Naval Gun Projects

[TomS]

Two additional tidbits

A paper on the shell aerodynamics, behind a paywall for me. https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.1993-3461

And a slide showing the fin configuration (looks like 6 fins) and giving a range of 2750m (probably effective range).

 

[jsport]

Minus the UK Starstreak which has its own uses, the above shows 3 systems which should be in service if it were not for dysfunction.

 

[Grey Havoc]

The 'Peace Dividend' and so-called 'End of History' madness clobbered a lot of good programs & projects.

 

[jsport]

Binary fuels can be safely stored and utilized safely according to the patents as has been repeatedly posted.

Lightweight 155 mm Liquid-Propellant Naval Gun Mount. In 1993, Martin Marietta announced a lightweight 155 mm liquid-propellant naval gun mount for this advanced gun program. It hopes to reach a range of 45 nautical miles with existing ammunition, and to exceed 100 miles with new projectiles, a rate of fire of 11 to 16 rounds per minute, and a velocity accuracy of better than 0.25 percent. It should then be able to fire a 4- to 8-round simultaneous impact mission at 6 to 40 kilometers. Range is increased because there is a capability to precisely inject propellant throughout the combustion process. The system offers soft launch with reduced chamber pressure, and ammunition storage volume is reduced because there are no cartridge cases. Martin Marietta estimates that this 155 mm L52 will weigh 40,000 pounds (compared to 110,000 lb for an 8-inch L55), and will achieve a range of 54,000 yards. Elevation limits are +65 to -15 degrees; rate of fire is 16 to 29 rounds per minute with 60 ready-use rounds. This development has since been at least partly overtaken by the introduction of the L62 barrel on the Mk 45 gun with the capability of firing extended range guided munitions (ERGM). The combination of extended barrel and non-ballistic guided munition will extend the gun’s coverage to about 60 miles (100+ km). Meanwhile, a new 155 mm gun mount is being developed (as a derivative from the USMC 155 mm unit); the DD(X) class will presumably be the first platform to adopt it.

Background. In 1987, FMC (now part of United Defense) announced the development of its combustion-augmented plasma (CAP) technology for advanced gun development. Two major fields of exploitation were envisaged: long-range fire support for shore operations and close-range anti-missile defense. In the 1987 announcement, FMC showed its version of CIWS-2000, which used CAP and carried two rather than six barrels. The first experiments used 10 mm projectiles. Later, 30 mm were used, and FMC expected to fire 90 mm projectiles. All of these experiments used liquid propellants, although a conventional solid propellant might also be used. In 1987, FMC applied its CAP technology to an Air Force funded hypervelocity ammunition technology (HAT) program in which a sideways-pointing anti-tank gun was to be mounted onboard a C-130 or successor gunship that would fly just behind the battle line. CAP was also proposed as part of a hybrid rail gun for anti-missile defense, to be used to inject a projectile into the electric gun. FMC patented its CAP concept in 1985, and in 1990 it began a CAP naval gun project under the US Navy’s Balanced Technology Initiative. The weapon developed under this program is designated the electrothermal gun, and is considered a much nearerterm proposition (e.g., for point defense) than a full electric gun. Compared to alternative exotic guns, CAP can use a conventional barrel and projectiles. FMC claims that CAP offers better reliability and internal ballistics control than a liquid-propellant gun. In late 1990, the US Navy acknowledged the need for a new-generation close-in defense system to combat the latest anti-ship missiles. The use of electrothermal gun technology promised a new weapon that would use the same trunnion that housed the Phalanx system but offer significantly increased performance. Design work commenced in the last quarter of 1990, and was to be completed in the last quarter of 1991. A 31-month design contract valued at US$4.6 million was awarded to FMC for development of the new weapon in November 1990. The FMC 60 mm electrothermal gun and its Martin Marietta (formerly GE) guided round small-caliber smart munition (SCSM) were tested successfully during 1992/93. The SCSM contract was awarded in the autumn of 1991. The 1.75 kilogram rolling-airframe steel shell (illustrated in this report) uses a K-band guidance uplink and an E/F-band telemetry downlink. It carries a thermal battery and a miniature propulsion Electrothermal (ET) Gun, control using a small solid-propellant thruster. Muzzle velocity is 1.4 kilometers per second (4,260 ft/sec); SCSM can maneuver at 40g at Mach 4. Like Phalanx, this weapon kills by impact, not by explosion. Of the seven saboted projectiles successfully fired at Dahlgren Naval Base in the second half of 1992, five carried live gas generators and thermal batteries. The K-band command link was tested over water at Dahlgren in February 1993. Tests against airborne targets were scheduled for late 1994. The gun is an autoloader on a Phalanx mounting. Firing rate is 4 rounds per second/10 round burst); elevation limits are +40/-5 degrees. Following a 30-month design and development program, the first 60 mm ET gun was delivered to the US Navy in July 1993. Following the completion of final NSWC acceptance trials, the gun, autoloader and other program elements – including propellant charges, guided projectiles and the TASD target acquisition system – will be integrated during a series of live firings against airborne targets. In December 1994, the US Navy announced that it expected to make a decision on the feasibility of using electrothermal gun technology for future naval weapons by 1998. The studies, costing some US$107 million, would determine if a 155 mm electrothermal gun would provide a feasible, practical, and affordable solution for the US Navy’s naval surface fire-support requirements. The study program would use a 5-inch L54 Mk 45 mount as a design baseline to evaluate the technology issues involved. The objective is to increase the gun range from its existing 27 kilometers to a maximum of 150 kilometers, and to integrate this improved performance with a new guided round. However, by mid-1996, the whole US Navy side of this program was strongly de-emphasized in favor of the Army-related aspects. No work was being carried out on the naval weapons and no early introduction to service was predicted by company officials. The performance increments gained by the introduction of combustion-augmented plasma technology are evolutionary rather than revolutionary, but, combined with the development of practical guided projectiles, are sufficient to restore a substantial measure of credibility to gun-based CIWS. The application of CAP technology to basic conventional gun designs means that the 60 mm ET-gun technology demonstrator should be adaptable to a service weapon within the forecast period. The timing of such a program will be determined by funding constraints. At present, other priorities are considered more pressing.

