship. He conceived of what he called "large light cruisers" carrying four guns, which became the , but he wanted their
half-sister A sibling is a relative that shares at least one parent with the other person. A male sibling is a brother, and a female sibling is a sister. A person with no siblings is an only child. While some circumstances can cause siblings to be raise ...
''Furious'' to carry an even bigger gun. The
Elswick Ordnance Company The Elswick Ordnance Company (sometimes referred to as Elswick Ordnance Works, but usually as "EOC") was a British armaments manufacturing company of the late 19th and early 20th century History Originally created in 1859 to separate William ...
was the only company capable of manufacturing such a large gun and began design work in 1915. It was designated as the "15-inch B" to conceal its real size and was derived from the design of the 15-inch Mk I already in service.Buxton, p. 225 The gun and its breech mechanism weighed a total of , almost half again as much as the 15-inch gun's . It was mounted in a single-gun turret, also designated as the 15-inch B, derived from the twin-gun 15-inch Mark I/N turret. The
barbette Barbettes are several types of gun emplacement in terrestrial fortifications or on naval ships. In recent naval usage, a barbette is a protective circular armour support for a heavy gun turret. This evolved from earlier forms of gun protection ...
s of ''Furious'' were designed to accommodate either turret, in case problems arose with the 18-inch gun's development. The gun could depress to −3° and elevate to a maximum of 30°. Ammunition development for the gun was naturally focused on anti-ship shells for ''Furious'', and it fired a , 4
crh CRH may refer to: * Calibre radius head, a traditional British ordnance term for a concept in ballistic projectile design * Celtic Resources Holdings, an Irish mining company * China Railway High-speed, a high-speed railway service operated by China ...
armour-piercing, capped Armour-piercing ammunition (AP) is a type of projectile designed to penetrate armour protection, most often including naval armour, body armour, and vehicle armour. The first, major application of armour-piercing projectiles was to defeat the t ...
(APC) shell, at a
muzzle velocity Muzzle velocity is the speed of a projectile (bullet, pellet, slug, ball/ shots or shell) with respect to the muzzle at the moment it leaves the end of a gun's barrel (i.e. the muzzle). Firearm muzzle velocities range from approximately t ...
of to a distance of . It could fire one round per minute. The turret's revolving mass was , only a slight 2% more than the of its predecessor. The guns proved to be too powerful for ''Furious'' light hull, and they became available for other uses during 1917, after trials showed the ship could not handle the stress of firing.
Admiral Admiral is one of the highest ranks in many navies. In the Commonwealth nations and the United States, a "full" admiral is equivalent to a "full" general in the army or the air force. Admiral is ranked above vice admiral and below admiral of ...
Sir
Reginald Bacon Admiral Sir Reginald Hugh Spencer Bacon, (6 September 1863 – 9 June 1947) was an officer in the Royal Navy noted for his technical abilities. According to Admiral of the Fleet (Royal Navy), Admiral of the Fleet John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher, L ...
, commander of the
Dover Patrol The Dover Patrol and later known as the Dover Patrol Force was a Royal Navy command of the First World War, notable for its involvement in the Zeebrugge Raid on 22 April 1918. The Dover Patrol formed a discrete unit of the Royal Navy based at Dov ...
, conceived a plan to mount two guns inside the shell of the Palace Hotel in
Westende Westende is a town in Flanders, one of the three regions of Belgium, and in the Flemish province of West Flanders. It lies on the Belgian coast, also called the Flemish coast. It used to be the far west (West-ende: Dutch for west-end) of the is ...
from where they could bombard the naval facilities at
Zeebrugge Zeebrugge (; from , meaning "Bruges-on-Sea"; , ) is a village on the coast of Belgium and a subdivision of Bruges, for which it is the modern port. Zeebrugge serves as both the international port of Bruges-Zeebrugge and a seafront resort with ...
