From: Blair Haworth <Blair.Haworth@lambada.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: Iowa Class Battleships
Organization: University of North Carolina Extended Bulletin Board Service
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 17:33:48 GMT


From Blair Haworth <Blair.Haworth@lambada.oit.unc.edu>

In article <C0o9In.I9t@law7.DaytonOH.NCR.COM> "david.r.wells" <drw@cbnewsg.cb.att.com> writes:
>
>From "david.r.wells" <drw@cbnewsg.cb.att.com>
>
>In article <C0Hvwn.G72@law7.DaytonOH.NCR.COM> Blair Haworth <Blair.Haworth@lambada.oit.unc.edu> writes:
>>
>>In article <C0G11n.uK@law7.DaytonOH.NCR.COM> "david.r.wells" <drw@cbnewsg.cb.att.com> writes:
>>
>>>The Navy DID have an 18" L48 gun that they built
>>>after WWI for test purposes. In fact, I think Dahlgren still has it!
>>
>>If they still have it, it's not an 18"/48 any more.  The indispensible
>>Norman Friedman, in _U.S. Naval Weapons_ (p.21, I love posting from a four
>>million volume library) says that the gun, ordered at 45 caliber and built
>>at 48 was lined and extended to 16"/56 after the Washington Treaty forbade
>>guns over sixteen inches.  In this form it was rejected because it weighed
>>too much and and because it shot so flat that plunging fire was
impaired. [...]

>We're working from the same source. I don't have a 4 million volume library,
>but my brother owns the book. I was thumbing through it over Christmas.
>Now that you mention it, I do remember that bit about the 16"/L56. I made 
>my statement based on a picture in the same book of the 18"/L48 on display
>at Dahlgren. Granted, it looked old, but I got the impression that it was
>a 1950's vintage picture. Could I be hallucinating again? Another poster
>mentioned that three of these guns were built. Perhaps only one was
>converted? 

That might well be.  Friedman talks like there was only the one (I can't
find the picture you refer to, but I haven't looked everywhere.  Maybe
another of his books?), but certainly doesn't say so explicitly.  Of
course, once you'd built the tooling and whatnot, it'd be kind of silly to
just build one, but all kinds of goofy things were done in the name of
"economy" in the interwar US armed Forces. 

>   Now for some REAL speculation: Were these guns built for the South 
>Dakota I (BB-49) class? Several sources, including S. Breyer, mention that
>the first specification for these ships called for an 80,000 ton ship,
>with fifteen 18" guns and a speed of 35 knots! Apparently, this idea was
>abandoned very early, but could these have been the guns they had in mind?

Friedman says that the 18"/48 gun was started as a contingency excercise,
with no specific ship intended.  I think the BB-49 studies are the same as
the ones done in 1917 "at the behest of Senator Benjamin Tillman.  He
wanted to know how far the competition in battleship sizes might be
expected to go, and for his pains was shown 80,000-ton ships with fifteen
or sixteen 18in guns each" (_ibid._).

--
   The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of
     North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Campus Office for Information
        Technology, or the Experimental Bulletin Board Service.
           internet:  laUNChpad.unc.edu or 152.2.22.80

Newsgroups: sci.military