 

[Colonial-Marine]

Seems a shame that all of this has apparently gone to waste and not resulted in any new weapon systems at sea (or on land) 20+ years later.

I wonder how the 60mm ETC gun system would compare in effectiveness to the current 57mm Bofors?

 

[ceccherini]

A guy in a Japanese forum wrote that just before Japan entry in WW2 a 53 cm/45 protype gun was planned by IJN. Has any of you ever heard of this? Personally I've many doubts mainly because it seems a far too small improvement over the 51 cm to justify a new design and because a more conservative 50 caliber variant of the 51 cm would give basically the same improvement. Still the idea of a gun over 20 inches at least as a trial gun is not totally fool: the two ocean navy act effectively grounded the Japanese battleship policy by making realistic American battleship larger than Panama locks and already Montanas were believed by the Japanese to be equipped with 8 20". Taking in mind that gun minded officers were still dominant some consideration to a larger gun seems quite logical through a 56 cm or a 61 cm would be a more coherent step. 6 of such guns should be a workable alternative to 8 51 cm on the planned 90-100000 ton post A150 battleships.

 

[Tzoli]

No no no
The Peace Goddess doctrine foreshadowed that the Montanas would be equipped with 18" cannons not 20" hence Yamato upgunning and new construction would be 51cm (510mm not 508 ) armed vessels to provide gunnery superoritiy over them. Yamato being superior over North Carolina, South Dakota and Iowa.

Can you link to this Japanese forum?

A Prototype or Test gun is not impossible as in the late 1910s early 1920s 48cm cannons were constructed to test new large calibre barrel construction methods for the 46cm and possibly for a future 51cm weapon. This 53cm if true would be a logical extension of that idea to test out the 51cm and possible future 56cm weapon though it was stated that the 51cm Type 98 was simply an enlarged 46cm Type 96 (Note that in 1934 there were proposals for a 46cm/50 weapon as the very first Yamato preliminaries were designed with this weapon in mind! )

 

[ceccherini]

No no no
The Peace Goddess doctrine foreshadowed that the Montanas would be equipped with 18" cannons not 20" hence Yamato upgunning and new construction would be 51cm (510mm not 508 ) armed vessels to provide gunnery superoritiy over them. Yamato being superior over North Carolina, South Dakota and Iowa.

