Landships II

Not on a ship (the Retrokit pic is very good picture of one "dismounted" of course).  Here are a couple of it in use as a railway gun.  From Railway Artillery - A Report on the Characteristics, Scope of Utility, Etc. - Volume 2 - USA - 1921
United States of America War Office
Ordnance Department Document No 2034

Volume 1 has lots of pictues, plans drawings etc (mostly US but some French, German, Austrian etc.) but I don't think of this one.

No doubt about what the War Office book said it was - it said it was a 164.  That volume is laid out in sequence but I didn't look past the pages for the 164 to see what they had about the 194 (if anything).  Could be in error of course.

Here is a pic of the Léon Gambetta which had both 164 and 194 in twin turrets.  Not a lot in it, I would have to admit - forward turret is the 194 of course. Picture has one level of zoom if your browser is enabled.

http://burdigalaproject.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/fs-leon-gambetta.jpg

Incidentally, the picure in the Wikipedia article linked by PDA is the same as the one in Jane's Fighting Ships of World War I, in the entry for the Suffren, which picture is same size and only slightly/marginally clearer than the Wikipedia one - seems they couldn't find a better shot of it.

Steve

far as I know the 164 has a shorter barrel, approx 150cm shorter than the 194.
There must have been an older Model 1875 194mm howitzer too, also a former coastal defence gun put on a  railway carriage.

Hi Kieffer,

kieffer wrote:

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far as I know the 164 has a shorter barrel, approx 150cm shorter than the 194.
There must have been an older Model 1875 194mm howitzer too, also a former coastal defence gun put on a railway carriage.

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At first we were talking about the Model 1893 164mm naval gun which was available to be pressed into service as a coastal defence and as a railway gun (or as a railway gun for coastal defence). That was 45 cal barrel length. There was a later model with a 46 cal barrel I think. That one probably stayed on the ships.

The link I showed for the Léon Gambetta also showed her 194mm main guns as well as her 164 mm guns. Those 194s were also 45 cal so the difference in those twp would be about 135 cm. But I don't know if the 194 was put into railway gun service.

The American book shows different models and different barrel lengths of 194 mm gun, and that's in addition to the 194 mm howitzer (models 1875, 1876 and 1878). The 194 mm guns listed are models 1887, 1893, 1896 and 1902. They are described as seacoast guns. There's a drawing showing that the difference in those was the barrel length, increasing with the model number. Somewhere around 1896 or 1902 that barrel length looks about 45 cal to me, or maybe 46. But then they show a "model 1870, 1893" 194 mm mounting where the 1870 seems to come out of nowhere. In any event, the fitting of the 194s is varied but quite different to that of the 164s.

But we weren't talking about the 194mm - except if it might be confused with the 164 mm. I know the pictures I showed were what the Americans identified as the 164 mm naval gun, used as a railway gun. I think they're right but I am a total novice with artillery. Well, with most thing really. But I'm interested.

Do you still think that was not the Model 1893 164mm naval gun?

Ironsides wrote:

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Hi Rectaglia heres some more... same book but 8.6mb download pics look ok...

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=Railway%20artillery

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That's great Ivor, thanks. Tossing up now whether I need to retain a copy. The problem is, many of these great links get broken as time goes by and the only surety is to keep a local copy ... oh well, it's only storage space and 8.6 mb is worth about one-sixth of a cent at today's rates. Probably half that with next year's hardware.

Steve

Hi Ironsides,

whilst looking for more information of the 164-194 railwayguns I found this patent...
as you're a keen patent-finder I was thinking automatically in your direction.
It's an electric powderless gun..as far I can decipher the Sutterlin script it all works on electro magnetic pulses of 'ungeheure Kraft', very promising for modern war fare. The inventor was a mr. Foster of the US.


-- Edited by kieffer on Wednesday 25th of August 2010 03:19:13 PM

Oh it would work OK - it is just a crude linear motor but poorly conceived. There is no need for a massive breach end, a simple tube is all that is needed. Unless one was concerned a cunning foe might sneak up to the muzzle-end and fire a shot back the other way at the gun crew (it is potentially a bi-directional arrangement, depending which end is loaded). Just at a guess, a scale model of 20mm bore and using a 12V car battery might achieve a muzzle velocity of 2-4 m/s. It is just like a solenoid with the moveable core (slug) being passed on to successive coils.

Add some more coil and contact stages, use thicker wire with more windings and big capacitors to boost the current through those and who knows what you might get from the power supply of a humble 12 V battery? Maybe 20 m/s! If you could make the final coil massive and feed alternating current through it instead of direct current you could maybe heat the projectile to incandescence and have an incendiary-tracer adaptation so simply.

