Naval Gun Projects

[thebig C]

Jane's gives slightly different info about the TAK 120 L/46 ammunition supply. It says there were magazines on each side of the gun consisting of four compartments with five rounds each. These in turn supported a pair of feed tables, each holding six rounds. That's either 32 or 52 rounds on mount, depending on how you interpret it (4x5 total or 4x5 on each side). Those rounds could then be manually reloaded in 2.5 minutes by two human reloaders. The gun would have to return to a loading position for this evolution.

I would love to get a confirmation because that is some disparity. A 32-52 round capacity makes it a much more attractive proposition then a 5 round capacity!

I think you could be right about the jamming issue. Particularly on weapons of that vintage the quoted stats were often a little "theoretical"!

C

 

[TomS]

I would love to get a confirmation because that is some disparity. A 32-52 round capacity makes it a much more attractive proposition then a 5 round capacity!

Friedman's Guide to World Naval Weapon Systems says the TAK 120 turret had two 25-round magazines, one on each side of the breech. That looks pretty consistent with the Jane's description, give or take one round in the feed trays (possibly the difference between a round "up the pipe" or not).

 

[Petrus]

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

 

[TomS]

Thanks for that reference; I was not familiar with the land-based gun the TAK 120 was based on. Wish there was an easy way to reconcile the various sources, but they seem mutually incompatible.

 

[TomS]

A quick update. Tony DiGiulliani from Naval Weapons let me have a look at an official Bofors data sheet for the TAK 120 and it confirms the Jane's figures of 52 rounds in magazines and feed tables. There were also 16 rounds in the turret rear. These rounds were probably (my guess) a ready reserve in case of trouble with the hoist that would bring reserve ammunition up to the turret from stowage magazines. The hoist could only bring ammo up into the turret while the later was in the loading position.

Sadly, Tony was given the data sheet on the condition that he not post it online, so I must honor that constraint. He said he would update his website accordingly.

 

[Petrus]

Tony DiGiulliani from Naval Weapons (...) said he would update his website accordingly.

Do you mean www.navweaps.com?

Piotr

 

[TomS]

Yes.

Edit: Please do not bug Tony asking for copies of this. He shared it with me because we've known each other (online) for many years and he's a bit annoyed with me that he's now getting other folks he does not know mailing to request the file.

 

[Brickmuppet]

This sounds very similar to the ammo system of the Bofors 57mm weapon which makes sense. It also needs to move to a fixed firing position to reload its ready use trays.

 

[Abraham Gubler]

This sounds very similar to the ammo system of the Bofors 57mm weapon which makes sense. It also needs to move to a fixed firing position to reload its ready use trays.

Aye and the picture above of the Bofors 120mm looks almost identical to the inside of the 47mm gun. Two big magazines on either side of the breech. Which is also similar to the large continuous feed magazine they developed for the post war 40mm L70s.

 

[RP1]

Which is also similar to the large continuous feed magazine they developed for the post war 40mm L70s

For what it's worth, a seem to recall Friedman saying that the 120mm was conceptually a scaled up 40mm.

RP1

 

[Petrus]

As for the Lvakan 4501, you perhaps may be interested in a 'datablad' (in English), which I've just found elsewhere on the Internet.

Piotr

 

[Abraham Gubler]

As for the Lvakan 4501, you perhaps may be interested in a 'datablad' (in English), which I've just found elsewhere on the Internet.

What a gun! If only Bofors had sold this design to the Allies before WWII. Would have put a dint in the Luftwaffe and the Panzerwaffe...

 

[TomS]

What a gun! If only Bofors had sold this design to the Allies before WWII. Would have put a dint in the Luftwaffe and the Panzerwaffe...

I was under the impression that the 4501 was a post-war design from the late 1950s, about the time that such guns were becoming quite obsolete.

 

[Abraham Gubler]

What a gun! If only Bofors had sold this design to the Allies before WWII. Would have put a dint in the Luftwaffe and the Panzerwaffe...

I was under the impression that the 4501 was a post-war design from the late 1950s, about the time that such guns were becoming quite obsolete.