Can you link to this Japanese forum?

A Prototype or Test gun is not impossible as in the late 1910s early 1920s 48cm cannons were constructed to test new large calibre barrel construction methods for the 46cm and possibly for a future 51cm weapon. This 53cm if true would be a logical extension of that idea to test out the 51cm and possible future 56cm weapon though it was stated that the 51cm Type 98 was simply an enlarged 46cm Type 96 (Note that in 1934 there were proposals for a 46cm/50 weapon as the very first Yamato preliminaries were designed with this weapon in mind! )

You're confusing 1934 predictions and 1940 intelligence: by 1940 Congressional report on 20" gunned battleships, even if absolutely not grounded in real construction activities or even General Board discussions, were widely circulating and taken very seriously by IJN

 

[Tzoli]

Problem is, the largest calibre ever considered for the Montana was the 18" cannon. The 20" was shown for the 1935/36 Maximum Battleship study only.

 

[CIC-TAO]

First up, a 35mm CIWS proposal presented at the 1991 US Navy League show.

Source: Navy International, November 1991, Vol 96, No 11, Publ: Maritime World Limited

EDIT
Some information from the same source:

• GD proposal to use GE Cased Telescoped ORDALT 35mm weapon system.
• 8 barrels.
• 8000rpm.
• Balanced linkless feed holding 1200 APDS rounds.
• Nearly 6x on target energy per shot compared with 20mm Phalanx.
• Dispersion of less than 1mrad.
• MV greater than 1130m/s.

I tried to find these magazines myself, I looked for <Navy International, November 1991, Vol 96, No 11> and found no CIWS articles as you mentioned.

Can you tell me exactly which page it is on?
Is it the text or the ad?

 

[RP1]

First up, a 35mm CIWS proposal presented at the 1991 US Navy League show.

Source: Navy International, November 1991, Vol 96, No 11, Publ: Maritime World Limited

EDIT
Some information from the same source:

• GD proposal to use GE Cased Telescoped ORDALT 35mm weapon system.
• 8 barrels.
• 8000rpm.
• Balanced linkless feed holding 1200 APDS rounds.
• Nearly 6x on target energy per shot compared with 20mm Phalanx.
• Dispersion of less than 1mrad.
• MV greater than 1130m/s.

I tried to find these magazines myself, I looked for <Navy International, November 1991, Vol 96, No 11> and found no CIWS articles as you mentioned.

Can you tell me exactly which page it is on?
Is it the text or the ad?

There was a typo in the original post. It is the October 1991 issue, in an article entitled "CIWS Anti-Air Defence".

 

[cattalonX]

anyone know something about this 20" gun？？？

Washington Cherry Trees II./ Part 3

The G3

warshipprojects.com

USN 20”/45 Mark 1 * (508mm)

1860

792

583

it has shell weight and muzzle velocity·····

 

[Tzoli]

From Norman Friedman Naval Weapons of WW1:
A Gun design offered late ww1 in around 1917, no actual barrel constructed but it was used for the 1935/36 maximum battleship design (4x2 20")
Shell Weight: 1860kg
Muzzle Velocity: 792m/s

 

[Winchester]

United Defense NG^2 155mm gun, advert that ran in USNI Proceedings in the latter part of the 1990s. No additional info other than what's on the image.


RP1


[Edited to add 3-view drawing from another advert]

The thought strikes me (several years later) that given the late 1990s timeframe of the ads, and the manufacturer... .might this be the XM297E2 from the Crusader in a naval mount? The Crusader was also by United Defense, and it was in testing at the time...

 

[TomS]

United Defense NG^2 155mm gun, advert that ran in USNI Proceedings in the latter part of the 1990s. No additional info other than what's on the image.


RP1


[Edited to add 3-view drawing from another advert]

The thought strikes me (several years later) that given the late 1990s timeframe of the ads, and the manufacturer... .might this be the XM297E2 from the Crusader in a naval mount? The Crusader was also by United Defense, and it was in testing at the time...