I vote we elect Hughbearson to commence trials forthwith

Mr.Foster was convinced his patent would work. There should have been some overheating problem but as the whole process of electric pulses would run very fast, with short blasts, Foster saw no difficulties in that. There were a lot of springs involved too, cutting of the pulses...
All was intended for small guns on war vessels, to get rid of the 'unhealthy clouds of gun smoke'. Actually it wasn't Foster's idea though he patented it. A mr. Birkelund was a few years ahead, same Birkelund who discovered the proces of making nitrogen from air.
I think the Germans used that in ww1 when guano became scarse.

Rectalgia wrote:

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And you could build an awful lot of the Canon de 16cm Mle.1893 - and shells to go with them - for the same money.

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The word 'battery' gets a connotation then...
But don't forget the melt down problem, which is the main problem I think though Foster happily denied that, and apparantly the gun had to be built after he patented the idea.
But back to the Canon: this I found in Allied artillery of World War One, by Ian Hogg.
The picture is a 194mm Mle 1893 on a Creusot carriage. A table in the book says:
barrel length 5.89. The 160mm Piegne Canet is 7.41.
More confusion as the 160 has a longer barrel, not shorter as I thought and wrote before. Or is the Piegne Canet another gun (both are mentioned under railwayguns)?
Seeing the 164 on the painting, that has clearly a shorter barrel than the 194 and seems logic too. But I also read somewhere that the 16's and 19's weren't so much different in appaerance...

 

-- Edited by kieffer on Thursday 26th of August 2010 06:52:58 AM

Hello,

The two photographs show the "Canon de 16 cm modèle 1893 sur affût-truck tous-azimuts Schneider", two made in 1916 and two more in 1918.These four guns were rearmed with 16 cm Mle 1893-96 guns in 1919.Others 16 cm railway guns were made in 1918: four guns of 1893-96 M model.
The "big" Guns of french Army are depicted in my small book "Les Canons de la Victoire-tome 2-L'Artillerie Lourde à Grande Puissance" publisher "Histoire et Collections"-Paris-2008.
The book show 59 different big guns, mostly Railway Guns, each model is exposed with at least two photographs (95 mm railway gun to 520 mm modèle 1916).
I love very much Ian Hogg books, but if his books on British and German artilleries are great and "classic" books, his chapters on french heavy artillery are very often wrong for the story of french big guns!
Yours sincerely,
Guy François.

Rectalgia wrote:
I vote we elect Hughbearson to commence trials forthwith

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Sounds like a plan :D

 

I think so, as said in my first sentence. Mercifully Guy François (merci Guy), who knows the subject, seems to agree. The picture Retrokits is referencing is http://www.retrokit.net/images/72057photo.jpg?966 for anyone lacking the stamina to retrieve our starting point

P.S. I don't see that installation is actually safe to fire as depicted but that's a minor point - I was a 'ginger beer' (sapper) not a 'drop-short' (gunner). And yes, I know what 'ginger beer' means in Cockney rhyming slang - that was a calumny started by the 'drop shorts and bend overs'.

-- Edited by Rectalgia on Saturday 28th of August 2010 02:20:19 AM

My stamina has been totally depleted, Rectalgia. My apologies for being snippy.

Very nice pic, kieffer, may I ask where it's from; I am hunting around for new books to read. Your pic also gives ideas for a diorama setting for Retrokits' kit. Thanks.

PDA wrote:

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... My apologies for being snippy.

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No offence taken, no apology needed. I know I do yammer on - my member name is hard-earned and well warranted I'm afraid

Importantly, the Retrokits' model should make a great focal point for a diorama of authentic historical interest, another unexpected aspect^* of the conflict rescued from obscurity by the modelling fraternity. And Kieffer's picture seems to confirm the mounting detail shown in the Retrokits pic. Both those pictures give the impression it was used at comparatively short ranges for a fixed emplacement/low-mobility gun (not a lot of muzzle elevation available). ^*Usually these are not risked so far forward.

I don't know this is much help, as I am even not sure which gun this is. It's from an old book, it only says this is a Belgian/English operated railway gun. But may be some inspiration if you're planning to build a model?

regards, Kieffer

Stefan Szymanski wrote:

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...I´m also very thankfull for getting detail pics which shows the gun on every side...Stefan

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Hi Stefan, just to understand - the pictures, repeating links, from Kieffer's earlier post (probably need to be logged in to follow that one) and from Retrokit are the sort of thing you want, but you want more? I'm surprised, I thought those two might be sufficient. I'm sure if anyone has more they will post them but they seem to be a little hard to find.

-- Edited by Rectalgia on Tuesday 7th of September 2010 08:53:00 AM

Okay, will certainly post if I find anything suitable.

Yep, it is one I found too...

It is not perfect, but this kind of pics I need...

One more I found too...

Maybe the next pics you will find could be very importand for me...