Landships II

Roger Todd · Legend

A Quickie - what is this bit called?

James H · Legend

Gunshield? Casemate? Barbette?

PDA · Legend

I've seen it called the gunshield (Fletcher, IIRC), and barbette makes sense, but I wouldn't call it a casemate.

Rob · Legend

Gunshield

Ironsides · Legend

Gunshield, Barbettes usually apply to main gun positions of a particular type on warships, casemate or casement can apply to fortifications or ships but may also apply in this case for the armoured position...

�

Cheers wink

Ironsides · Legend

The Defition�of Casemate/Casement changed over time, by the late 19th - early 20th�century a "casemate, casement" in regard to warships is an enclosed armored box generally intended to prevent destruction of more then one weapon by a single hit or�to protect a single gun postion�from any direction even through the hull of the vessel( in otherwords from the rear, im not going to discuss defintions of rear smile ), you could argue the sponson in this case has no rear armour so is not a "Casemate casement" as any shell entering� the Landship�would likely knock out both guns, since they dont have individual all round protection...�

A�closer definition of a Early Landship(British) maybe a�self propelled box battery with the guns in sponsons but one that includes the propulsion and conning position without any seperate compartment or protection, a recipe for disaster for a warship...

But I think what matters here is what term was used at the time in regard to the Landships...

Cheers wink

Sorry Roger this was not in reply to you�it just took a long time to post wink

�

-- Edited by Ironsides on Thursday 29th of November 2012 02:57:50 PM

Ironsides · Legend

As Roger ses Sponson or armoured sponson would be the way�I would refer to them , I was thinking you could you use "casemate sponson" but probarbly "armoured sponson" would be more correct.

� "casemate" allways implies armor, though I think "sponson" implies a certain amount of armour its not allways the case�sponsons at least on warships�had any..

from contemporary books:

"The tanks moved down to the temporary tankdrome
which had been decided upon near the rail-
way, and the sponson trucks were towed there.
The night was spent in fitting on the sponsons
to the sides of the machines. "

""They're bombing us, sir! " cried one of the
gunners. McKnutt signalled to him, and he
opened fire from his sponson. They plunged
along, amid a hail of bullets, while bombs
exploded all around them." from Life in a Tank 1918

"She," curiously
enough, is a male, carrying six-pounder as
well as machine-guns, and is therefore easy
of access. The door is in the rear of the
projecting"sponson," or gun-turret"

"Finally came the order to push in sponsons." This is the immediate and inevitable
preliminary to a railway journey, and consists
in pushing in the projecting gun-turrets along
guide-ways until they are level with the side
of the Tank. The operation is not a difficult
one, but calls for co-operation between Tank
and Tank. All bolts having been withdrawn,
one Tank noses up to the sponson of her mate
and gently but irresistibly pushes it in" from Men and Tanks

"instructions, which I forwarded to Mr. Tritton
on October 5th, giving the size of the opening of
the " sponsons,"� which would carry one gun
on each side of the proposed ship, and the weight
of the gun-carriage, of the base-plate, and of
the holding-down ring and shield. These two
sponsons, which carried two guns and shields,
were to weigh in all about three tons."

" A sponson is a structure projecting beyond the side of
a Tank or Ship in which a gun is placed. This projection
is necessary to enable the gun to be fired clear of the side,
directly ahead or astern." from "Tanks, 1914-1918; the log-book of a pioneer (1919)"

Cheers wink

�

James H · Legend

Many thanks, Citizens. The bit I'm interested in is the curved shield thing, which a singularly annoying gent insists is a casemate. I believed that not to be the case, and, thanks to these very kind exp[lanations, the shield shall hereinafter be referred to as "the shield".

CharlieC · Legend

�

Just to roll a grenade in.....

Shouldn't the curved shield be a mantlet. Before everyone leaps in and says that a mantlet is an external shield there have been

a number of tanks with internal mantlets. The function of a mantlet is to protect the working part of a gun.

I agree that casemate is not correct - that seems to refer to a type of mounting.�

Regards,

Charlie

James H · Legend

Come on, Charlie - I've got enough on my plate. Have toyed with the idea of Scutum:� the Latin word for "shield", although it has in modern times come to be specifically associated with the rectangular, semi-cylindrical body shield carried by Roman legionaries.

