Wednesday, January 28, 2015

BB-61 Battleship Turrets

In history we often talk about battles and wars on a very broad scale, especially so in naval warfare.  Rarely do we look at the actual complexity of what these men accomplished.  It is easy to say "the ship shot at the other", however that action alone is extremely difficult.  I found this training video for the US Navy Battleship's 16"/50 guns, and it really is incredible how much work went into firing just one shot.

Displacing 45,000 tons of water, these are some of the largest ships in history.  However, the Japanese Yamato abd Musashi were even larger, displacing 76,000 tons.  BB-16 Class ships were quite long as well, at 887 feet.  Clearly these ships had space for quite a bit of manpower.  As the video says, each turret took 79 men to operate and each BB-61 Class ship had three turrets.



Source/Additional Info:  http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/bb-61.htm


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2 comments:

  1. UnknownMay 21, 2015 at 9:15 AM

    Dang that's crazy! I was reading more on the Japanese Yamato and was looking at it's weaponry. The class carried the largest naval artillery ever fitted to a warship, nine 460-millimetre (18.1 in) naval guns, each capable of firing 1,360 kg (3,000 lb) shells over 42 km (26 mi). Two battleships of the class (Yamato and Musashi) were completed, while a third (Shinano) was converted to an aircraft carrier during construction.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamato-class_battleship

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  2. UnknownMay 21, 2015 at 9:16 AM

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