By the brochure it wasn't available until 1963... so WWII is a fantasy. But 1963 raises questions as to why were they building it? Sweden didn't appear to build an indigenouse AA missile until the RBS 70. So perhaps as a back up to missile imports.

 

[Petrus]

By the brochure it wasn't available until 1963... so WWII is a fantasy. But 1963 raises questions as to why were they building it? Sweden didn't appear to build an indigenouse AA missile until the RBS 70. So perhaps as a back up to missile imports.

Actually the Swedish worked on surface-to-air missiles in the 1950s. There was at least one project, designated Robot 322, or Rb-322, or simply '322', which obviously has never been adopted by their air force (instead they purchased British Bloodhounds).

At http://www.x-plane.org/home/urf/aviation/arbm03/arbm_0307.html you'll find some info on the missile as well as its pictures from a Swedish museum.

Piotr

 

[Petrus]

Back to the subject, have a look at http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNSweden_47-46_TAK120.htm. It's just been updated and contains info that (I suppose) we talked here about.

Piotr

 

[Michel Van]

let's push Naval Gun project in to bigger scale

The Third Reich had in 1939, the "Z-Plan" to build a New Battlefleet

the plan include constuction of six H-class Heavy Battleships (62000 tons)
with eight 40.6 cm ø SK C/34 guns in four twin gun turrets.
standard range of approximately 36 kilometres with 1030 kg shell (30° elevation)
with long range shell of 320 kg so 56 kilometres
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/40.6_cm_SK_C/34_gun

after the H-class build was stop the finished guns were used in Coastal Defense

this picture show singel C/34 gun used in atlantic wall fortress

why was the H-class abadoned ?
first lack of construction materials and Fuel to run the H-class fleet
because the German wandet the biggest diesel engines of world (in there Time)
the H-class fleet had used the Reichs entire diesel reserve in just a week...

Also that Japan build the bigger Yamato class battleship with nine 46.0 cm ø Type 94 naval guns
Could play also a little role in death of the H-Class...

 

[Abraham Gubler]

Actually the Swedish worked on surface-to-air missiles in the 1950s. There was at least one project, designated Robot 322, or Rb-322, or simply '322', which obviously has never been adopted by their air force (instead they purchased British Bloodhounds).

Did not know. Thanks for the info.

The 4501 was probably intended as a mobile coast defence asset with a secondary anti aircraft capability (or vice versa). Certainly would have been very impressive at the firing range and superior to the later 12cm version of the FH-77 used as a mobile coast artillery gun by the Swedes.

 

[Petrus]

The 4501 was probably intended as a mobile coast defence asset with a secondary anti aircraft capability (or vice versa). Certainly would have been very impressive at the firing range and superior to the later 12cm version of the FH-77 used as a mobile coast artillery
gun by the Swedes.

It may be. But AFAIK there was quite another 12cm coastal-gun developed post-war in Sweden (m/70 12cm L/62 gun).
To me building an anti-aircraft missile and a big gun in the same time-frame seems quite strange too, but somewhere (in a Norman Friedman's book?) I read that at that time there were views that artillery shells cannot be jammed like missiles, so the guns had been regarded as more reliable than the missiles. Perhaps the Swedes had such thoughts, but soon they concluded that missiles could replace heavy AA artillery.

Btw it should be noted that the TAK120 L/46 used quite different ammunition than the twin 12cm L/50 (m/50) on-board destroyers of the Halland class (as well as Dutch and Colombian ships). The former had 120x616R, while the latter - 120x835R. The m/70 12 cm L/62 coastal gun had its own kind of ammunition: 120x946R. All these kinds of the round were fixed, I'm quite sure.

Piotr

 

[gollevainen]

Atleast the coastal 120mm used fixed rounds. I've read that in the 60's when the Finnish coastal artillery sougth new medium range system, the 120mm swedish one with automatic loader was high candinate, but got eventually rejected becouse of the high cost that the automated system required for the fixed round. A domestic 130mm with seperate round was devolped instead from Soviet M-46 130mm field gun.