The bits we see don't remind me much of Crusader. It seems to be basically a straight scaled up version of the Mark 45 Mod 4, complete with semi-fixed ammunition in loading drums.

The timing makes me think this might have been an alternative offering for fitting on future DDG-51s if DD(X) and AGS had fallen through.

 

[Kat Tsun]

Looks like a bigger brother to BAE's 6.1" TMF, which was the 4.5" with a 155mm and half the ready ammo capacity. Each autoloader cell held a projectile and a charge in sequence, rather than a full combination, so the gun had to go through two loading cycles which halved the rate of fire.

Of course the advantage of the TMF is that it fits in the same footprint as the old naval gun.

 

[Winchester]

Looks like a bigger brother to BAE's 6.1" TMF, which was the 4.5" with a 155mm and half the ready ammo capacity. Each autoloader cell held a projectile and a charge in sequence, rather than a full combination, so the gun had to go through two loading cycles which halved the rate of fire.

Of course the advantage of the TMF is that it fits in the same footprint as the old naval gun.

According to Navweaps, the TMF was supposed to start service with an L39 barrel, upgraded later to an L52... which also sounds suspiciously similar to another gun in British service, namely the AS-90 and its (cancelled) Braveheart upgrade. Which is where I got the idea that it might be an existing howitzer in a new shell.

The Germans of course literally trialed the turret of their PzH 2000 on one of their frigates, making it the only "naval" gun firing NATO standard 155 mm ammunition that I'm aware of that actually went to sea...

 

[Tony Williams]

According to Navweaps, the TMF was supposed to start service with an L39 barrel, upgraded later to an L52... which also sounds suspiciously similar to another gun in British service, namely the AS-90 and its (cancelled) Braveheart upgrade. Which is where I got the idea that it might be an existing howitzer in a new shell.

Yes - the TMF was intended to use surplus army AS90 barrels. Since both the guns and the 4.5" mounting were already available, it should have been a very cost-effective solution. The problem came with the fact that the army gun uses bagged propellant whereas the RN insists upon metal cartridge cases for fire safety reasons. If you redesign the ammo to have a metal case you then have to redesign the gun and loading system and, all of a sudden, it's not looking so cheap any more.

The German Monarch had a different problem: the PzH 2000 turret was not designed to cope with the very different maritime environment. For instance, a powerful stabilising system would need to be added due to the ship's movement relative to the target.

 

[MihoshiK]

According to Navweaps, the TMF was supposed to start service with an L39 barrel, upgraded later to an L52... which also sounds suspiciously similar to another gun in British service, namely the AS-90 and its (cancelled) Braveheart upgrade. Which is where I got the idea that it might be an existing howitzer in a new shell.

Yes - the TMF was intended to use surplus army AS90 barrels. Since both the guns and the 4.5" mounting were already available, it should have been a very cost-effective solution. The problem came with the fact that the army gun uses bagged propellant whereas the RN insists upon metal cartridge cases for fire safety reasons. If you redesign the ammo to have a metal case you then have to redesign the gun and loading system and, all of a sudden, it's not looking so cheap any more.

The German Monarch had a different problem: the PzH 2000 turret was not designed to cope with the very different maritime environment. For instance, a powerful stabilising system would need to be added due to the ship's movement relative to the target.

The PzH 2000 turret was apparently also very hard to proof against salt spray and all that. The concept sounded good, but an SPH and a ship live in VERY different environments.

 

[RP1]

I'm not entirely sure if this weapon was actually deployed, so here we go. A 17-25-pdr Mark II mounting for use on shallow draft craft to support amphibious landings. These photographs show the mounting with the 17-pdr gun installed - note the muzzle brake, which was not required on the 25-pdr. Total mounting weight was around 12 tons. The reference doesn't say who the manufacturer was, other than their "normal interests were confined to the manufacture of bakery equipment".

Reference: Cdr (RN) JWA Adams, "An Unorthodox Gun Mounting", Journal of Naval Engineering, Vol 2, No 1, April 1948.

