UK naval guns in land role?

I'm not sure about 4-in calibre weapons, but in late 1899, the British Royal Navy Powerful class protected cruisers HMS Terrible and HMS Powerful landed weapons to be used in the Boer War to assist in the relief of the siege of Ladysmith. Terrible landed a pair of 4.7-in guns, for which they fashioned carriages for them, and Powerful landed a pair of 12-pdr (3-in) guns, and later two more 12-pdrs were added.
The actions of the Naval Brigade as it was called in assisting with the relief of the siege it became the origin of the Royal Navy Field Gun Runs (races) that were so popular at the Military, called the Royal Tournament, which ran until 1999, and subsequently run by ex-Field Gun Crew members at public events.
 
I was thinking in terms of using the guns as fully fledged field or anti tank guns. A 4.1 inch gun would have made a handy field gun or self propelled gun, given that the gun and cartridge were known quantities.
 
Stovepipe said:
A 4.1 inch gun would have made a handy field gun or self propelled gun, given that the gun and cartridge were known quantities.
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Problem is, that shipboard guns aren't exactly well-suited for land purpose. Especially for putting on the self-propelled platform. The naval guns usually designed under assumption that there are a lot of space around to put the cannon's own parts and supporting equipment.
 
I'd envison a 4.1 or 4.2 mounted in a Sexton, just the gun tube and breech on a suitable trunnion.
 
Stovepipe said:
I was thinking in terms of using the guns as fully fledged field or anti tank guns. A 4.1 inch gun would have made a handy field gun or self propelled gun, given that the gun and cartridge were known quantities.
Click to expand...
Part of the reason might be that 4" guns were too much gun/carriage for too little shell weight. The closest approximation to 4" naval gun performance was probably the German 10 cm schwere Kanone 18, which was not liked and often relegated to coast defense duties. A carriage, SP or towed, that could take 4" gun was seen as better employed with a 5.5" gun or 155mm howitzer.

For anti-tank use, the heavies that would require a 100mm gun only showed up in numbers in 44-45 and by then the US/UK preferred improved ammunition for existing calibers (90mm HVAP and 17lbr APDS) to larger guns firing full caliber AP rounds, since they had those guns developed as anti-tank guns and for use in AFV, the US moving away from towed ATG before they could get a towed 90mm in service. When both of those countries looked at heavier ATG and AFV guns, they went to anti-aircraft guns (32lbr/105mm/120mm) as the basis instead of naval weapons.

Most countries seemed to decide that you had to get up in the 4.7" - 5" range to have a heavy enough shell, even for long range counter-battery fire. That's where you see the Soviet 122mm guns and the late war German fascination with 128mm as not just an AT gun, but also a field piece. The US and UK worked with slightly smaller, 4.5" guns, but they didn't seem that popular, had low muzzle velocities compared to most naval guns, and were dumped as soon as the war ended in favor of the 5.5"/155mm howitzers that could be employed using the same carriages and tractors.

The Soviet 100mm gun is an exception, but by the time it came into play, 1944, it was a dual purpose field/anti-tank gun and the Soviets wanted a heavier anti-tank punch than even the contemporary 85mm field gun could provide. The Soviet faith in ATG persisted with 100mm guns, while the US/UK never got any conventional ATG fielded in numbers larger than 76mm. Even given all that, for field gun purposes the Soviets moved up to 130mm in the decade after WWII.
 
What about naval guns used as shore batteries to defend harbors?
 
Various Marks of 4" naval gun were widely used by the British as coast defense pieces, both against surface targets and for air defense. As field artillery, the 4" gun is really too small to be a good piece for long range fire while it's too heavy for general field artillery use.

The British Army preferred the 25 pdr for general artillery use, while the 4.5" gun and 5.5" gun/howitzer were the preferred general support weapons. Anything heavier tended to be some lash up using whatever was laying about in quantity.

The US Army only adopted the 4.5" gun to standardize with the British for logistical reasons. It was not popular in US usage and the US Army would have preferred their traditional 4.7" gun to it.
 
Usually naval guns mounted on land were used in fortifications where there are enough space.
Land guns could even be larger in some aspects like the 5" and 6" AA guns (German and Japanese for example) or a 5,25" Mark II gun of the British
 
Didn't some 'obsolete' RN guns acquire railway mounts for coast defence ??
 

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