 

[RP1]

Now here's a question. What's this; Dock Museum pictures 7869 - 7874, showing an odd looking twin mount. This closely resembles the outline turrets on the 5 inch gunned 1960 Cruiser (I'm making CG models of the designs). but surely the shells are too small for that. An alternate design for the twin 3 inch Mk6 maybe? I'm trying to work out what the twin 5 inch would have looked like, since the outline looks more like an enlarged Mk6, rather than the automatic 6 inch from the Tiger class, or the boxy single 5 inch from the cruiser destroyer painting.

RP1


Link to the last page of the Naval Gun list, with the images:

http://www.dockmuseum.org.uk/archive/browser.asp?searchtype=0&deepcriteria=&startindex=520&endindex=528&subject=Armaments&title=Naval+Weapon&subtitle=Naval+Gun

 

[JFC Fuller]

Looks like the 3 inch to based on the way the guns are mounted.

 

[Creative]

AGS - Lite

http://events.us.baesystems.com/SAS/prodserv/AGS-Lite.html

 

[TomS]

I think the AGS-Lite fact sheet is the first document to explicitly refer to the existence (or development?) of an anti-surface warfare round for AGS. Anyone seen more details?

 

[pathology_doc]

Now all we need is the ability to update the target coordinates for the guided shell and hey presto, gun engagements on enemy surface ships at 70-plus miles.

Oh, and we need to at least double the rate of fire for line of sight engagements.

The one thing I'm sure of re. naval gun systems is that Western warships do not have enough of them, in any calibre.

 

[TomS]

I can't see any reason to want more than two medium-caliber (5-6 inch) guns. One is less than ideal given the demonstrated unreliability of the Mk45 (ask Vincennes) but more than two seems pointless.


Small-caliber stuff, I could see a case for a couple more, but where do you out them without mucking up all the other essentials? And of course, most deployed ships actually do have at least four small caliber guns -- a pair of 25mm and a couple of Phalanx, most now with Surface Mode -- plus at least a couple of of .50-cals and/or 7.62mm miniguns.

 

[pathology_doc]

The Italians never had much of a problem fitting a lot of guns on their ships (e.g. two fast-firing 127mm, FOUR rapid-fire 76mm, and a Mk13 Standard launcher on a medium-sized air-warfare destroyer), so I don't see why other navies can't do the same. VLS should make it even easier.

There seems to me no reason why a 1000ft aircraft carrier can't carry at least six CIWS guns.

 

[JFC Fuller]

Does anybody have any information or images on the Vickers GBN? It was a 155mm designed for naval use and was unveiled in 1983, it was a counterpart to the GBT turret that eventually evolved into the AS90, both derived from UK work on SP70. In 1991 Vickers displayed a mock-up of what they called the N155-2000, basically a 155mm version of the 4.5 inch Mk8, I assume using Vickers UFH (Ultralight Field Howitzer- eventually became M777) barrel, basically the same as what BAE has been playing with recently through the 155mm TMF before it was abandoned in 2010.

 

[TomS]

The Italians never had much of a problem fitting a lot of guns on their ships (e.g. two fast-firing 127mm, FOUR rapid-fire 76mm, and a Mk13 Standard launcher on a medium-sized air-warfare destroyer), so I don't see why other navies can't do the same. VLS should make it even easier.

The Italians managed it by having seakeeping and habitability standards similar to the Soviets, IIRC. Okay if you plan to do most of your fighting in the Med; not so good if you may have to spend a lot of time in the North Atlantic.

There seems to me no reason why a 1000ft aircraft carrier can't carry at least six CIWS guns.

You get into diminishing returns pretty quickly; more than one CIWS on the same firing arc may not be a dramatic improvement in actual protection.

 

[pathology_doc]

Wouldn't it help to prevent saturation, though? For all that a lesser number of guns may be able to switch between targets rapidly enough to shoot them all down, those things do need to be reloaded from time to time. And if you're far from home with your missile magazines getting lean and the next reload is a cordon of enemy submarines away, or if you're a destroyer defending a high-value target, your point-defence gun armament might become your dominant means of self-protection.

