"Buerste" wrote in message
news

"Richard" wrote in message
m...
Does anyone have the link to the Navy traing film about loading
the 18 inch guns.

I thought it was titled "72 men load gun", but canf find it.

???

Richard

I thought only the Brits had a few 18" guns and the Japanese had 18.1"
on the Yamato and her sister. I know there are vids of 16" gun operation.

Just before the first world war, the brits built 3 light battle cruisers of
shallow draught. They were intended to be used to seize one of the Frisian
Islands, as a base to operate in the Baltic. The first two, Glorious, and
Courageous had 15 inch guns. HMS Furious was a bit larger, and was to have
18 inch guns. In the end, only the aft turret was mounted, with the foreword
part as an aircraft carrier. Soon all three ships were fitted with flight
decks, retaining the central superstructure. Plane landed on the after deck,
and were lifted around to the foreword deck with a derrick. In this form
they launched 7 airplanes against the Zeppelin sheds, in the words first
ever carrier strike. A 4th ship was built with a straight through flight
deck, the first operational carrier with this configuration. After that, the
other 3 were converted, so that at the end of the war, the UK had 4
operational carriers. The 18 inch guns proved to be shattering on such a
lightly built ship, which hastened the conversion. The guns were moved to
Singapore. On the ship the gun was in a single gun turret.


Steve R.