 

[TomS]

I'm not entirely sure if this weapon was actually deployed, so here we go. A 17-25-pdr Mark II mounting for use on shallow draft craft to support amphibious landings. These photographs show the mounting with the 17-pdr gun installed - note the muzzle brake, which was not required on the 25-pdr. Total mounting weight was around 12 tons. The reference doesn't say who the manufacturer was, other than their "normal interests were confined to the manufacture of bakery equipment".

Reference: Cdr (RN) JWA Adams, "An Unorthodox Gun Mounting", Journal of Naval Engineering, Vol 2, No 1, April 1948.
View attachment 656353
View attachment 656354

Wonder if it's related to to 20-pdr turret planned but not adopted for the Brave MGBs.

 

[A Tentative Fleet Plan]

I'm not entirely sure if this weapon was actually deployed, so here we go. A 17-25-pdr Mark II mounting for use on shallow draft craft to support amphibious landings. These photographs show the mounting with the 17-pdr gun installed - note the muzzle brake, which was not required on the 25-pdr. Total mounting weight was around 12 tons. The reference doesn't say who the manufacturer was, other than their "normal interests were confined to the manufacture of bakery equipment".

Reference: Cdr (RN) JWA Adams, "An Unorthodox Gun Mounting", Journal of Naval Engineering, Vol 2, No 1, April 1948.
View attachment 656353
View attachment 656354

The mounting was certainly used on Landing Craft Gun Mediums.

https://flic.kr/p/aZzaQk

View: https://www.flickr.com/photos/39411748@N06/6558722959

With 25pdrs.

LCG (M) 103

Underway.

www.iwm.org.uk

 

[A Tentative Fleet Plan]

From the Vickers Photographic Archive:

17-pdr Mounting

25-pdr Mounting

 

[iverson]

Here are some photos from my hard disk.

 

[DWG]

The reference doesn't say who the manufacturer was, other than their "normal interests were confined to the manufacture of bakery equipment".

The company was Baker Perkins (particularly good name for a bakery company!), and while they might have started out with bakery gear, they produced gun carriages (whole or parts) in WWI and again in WWII. According to a little company history they did work on 3.7" and 4.5" AA, 2 Pdr AT, 6 Pdr 10 Cwt Twin Six (including the AA conversions and naval mountings), 4.5"/5.5" Gun/Howitzer, 6" Howitzer, 40mm Bofors, 6 Pdr AT, 95mm Howitzer, and field bakeries.

They were given the order for the 17 Pdr/25 Pdr mountings in early 43, had a design by August and 2 complete mountings by December, ultimately producing 78.

 

[sferrin]

Sounds like FMC - Food Machinery Corporation.

 

[Winchester]

Friedman "US Amphibious Ships and Craft - An Illustrated Design History", pg 404:
"By 1969 a long-range gun system (LRGS), approximately a 12-in/70, was in the advanced development stage. According to a 1 July 1969 Op-36 point paper, this 300,000-lb weapon could throw a 100-lb projectile 70 nm."

Found this while looking for more info on the US Marines' quest for a new fire support ship, and I'm...intrigued. Does anyone know any more about this thing?

 

[Tzoli]

wow a 12"/70?? I wonder if it really was a new gun or a re-bored 16"/50!

 

[A Tentative Fleet Plan]

As for the TAK120, the gun was based upon land-based anti-aircraft automatic Lvakan 4501 gun, which had two magazines (each side of the breech) each with 24 rounds (take a look at photos attached), so it would be quite logical that the feeding system had been retained in the naval mounting.

However in a Swedish forum https://www.flashback.org/t1058569p10 I've found information on the ammunition capacity of the TAK120, which we know from http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNSweden_47-46_TAK120.htm:

12cm L/46 TAK120 hade dock reducerad ammunitionskapacitet jämfört med 12 cm lvakan 4501, med 10 granater i magasinen och 16st i tornets bakkant för 12cm L/46 TAK120 vs. 48 granater i magasinen för 12 cm lvakan 4501.

The text doesn't seem to be simply copied from another source and its author says about reduction of the TAK120's ammo capacity as compared to the Lvakan 4501, so perhaps indeed the naval mounting had fewer ready to fire ammunition than the land-based gun.

Anyway it would be really interesting to know how the mounting was actually arranged internally.