I take the point about the habitability standards and likely theatre of engagement, though. Wasn't this also the thing which made Italian battleship designers' lives a lot easier?

 

[Sea Skimmer]

Small caliber CIWSs are very much last ditch defenses, the ship is still likely to be hit by debris which may include the intact warhead blasted free of the missile airframe. Larger systems like 76mm can do more, but they also cost more. If you are worried about saturation then packing on more small guns is not the solution, you need missile based systems that can defeat incoming threats at longer ranges and ideally which have more then one engagement opportunity. It also really helps if you can make more then one engagement at a time or in much quicker succession, all the more so then a gun system which often has to fire spotting bursts. The Italians are using a guided shell for the 76mm now to improve performance against supersonic missiles and avoid spotting, god only knows how much that costs per shell but I doubt it is less then tens of thousands of dollars.

You'd also have to look into how many actual fire control channels those Italian ships have for all those guns, I don't think its a 1:1 ratio and this is key for the engagement rate.

Anyway even the small Phalanx style mount costs around 6 million bucks, I don't know about 76mm but the 57mm Mk110 which is a similar size costs around 7.2 million for the gun mount alone. This doesn't count the radar direction or the magazine or major ship and crew impact which must be paid for every year no matter the use. RAM is under 1 million dollars a round with more effective range then any feasible CIWS, and its a wooden round in a simple mount that can be reloaded by a couple people. Mounting more guns to avoid running out of self defense missiles does not make a great deal of fiscal sense. Guns make sense for the primary reason that they have no greater minimal range then the arming time of the shell; and even a unarmed shell can kill a missile if it hits solidly.

 

[JFC Fuller]

I'm not sure if it was here or on another forum, but I remember a discussion of a Rarden based remote control mounting proposed for the RN. Thanks to an old issue of the gleefully entitled "War Machine" (The 1980's, eh?) I have a few details.

"LS30R"
• Laurence Scott Defence Systems mounting
• RARDE 30mm Rarden automatic cannon
• Power driven and LOS stabilised
• Tests carried out by RN at sea on trials FF HMS Londonderry and on land at the Fraser Gunnery Range
• Hit a 2m2 target 80% of the time at ranges between 1000-1300m
• HE, APSE and APDS rounds
• LS30R was to replace 20mm and 40mm weapons, initially starting on OPVs
• Basic mounting can be used with 30mm Oerlikon KCB and Mauser Model F (LS30B and LS30F)
• -20 to +70 degrees elevation
• 6-22 rounds on-mount

This was the weapon DJ Brown used on a lot of his independent concept designs.

EDIT 2011-07-26:

Warship #25 has an article by Antony Preston entitled "The Naval Rarden Gun" with pictures and a description of the development process. Obviously I'm not going to reproduce the whole thing here, but a few points:

• The mounting was a private venture development of the Laurence Scott / Electromotors Optical Fire Director mounting. As a secondary role, the mounting could act as a director for another system.
• The mounting was tested with Oerlikon 20mm and Rarden 30mm.
• Aim-off and range were estimated manually by the operator. A predictor was to be available for later versions, but no mention is made of a rangefinder, so would still have been based on estimated ranges.
• Numerical specifications are provided. As a summary the complete mounting was 800kg in mass with 2m overall height and a swept radius of 2.2m. Elevation limits were -20/+70 degrees.

- RP1

Does anybody have any images of the LS30R? i am curious about the feed system on the RARDEN that was used, surely there must have been some modifications to suit the transition from the 3 round clips to a 21 round magazine?

 

[pathology_doc]

RAM is under 1 million dollars a round with more effective range then any feasible CIWS, and its a wooden round in a simple mount that can be reloaded by a couple people. Mounting more guns to avoid running out of self defense missiles does not make a great deal of fiscal sense. Guns make sense for the primary reason that they have no greater minimal range then the arming time of the shell; and even a unarmed shell can kill a missile if it hits solidly.

And a full load-out of RAMs at a million a pop is $20m or so? And then how much does each round of ammo for the gun cost?

