Abstract
Big guns have their own unique challenges. They must contain the enormous pressures due to a large and heavy projectile being fired. They also present significant logistical burdens on the owners as heavy masses of steel need to be positioned and aimed with millimetre-accuracy.
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Notes
- 1.
And generally better value.
- 2.
A particular hero of mine, Bertram Hopkinson (1874–1918) started his career as a lawyer before turning his attention to engineering and eventually became Professor of Mechanisms and Applied Mechanics at Cambridge University at the age of 29.
- 3.
Despite the convention of naming guns by the mass of the projectile, Armstrong’s 100 tonne gun broke that convention—the ‘100 tonnes’ referred to the mass of the gun.
- 4.
The 28-cm Amiens gun , built in 1904 at the Krupp factory in Essen, Germany was given the nickname ‘Little Bertha’ or ‘Baby Bertha’. The barrel and the roof structure now reside at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
- 5.
Although the separation of 33 km existed between Calais and Dover, it was anticipated that a gun with a range of 37 km was required to allow for variable weather conditions.
- 6.
The L45 denotes the length of the gun. In this case, the L45 gun was 45 calibres in length. The tradition of citing the length of the gun in terms of calibres carries on to this day.
- 7.
That is, the position along the gun barrel at which the propellant has been completely consumed during deflagration.
- 8.
K(E) = ‘Kanone Eisenbahn’, which literally means ‘cannon railway’.
- 9.
The ‘V' stood for vengeance.
- 10.
“Columbiad” was the name given in the US to large-calibre, cast-iron, smoothbore, muzzle-loading cannons that were able to fire heavy projectiles.
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Hazell, P.J. (2021). Big Guns. In: The Story of the Gun. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73652-1_4
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