But I think this fits the bill; caption to photo in D. Fletcher's New Vanguard book on the Mk IV:

A male sponson . . . The short six-pounder gun in its rotating shield . . .

That will be sufficient to quieten this egregious person, especially since he is very fond of quoting DF, often in vain.

Roger Todd · Legend

James H wrote:
Many thanks, Citizens. The bit I'm interested in is the curved shield thing, which a singularly annoying gent insists is a casemate. I believed that not to be the case, and, thanks to these very kind exp[lanations, the shield shall hereinafter be referred to as "the shield".

I'd go for that. If you're referring to who I suspect you are, I would say to him that the whole unit, that is to say the boxy structure including the curved shield, could be referred to as a casemate or, if you wanted to cover all bases, a 'sponsoned casemate'. But the curved shield on its own is not a casemate.

Roger Todd · Legend

CharlieC wrote:
�Just to roll a grenade in.....
Shouldn't the curved shield be a mantlet. Before everyone leaps in and says that a mantlet is an external shield there have been
a number of tanks with internal mantlets. The function of a mantlet is to protect the working part of a gun.
I agree that casemate is not correct - that seems to refer to a type of mounting.

Funnily enough, I deleted a reference to mantlets from my previous post as I feared confusing matters, but yes, certainly in naval practise some heavy guns had a curved shield behind the turret face, to prevent splinters entering the turret through the gunport, rather than the external mantlet common to tanks.

Rob · Legend

Does the 6 pounder not have an internal mantlet? Quite a big gap to have unprotected

Rob · Legend

So it does - can see it on the Bovington Mk V

http://photos.jibble.org/Vehicles/Tanks/Bovington%20Tank%20Museum/Mark%20V%20male%20tank%20IMG_6755.JPG

Roger Todd · Legend

Hm, good point about the lack of an internal armoured division. Having said that, any shell entering and exploding from any direction would have knocked out an early tank - they simply weren't shellproof, hence the Flying Elephant project.

Roger Todd · Legend

Ironsides wrote:
Sorry Roger this was not in reply to you�it just took a long to post

No worries!

It emphasises that there are no easy answers. Or, rather, that it's easy to say what it isn't - the gunshield on its own isn't a casemate. But is the unit as a whole?

On the whole, I'd stick to sponsons to describe the whole thing and gunshield for the part James enquired about.

Ironsides · Legend

Roger Todd wrote:
Ironsides wrote:
Sorry Roger this was not in reply to you�it just took a long to post
No worries!
It emphasises that there are no easy answers. Or, rather, that it's easy to say what it isn't - the gunshield on its own isn't a casemate. But is the unit as a whole?
On the whole, I'd stick to sponsons to describe the whole thing and gunshield for the part James enquired about.

�Hi Roger on that we are agreed smile

TinCanTadpole · Legend

Casemates are for ships; everyone knows the sponson of a rhomboid tank as a "sponson", so let's stick with that - after all, a sponson is a projection from the side.

As for mantlets, I've just checked a dictionary (Chambers) which describes them as 'moveable shields'. The term is therefore perfectly suitable for the part in question - although I myself would tend to use it for later vehicles with cast mantlets; to me the word suggests something more grandiose than the simple metal plate used on the rhomboids. Whilst there's nothing wrong with saying 'mantlet', I would call it a gun-shield.

Ironsides · Legend

"Casemates are for ships"

Quite right "Landships" wink

After I suggested it as a possible descriptive term, I noticed� Casemate has been adopted to describe a certain type of gun position in an AFV,� Janes WW2 Tanks�uses it in some cases..�I had'nt previously been aware of this, is this a new development in AFV terminology?

http://archive.org/details/Janes-WorldWarIiTanksAndFightingVehicles-TheCompleteGuide.pdf

Cheers smile

James H · Legend

I am deeply content that in the Osprey Mark V Tank by D. Fletcher and Henry Morshead, the sponson is described as a sponson and the part that started the argument as "the rotating gunshield." That gives me enough ammunition to shut my opponent up, so I shall quit while I'm ahead.