Manufacture time, in a prolonged shooting war, could make the difference here, especially for a second line navy. If desperate, you could always go back to firing jacketed lead, but a missile takes time and much higher QC standards.

 

[Sea Skimmer]

And a full load-out of RAMs at a million a pop is $20m or so? And then how much does each round of ammo for the gun cost?

Manufacture time, in a prolonged shooting war, could make the difference here, especially for a second line navy. If desperate, you could always go back to firing jacketed lead, but a missile takes time and much higher QC standards.

Which is just as true for the enemy trying to build piles of anti ship missiles as a defender making a small and fairly basic missile like RAM, aside from its passive homing feature anyway. How many anti ship missiles do you really expect people to field? Guns in any case also need new barrels, which take a very long time to produce in calibers larger then machine guns and cost a fair bit of money, and these modern ultra rapidly firing defensive guns have very short barrel lives because of the speed at which they overheat. Since so few nations produce any kind of naval SAM or naval gun in the first place, the whole production argument is on shaky grounds anyway; and the big powers have nuclear weapons.

 

[Abraham Gubler]

Does anybody have any images of the LS30R? i am curious about the feed system on the RARDEN that was used, surely there must have been some modifications to suit the transition from the 3 round clips to a 21 round magazine?

Its not much but here is a painting from an old 'Sea Weapons' book.

 

[JFC Fuller]

Thanks Abraham.


I did a google books search today and Warship Volume VII (which I do not have a copy of) seems to suggest that actually there were three proposed variants and only the Mk3 would have the clip-on 21 round magazine.

 

[Grey Havoc]

Another interesting project is Project MORAINE, from 2004 or thereabouts:

Gun-type Weapons on Submarines - Project „MORAINE“

Within the scope of the new security challenges the naval forces, too, have to perform to an increasing degree quasi-police tasks. Torpedoes and heavy missile are unsuited weapons for that kind of action. Especially the submarine, which due to its invisibility is particularly well suited for clandestine operations in coastal waters, requires a „downward“ expansion of its escalation-capable weapon employment spectrum. It should therefore be possible to cover the spectrum from missiles and torpedoes down to the employment of an automatic gun.

Today, submarines have no suitable close-range weapons. Already after the Second World War, there seemed to be no use any more for gun-type weapons. Meanwhile, this has obviously changed again in times where the navies take on diverse new tasks. With the missions required today, submarines can effectively bring to bear their capability of surfacing unexpectedly. Covert actions by special units which will not only be carried out by frogman and underwater demolition teams, but also by other specialized task units, will increase to a considerable extent. It may also become necessary for submarines to provide covering fire in the fight against the globally increasing piracy, which can adequately be realized only by means of gun-type weapons. The gun will be bedded in a pressure-resistant bearing in the submarine’s tower and hydraulically raised. It will be remotely controlled from inside the sub. The submarine will remain submerged during this process. Together with the Gabler Company in Luebeck and the Mauser Company in Oberndorf, the HDW shipyard has developed a concept for a gun system. The recoilless gun (RMK 30) will be expanded from the submarine’s tower by means of a hoistable device and can be employed by remote control from the boat, which travels at periscope depth.

http://www.europeansecurityanddefence.info/Ausgaben/1_2004/Hoffmann.html (Scroll down; There are also a fair few other interesting tidbits.)

Also, it looks like Gabler and Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft continued (and expanded) the development of the concept into the TRIPLE-M system: http://www.gabler-luebeck.de/maschinenbau/en/entwicklungen/eigenschutz/index.html

Note that the MURAENA gun is a development of the Rheinmetall RMK 30 created especially for the role (the RMK 30 appears to have been included in Project MORAINE from the outset).

[IMAGE CREDIT: GABLER Naval Technology]​

Here's the Gabler TRIPLE-M brochure.

 

[Abraham Gubler]

Here's some of the FMC brochure for the Mk 71 203mm naval gun mount.

 

[Abraham Gubler]

More leaflet pages.

 

[sferrin]

Could a Spruace have handled one of these? (I remember reading that it was planned at one time to replace the forward Mk45 on those ships with these.)