Quintinshill Accident
The first picture in “Railway guns…” is of the 14 inch rail mounted naval rifles, with the mount built by Baldwin (these were NOT built in France). These saw action in the last few weeks of WW1 and were reputed to be accurate enough that targeting could be done by map. The higher elevation with respect to ship mounts allowed for a couple of miles more reach.
Do you s’pose they were all singing ‘Roll Out The Barrel’?
US Railway Ordinance by Edmund, on Flickr
h96262 by National Museum of the U.S. Navy, on Flickr
Lot-5363-8 by National Museum of the U.S. Navy, on Flickr
Cheers, Ed
TF
The cannons shown here are amazing. My dad’s battleship (BB-38) had twelve 14" cannons. He told me they couldn’t all be fired at once, or they would torn from their mountings. Also, they never fired a 90-degree broadside; the cannons had to be fired from an angle (there was a reason for that, too).
Nevertheless, for me it’s beyond depressing to look at all these cannons and reflect that not only was the killing of large numbers of men their sole purpose, but I reflect on all the money, expertise, and resources that went into making them.
Will Rogers* once said, “You can’t say mankind doesn’t make any progress; why, in each war they think of a new way to kill you.”
*If you’re not familiar with him, Google him; you’re missing out.
Guns - all sizes - were created for a single purpose - to KILL. To kill man or beast. Any other alledged uses are secondary to the purpose they were created for.
Yep. But then man, (and I mean in general as a species rather than man as an expression of gender) is incapable of true creation. No matter what we do we can neither create nor truly destroy any form of matter. All we can do is combine, transmutate or scatter atoms and their respective components. We cannot bring them into our existence nor can we remove them from our plain of existence. We can be “good at” our manipulations of matter but the creation of those building blocks is beyond our abilities.
I for one am comforted by the thought that mankind is not granted that ability. 