Piotr

Lvakan 4501






Source



Via Wikipedia, it looks like they've been scanned from an original brochure?

A few seconds of it firing in this video:

View: https://youtu.be/1wnae3wClAk?feature=shared

 

[Colonial-Marine]

Post-WWII there were a few UK 5" gun projects that never came to fruition and had a starting basis in the US 5"/70 Type F which was used in the Worcester class 6"/47 turret for testing purposes. This fired the same ~70 lb shell as the 5"/54 but at a very high velocity. The UK considered a twin automatic loading 5"/70 turret as the Mark N1 and later revised it to a 62 caliber length barrel to save some weight. The specifications were for an incredible (and likely impossible to achieve) 60 or greater rpm per barrel. Later they moved onto the 5"/56 Mark N2 which had less ambitious specifications.

Was there any US interest in a similar weapon to the Mark N1? It seems likely that the initial work on the 5"/70 Type F was a joint project between the US and UK similar to the work that led to their respective 3"/70 caliber AAA. An automatic loading 5"/62 twin with a more realistic rate of fire would have been quite impressive.

During that time period (late 40s to early 50s) the UK was still considering the prospect of new cruisers or a "destroyer/cruiser" armed with automatic dual-purpose 6" or 5" guns. Was the US still interested in building any new gun cruisers at that time, or were they fully committed to the development of guided missile cruisers? All of the designs for those seemed to either be conversions of existing cruisers, or new builds with minimal gun armament from the start.

 

[Grey Havoc]

Came across this while trying to track down information on the Soviet A222 mobile Coastal Defence gun system:
Design Criteria for inert or Consumable Polymer Cartridge Materials (Naval Weapons Center, 1971)

Semiempirical theory is used to provide guidelines for selecting inert or consumable polymer cartridge materials on the basis of chemical, thermal, and mechanical properties for use in existing gun systems. Internal ballistic parameters are obtained using the Le Duc velocity approximation. Resulting energy release, temperature, and transient pressure to the cartridge are then related to rate of degradation, heat transfer, and viscoelasticity in terms of chemical, thermal and mechanical properties using the Arrhenius activation energy theory, and Fourier heat conduction equation, and the Tresca failure criteria. The design criteria are based on simultaneous mechanical failure (powder gas erosive action) and burning/degradative consumption of a filled or unfilled polymeric cartridge material as a function of the time of projectile travel in the gun. The technique for defining the ideal cartridge material property envelope is outlined for any existing gun 3ystem. Candidate polymer cartridge materials on one side of the envelope are consumed on firing, whereas those on the other side %.re inert. The usefulness of the technique is shown for a specific ammunition in a 5-inch 54-caliber Navy gun.

 

[Winchester]

FMC's 155mm Vertical Load Gun. From an advert and article in USNI Proceedings, July 1983.


The article is largely a discussion of the advantages of 155mm. From the advert, the 155mm VLG would "weigh about the same as current 5-inch lightweight guns" and have "40% fewer components".


RP1


Reference: Lt Col (Rtd) Michael L Mosbrooker & Lt Col (Rtd) John A Murray, USMC, "The Naval Gun: Encore! Encore!, USNI Proc. July 1983

I've found some more info on this in Friedman's US Amphibious Ships and Craft - An Illustrated Design History.

Apparently it was proposed some time prior to 1981, when a study called AMFIST included it among the studied options for solving fire support during an amphibious invasion (the cases studied being an invasion of Jutland against a Soviet motorized rifle division, North Korea without Soviet intervention, and Southwest Asia.

In the study, they looked at a 155 mm Vertically Loaded Gun (included because it could potentially fire Copperhead or bomblet shells developed for the Army), an 8-inch/36 NUGM by White Oak (it refers back to an earlier chapter for a description, will have to dig to see if I can find it), and a Vought 9-inch rocket that could be loaded in an ASROC launcher. Also looked at were Tomahawk, a bomblet-carrying rocket missile, and Martin Marietta's Beachcomber (which was based on a Patriot missile body and originally developed for the Army's Assault Breaker program.

