US 5" Mk42 Naval Gun

Tzoli said:
About this Mark 42 mount I've seen at least 3 or 4 variants:
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The domes are local control stations, left side for anti-surface, right for anti-air. The AA stations were removed from the 1960s onward as it became clear that local AA control was ineffective. So you often see only the left side dome. If you see a picture with only a right side dome, it has probably been optically reversed at some point; that was never a fielded configuration.

I believe that the removal of the dome is independent of Mod, except that later Mods, like Mod 9, were built without the AA dome and don't have the "stump" where it was originally fitted.
 
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There was an article I read in International Defense Review in the 90's about mid-90s testing of an 8"60 refurbished from old stocks. For all I know it might have been one of Prinz Eugen's guns but it was presented in the article as associated with the MCLWG MK71. The article was on naval guns and NSFS in general, not this weapon in particular.
 
Brickmuppet said:
There was an article I read in International Defense Review in the 90's about mid-90s testing of an 8"60 refurbished from old stocks. For all I know it might have been one of Prinz Eugen's guns but it was presented in the article as associated with the MCLWG MK71. The article was on naval guns and NSFS in general, not this weapon in particular.
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That might have been a historical note in the article, but MCLWG was long-dead by the 1990s.
 
The poor execution of the Zumwalt program (putting aside what was political failure, and what was design failure and unforeseen technological problems, hurdles, etc)
proves that purpose-built surface action gun ships are a thing of the past: until fieldable, reliable railgun systems with cost-per-round-friendly guided ammunition for long range engagements are effectively COTS,
what's "needed" is a drop-in replacement for the NATO/Western standard Mk 42 (are those even still in service anywhere?) and Mk 45s....
The Mk 45 Mod 4 will reach its design limit just as the earlier models have, even with ammunition developments (the mounts and more importantly the combat command systems they're integrated into) lack the rapid response to engage threat hypersonic ASMs,
and the ammunition lacks the range for deep inland strikes without putting the ship at littoral risk of land-based anti-ship weapons,..

Face it: the US has dropped the ball on every guided 5" projectile program the USN has ever run.... only Raytheon's Excalibur N5 and Italy's Vulcano could save it now, if such large ship gunnery is to not go extinct.
And as there are no contenders out there utilizing Bull-inspired gun dynamics for a naval mount (relying instead on projectile development, not the tube/gun/mount), big ship gunnery is dead.

All the "big guns still have a future" advocates are putting all their eggs in the railgun's one basket. But without adequate "drop in" power generation replacement for current ships,
railguns aren't going to be the drop-in replacement for the standard 127mm naval gun.

There's the catch-22: a proper railgun, to be effective, needs a suitable ship (or just be a land-based system with extreme long range capability) designed to support its usage.
But too many current navies operating 127mm mounts will need those pushed to their design limits,
and then need a replacement "drop in", long before many of these nations' defense budgets will allow for purpose-built railgun cruisers.
 
TomS said:
It occurs to me that there was one other potential option, the French twin 127mm/54 Model 1948, which was fitted on the T47s, T53s, DeGrasse, and Colbert. It fired standard USN ammo at around 30-36 (15-18 rpm per gun*) and weighed just under 50 tons, so a good 25% lighter than the Mk 42 and only a bit heavier than the British Mk 6. What I don't know is whether it was any good. It was withdrawn pretty quickly in favor of 100mm, but that may have had more to do with weight savings and the desire for commonality than any inherent flaw of the gun. Or it could have been a total dog. Information is scarce.

France 127 mm/54 (5") Model 1948 - NavWeaps

www.navweaps.com www.navweaps.com

* I think. Jane's just says 15 rpm but NavWeaps has 15-18 rpm under the "gun" section, which generally means that's the RoF per tube.

Edit: Thanks to Tony DiGuilian and John Jordani, I've learned more about this gun, and it's apparently not a very good system at all, sort of a DP rehash of a prewar 130mm gun. Scratch that from the list.
Click to expand...
But the Model 1948 used an American Gun Barrel design, the Mk.18 which is the same used on the Mk.42 5" Naval Gun...
 
TomS said:
It occurs to me that there was one other potential option, the French twin 127mm/54 Model 1948, which was fitted on the T47s, T53s, DeGrasse, and Colbert. It fired standard USN ammo at around 30-36 (15-18 rpm per gun*) and weighed just under 50 tons, so a good 25% lighter than the Mk 42 and only a bit heavier than the British Mk 6. What I don't know is whether it was any good. It was withdrawn pretty quickly in favor of 100mm, but that may have had more to do with weight savings and the desire for commonality than any inherent flaw of the gun. Or it could have been a total dog. Information is scarce.

France 127 mm/54 (5") Model 1948 - NavWeaps

www.navweaps.com www.navweaps.com

* I think. Jane's just says 15 rpm but NavWeaps has 15-18 rpm under the "gun" section, which generally means that's the RoF per tube.

Edit: Thanks to Tony DiGuilian and John Jordani, I've learned more about this gun, and it's apparently not a very good system at all, sort of a DP rehash of a prewar 130mm gun. Scratch that from the list.
Click to expand...
The French Model 1948 uses the same Gun Barrel design as the Mk.42's, Mk.18 5"/54 Naval Gun and fires the same ammunition too...
 
Secundius said:
But the Model 1948 used an American Gun Barrel design, the Mk.18 which is the same used on the Mk.42 5" Naval Gun...
Click to expand...

Secundius said:
The French Model 1948 uses the same Gun Barrel design as the Mk.42's, Mk.18 5"/54 Naval Gun and fires the same ammunition too...
Click to expand...

Yes, I specifically mentioned that it fired US ammo. I was not certain it used the same pattern of gun tubes, but I can believe that it did.

Nevertheless, it was not a good mount, based on the input from John Jordan in particular. It seems to have been unreliable and never really lived up to the quoted performance.
 
uk 75 said:
Drawings and models of the Type 82 show a weapon similar to the US gun and suggest that the UK and US could have cooperated on developing such similar guns.
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Or maybe not! The UK and US tried to jointly developed a 3"/70-caliber dual-purpose gun in the early 1950's! The British 3"/70-caliber Mark 6 and the US 3"/70-caliber Mk.37 were suppose to be identical in design and capabilities, unfortunately the British used "Imperial Units" of measurements, whereas the US uses "SAE Units" of measurements! The differences being that the US "Inch" is ~2/1,000,000th of an inch longer than the British "Inch"! It may not sound like much of an obstacle to overcome, but the British Mark 6 was a better performer overall than the US Mk.37 was...
 

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