Mk16G = 12" / 50 mark 8 naval gun or 8"/55 RF Mark 16

Relax wrote: Now back to big GUNS that go BOOM! Personally, I would have loved to see Saddam Hussein's 4ft bore gun! None of this wimpy limp wristed 16", 12", or 8" popsqueekers...

The problem with that gun and the WWII German gun it was based on it is that the direction of fire is set at the point of construction. Makes it impractical, unless your enemy is a single small country. Also means it cannot hide from an air attack.

tlb wrote:

Relax wrote: Now back to big GUNS that go BOOM! Personally, I would have loved to see Saddam Hussein's 4ft bore gun! None of this wimpy limp wristed 16", 12", or 8" popsqueekers...

The problem with that gun and the WWII German gun it was based on it is that the direction of fire is set at the point of construction. Makes it impractical, unless your enemy is a single small country. Also means it cannot hide from an air attack.

Steerable shells my friend. Steerable shells. When you go exoatmospheric... well, lets just say, steering hundreds of miles is fairly easy. And in a modern war, everything is vulnerable to air attack. We can tell that there hasn't been a true peer power war as defense capabilities are so far behind the offensive capabilities it is ludicrous.

Relax wrote: Now back to big GUNS that go BOOM! Personally, I would have loved to see Saddam Hussein's 4ft bore gun! None of this wimpy limp wristed 16", 12", or 8" popsqueekers...

tlb wrote:The problem with that gun and the WWII German gun it was based on it is that the direction of fire is set at the point of construction. Makes it impractical, unless your enemy is a single small country. Also means it cannot hide from an air attack.

Relax wrote:Steerable shells my friend. Steerable shells. When you go exoatmospheric... well, lets just say, steering hundreds of miles is fairly easy. And in a modern war, everything is vulnerable to air attack. We can tell that there hasn't been a true peer power war as defense capabilities are so far behind the offensive capabilities it is ludicrous.

You are right and I did think about that, but where you are shooting will still be forward of the gun; I am not sure if you can get much more than 30 degrees off bore, since much of the travel is outside the atmosphere. 100 miles to the side at a 200 mile range is 30 degrees; that is a big area, but leaves as much as 300 degrees in the clear.
Yes, everything is vulnerable to air attack; but something that is just an enormous piece of immobile pipe is more vulnerable than most. In addition to development problems that is why the V3 cannon never fired in WWII, although I read that smaller versions of the gun did see limited action.
The inventor claimed the Babylon gun was intended to launch satellites, and it is a matter of conjecture who had him killed (but there is prime candidate).

Edit: Actually I made a trig error - the angle is closer to 27 degrees for the lengths I stated. If 200 miles were the hypotenuse, then I would have been right.

You are right and I did think about that, but where you are shooting will still be forward of the gun; I am not sure if you can get much more than 30 degrees off bore, since much of the travel is outside the atmosphere. 100 miles to the side at a 200 mile range is 30 degrees; that is a big area, but leaves as much as 300 degrees in the clear.
Yes, everything is vulnerable to air attack; but something that is just an enormous piece of immobile pipe is more vulnerable than most. In addition to development problems that is why the V3 cannon never fired in WWII, although I read that smaller versions of the gun did see limited action.
The inventor claimed the Babylon gun was intended to launch satellites, and it is a matter of conjecture who had him killed (but there is prime candidate).[/quote]

you guys are fantastic! I learn so much from the gems you drop

Relax wrote: We can tell that there hasn't been a true peer power war as defense capabilities are so far behind the offensive capabilities it is ludicrous.

In the West. The Russians have always been better at this than the US.

tlb wrote:You are right and I did think about that, but where you are shooting will still be forward of the gun; I am not sure if you can get much more than 30 degrees off bore, since much of the travel is outside the atmosphere. 100 miles to the side at a 200 mile range is 30 degrees; that is a big area, but leaves as much as 300 degrees in the clear.
...
The inventor claimed the Babylon gun was intended to launch satellites, ...

If you can put something into orbit on anything except a perfect equatorial orbit there is no point of Earth that is "out of range."

tlb wrote: You are right and I did think about that, but where you are shooting will still be forward of the gun; I am not sure if you can get much more than 30 degrees off bore, since much of the travel is outside the atmosphere. 100 miles to the side at a 200 mile range is less than 30 degrees; that is a big area, but leaves as much as 300 degrees in the clear.
...
The inventor claimed the Babylon gun was intended to launch satellites, ...

Weird Harold wrote: If you can put something into orbit on anything except a perfect equatorial orbit there is no point of Earth that is "out of range."

To be clear: that was the inventor's dream, but we do not know if he came close to achieving it. Using the gun to launch a satellite, you still need a rocket as part of the payload to reduce the eccentricity; otherwise the orbit includes an impact point.
I am not sure how well you could aim at any point more than five hundred miles away.

A modern 155mm howitzer has more range than a WWII era gun of the same caliber. My understanding is that the increase in range has been in part due to aerodynamic improvements to the shape of the shell. Would it be possible to extend the range of a 16 inch battleship gun by similar means?

Henry Brown wrote:A modern 155mm howitzer has more range than a WWII era gun of the same caliber. My understanding is that the increase in range has been in part due to aerodynamic improvements to the shape of the shell. Would it be possible to extend the range of a 16 inch battleship gun by similar means?

Some that is that, some is better propellant, longer/better barrels and some is base bleed shells. Or at least is my understanding.

Henry Brown wrote:A modern 155mm howitzer has more range than a WWII era gun of the same caliber. My understanding is that the increase in range has been in part due to aerodynamic improvements to the shape of the shell. Would it be possible to extend the range of a 16 inch battleship gun by similar means?

Oh Heck Yes!

The USN had already developed saboted sub caliber projectiles in the 1950s. See project HARP.

Also considered firing saboted Copper Head laser guided projectiles.

Once you go with saboted sub caliber round, you can optimize the shape for external ballistics rather than internal ballistics.

The Italians of all people have Otto Malera with it's Volcano extended range projectile. USN might buy it if Trump does not renegotiate the contracts with Martin Marrietta to get the price of 155mm LRLAP rounds down to $100 k per round rather than $1 million.

Keep in mind that the theoretical maximim velocity for guns using standard propellants is about 2,500 m/s vs about 800m/s for BB guns. Practical limit factoring in effective pressure drop vs velocity and barrel friction is about 2,000 m/s. 120 mm tank guns with saboted rounds come close to this velocity. Electrothermal hybrid guns could do 2,000 m/s no problem. Range is proportional to velocity squared. Max theoretical range WITHOUT gliding is about 400 kilometers!