and
Bruges Bruges ( , ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders, in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is in the northwest of the country, and is the sixth most populous city in the country. The area of the whole city amoun ...
, provided that the hotel was captured during the upcoming
Battle of Passchendaele The Third Battle of Ypres (; ; ), also known as the Battle of Passchendaele ( ), was a campaign of the First World War, fought by the Allies of World War I, Allies against the German Empire. The battle took place on the Western Front (World Wa ...
. He planned to transport the guns across the
English Channel The English Channel, also known as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates Southern England from northern France. It links to the southern part of the North Sea by the Strait of Dover at its northeastern end. It is the busi ...
lashed to the
torpedo bulge The anti-torpedo bulge (also known as an anti-torpedo blister) is a form of defence against naval torpedoes occasionally employed in warship construction in the period between the First and Second World Wars. It involved fitting (or retrofitting ...
s of monitors. He also thought that they could be used on the decks of monitors and as such a dual purpose carriage was designed for the guns, which could be used both afloat and ashore. Only a limited amount of traverse was required for either role, but elevation had to be increased to 45° to maximize range. The concept was approved 23 September 1917, and Elswick was ordered to design the new 'B CD' mounts for delivery in five months. The original concept for land use involved a special elevating slide that could traverse 6° to either side. Ammunition handling, elevation and ramming were to be done via hydraulic pump, but the breech was hand-worked. The gun was to be installed in a turf-covered concrete dome with a gunport for the barrel. As much as possible of the gun and its mount was designed to be assembled out of range of German artillery and then moved on a special broad-gauge railway to the site on specially designed wheels. The transportable section weighed . After the British Army failed to capture Westende, the mounting was optimised for use on a monitor. It was very simple, consisting of two large girders connected together at each end with the gun and its carriage between them. The mount could only traverse 10° inside its fixed, ½-inch (12.7 mm)
gun shield A U.S. Marine manning an M240 machine gun equipped with a gun shield A gun shield is a flat (or sometimes curved) piece of armor designed to be mounted on a crew-served weapon such as a machine gun, automatic grenade launcher, or artillery pie ...
and was aimed over the starboard side of the monitor. It was loaded at a fixed angle of 10°, but it could only fire between 22° and 45° to equalize the stresses on the carriage and the ship. It was provided with hydraulically powered cranes, loading tray, rammer and breech mechanism to minimize the crew's workload, but the ammunition parties had to use muscle power. The shells were stowed below deck and had to be moved by overhead rail to the hatch in the deck behind the gun to be lifted up and loaded. The
cordite Cordite is a family of smokeless propellants developed and produced in Britain since 1889 to replace black powder as a military firearm propellant. Like modern gunpowder, cordite is classified as a low explosive because of its slow burni ...
propellant charges were kept in eighteen steam-heated storage tanks mounted on the forecastle deck abaft the funnel and moved to the gun on a
bogie A bogie ( ) (or truck in North American English) comprises two or more Wheelset (rail transport), wheelsets (two Railroad wheel, wheels on an axle), in a frame, attached under a vehicle by a pivot. Bogies take various forms in various modes ...
mounted on rails, two one-sixth charges at a time, which reduced the rate of fire to about one round about every 3–4 minutes. The monitors had to be extensively modified to handle the gun. Numerous additional structural supports had to be added underneath the gun to support its weight of ; the sides had to be plated in to accommodate the additional crewmen and the interior rearranged for the 18–inch shells and the loading arrangements.