The 155 mm gun was envisioned as being able to not only fire the obvious Army shells, but also do stuff like launch sonobuoys, hydrostatically fused shells (i.e. depth charges), but due to the loading method they were looking at 10 rpm. The range was expected to be 42 km for guided shells (as opposed to 30 for the guided 5-inch shell), and 27 km for unguided shells.

The idea was formally rejected in December of 1983 on the basis of the gun adding 130 million dollars in life cycle cost to a ship so equipped with no real benefit over a guided 5-inch shell. (which then failed to materialize, multiple times.)

 

[1635yankee]

I live within earshot of a waterfowl hunting area, and every now and then during duck hunting season I hear fully automatic weapons opening up.

Wouldn't that most likely be the ducks returning fire?

Regards & all,

Thomas L. Nielsen
Luxembourg

That would certainly make hunting more sporting....

 

[GTX]

Can't help myself:

 

[Combat-Master]

Rare footage of Turkish Navy's 25mm Sea Zenith CIWS in action

https://twitter.com/x/status/1591544958703603714

View: https://twitter.com/Yamato_Armada/status/1591544958703603714?s=20&t=oibfzYoBJa8RmuazNkTMZw

 

[Prophet141]

Hey TomS

Thanks for those posts!! Some great info there.

The start date for this project of 1962 is interesting because off the top of my head I can only think of a handful of vessel classes that used them. Namely, the Storm Class patrol boats and Sleipner Class corvettes of Norway and on the Vosper FACs of Singapore. They are all of 1960s vintage meaning that Bofors must have ceased marketing this weapon after just a few years.

When you look at the low ROF compared the Bofors 57mm mk i (developed around the same time early 1960s) and the slightly later (mid 1960s) Oto Malera 76mm its perhaps unsurprising that it was given the heave-ho! To say nothing about its lack of adaptability to different tasks as you have pointed out!

It is worth noting though that the imensely successful Oto 76mm of today is the second attemt. The original 76mm "allargato" gun was pretty unsuccessful, being ordered only by the Italian Navy. It does make you wonder though, given that Oto took a couple of attempts to get things right, if Bofors had persisted they might just have produced something excellent and really dominated the medium calibre market. Not exactly a pipedream when you consider so of the great guns they have produced!

Its probably a bad reference, but just look at the TAK120. It was developed, as with the TAK76, in 1962 as a private venture. It was only adopted by Finland (Turunmaa Class 1960s) and Indonesia (Corvettes early 1980s). In all likelyhood it was harmed by the Swedish decision to disgard all vessels larger then torpedo/missile boats from 1968 onwards. Anyway, it was 120mm and managed 80!! rounds per minute. A staggering rof for a gun of that vintage!

Sweden 120 mm/46 (4.7") TAK120 - NavWeaps

www.navweaps.com

C

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Mace Perhaps you'll find this little relic of interest? Unfortunately rendered useless by advances in missile technology, but still funny to look at none the less.

 

[isayyo2]

FMC's 155mm Vertical Load Gun. From an advert and article in USNI Proceedings, July 1983.


The article is largely a discussion of the advantages of 155mm. From the advert, the 155mm VLG would "weigh about the same as current 5-inch lightweight guns" and have "40% fewer components".


RP1


Reference: Lt Col (Rtd) Michael L Mosbrooker & Lt Col (Rtd) John A Murray, USMC, "The Naval Gun: Encore! Encore!, USNI Proc. July 1983

1983 Color Ad for FMC's 155mm Vertical Load Gun (VLG) found in the Marine Corps Gazette

 

[Voltzz]

I found an image of a Phalanx CIWS firing one of two attached stinger missiles, but im not sure if its an image from a real test or just a mock-up made for a proposal.

 

[Tzoli]

Looks like a real test but does not seems to be adopted as a system. Cheap US idea copy of the Soviet Kashtan?

 

[TomS]

Looks like a real test but does not seems to be adopted as a system. Cheap US idea copy of the Soviet Kashtan?

The idea of pairing MANPADS with CIWS isn't all that new, and certainly not unknown before Kashtan. I know of tests of the EX-83 Goalkeeper mount with Stinger and Mistral in the mid-1980s. Never seen this one with Phalanx/Stinger but it could well date to the same era.