Service

A total of three guns were built by Armstrong Whitworth, two for ''Furious'' and a spare. The forward gun was removed from ''Furious'' in March 1917, before she was completed, when she was ordered to be converted to a seaplane carrier. The second gun was removed later in 1917, and she was converted into an
aircraft carrier An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and hangar facilities for supporting, arming, deploying and recovering carrier-based aircraft, shipborne aircraft. Typically it is the ...
. The new 'B CD' mounts were delayed, and the mount for was not delivered until 20 June 1918. The gun from ''Furious'' 'A' turret was lifted aboard on 9 July, but the ''General Wolfe'' was not ready to begin firing trials until 7 August. She was given the nickname of '
Elephant and Castle Elephant and Castle is an area of South London, England, in the London Borough of Southwark. The name also informally refers to much of Walworth and Newington, due to the proximity of the London Underground station of the same name. The n ...
', as the enormous gun-mount structure dominated the ship's profile. While the new mounting was being designed, further effort was put into the ammunition to extend the range as much as possible. Use of a supercharge, where one of the six charges was increased in weight to , making a total of propellant, and increasing the elevation to 45° extended the range to about with the existing 4 crh shells. New 8 crh
high explosive An explosive (or explosive material) is a reactive substance that contains a great amount of potential energy that can produce an explosion if released suddenly, usually accompanied by the production of light, heat, sound, and pressure. An exp ...
shells, with a longer, thinner ballistic cap, were ordered, but only two shells had been delivered before the end of the war. Some of the existing stock of 500 APC and 500 CPC (common, pointed, capped) shells on hand from ''Furious'' were modified with the new cap and were probably the only shells used during the war. ''General Wolfe'' was assigned to the Dover Patrol on 15 August 1918, but did not fire on any targets until 28 September, when a large force of monitors was gathered to harass German lines of communication. She was anchored bow and stern, broadside to her target, and had difficulties dealing with the tidal currents. She opened fire on the railway bridge at Snaeskerke ( south of
Ostend Ostend ( ; ; ; ) is a coastal city and municipality in the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It comprises the boroughs of Mariakerke, Raversijde, Stene and Zandvoorde, and the city of Ostend proper – the la ...
) at a range of and made naval history as the heaviest shell fired from the largest gun at the longest range in action. She fired 52 shells that day and found that the recoil from her 18–inch gun moved her sideways with her shallow hull and also caused her to roll, which slowed her rate of fire. She fired a total of 81 rounds before the end of the war. The second gun, ''Furious'' spare, was mounted in , but she was not ready for combat until 13 October 1918. She fired three rounds the following day, but had to cease fire to avoid hitting friendly advancing troops. One round had already been loaded when the order came to cease fire so she fired it, with a reduced charge, into a minefield to seaward. A total of 85 18-inch shells were fired in action by both guns. Wear on ''General Wolfe''s gun was measured at about after firing 161 effective full charges (EFC) - 105 rounds including
proof Proof most often refers to: * Proof (truth), argument or sufficient evidence for the truth of a proposition * Alcohol proof, a measure of an alcoholic drink's strength Proof may also refer to: Mathematics and formal logic * Formal proof, a co ...
and practice, with 57 being supercharges. This indicates the gun would have been good for well over 300 EFC, comparable with most other British ordnance using Cordite MD. The third gun, from ''Furious'' 'Y' turret, was intended for , which had been modified to accept it earlier in the year, but the war ended before it was mounted, although the monitor was ordered to Portsmouth to have it fitted on 19 October. The guns were removed from the monitors in December 1920. Gun No. 1, from ''Furious'' 'Y' turret, was lined down to and used in cordite-proving tests for the BL 16-inch Mk I gun, intended for the cancelled
G3 battlecruiser The G3 class was a class of battlecruisers planned by the Royal Navy after the end of World War I in response to naval expansion programmes by the United States and Japan. The four ships of this class would have been larger, faster and more hea ...
s, and used in the s. It remained in use until 1942 and was scrapped in 1947. The other two guns were used at
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and Yantlet artillery ranges in the
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for similar duties; they were scrapped in 1933. One mount survived and was used to mount a spare BL 14-inch Mk VII gun from the battleship . It was emplaced near
Dover Dover ( ) is a town and major ferry port in Kent, southeast England. It faces France across the Strait of Dover, the narrowest part of the English Channel at from Cap Gris Nez in France. It lies southeast of Canterbury and east of Maidstone. ...
in 1940, and the combination was named "
Pooh Winnie-the-Pooh (also known as Edward Bear, Pooh Bear or simply Pooh) is a fictional Anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic teddy bear created by English author A. A. Milne and English illustrator E. H. Shepard. Winnie-the-Pooh first appeared by ...
", after
Winnie-the-Pooh Winnie-the-Pooh (also known as Edward Bear, Pooh Bear or simply Pooh) is a fictional Anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic teddy bear created by English author A. A. Milne and English illustrator E. H. Shepard. Winnie-the-Pooh first appeared by ...
.Buxton, p. 228


See also

* 46 cm/45 Type 94 World War II Japanese 18-inch gun


Notes


Bibliography

* * * * *


External links


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{{GreatWarBritishNavalWeapons Naval guns of the United Kingdom 460 mm artillery EOC naval guns World War I naval weapons of the United Kingdom