Naval Rifles

Caliber is trick question when it comes to naval rifles. It is a great site though. If a battleship had a 45 caliber gun, what did that mean?

GEM said:

Caliber is trick question when it comes to naval rifles. It is a great site though. If a battleship had a 45 caliber gun, what did that mean?

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It means the barrel is 45 times as long as the bore diameter.
So a 5"/45 would have a barrel 225" long.

This convention applies to all military cannon, not just the naval ones- generally anything with a bore greater than 20mm.

I've seen it written as 45 calibers instead of 45 caliber. To me that is easier to decipher, but I'm not sure what is considered correct.

GEM said:

Caliber is trick question when it comes to naval rifles

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And, it's a bit of a left-over from when projectile range far outpaced visual targeting range. So, a designer might want less-long rifles (this saves weight directly, and in length of the ship) rather than longer. Now, the stumpier rifles needed more elevation than their longer cousins, which often means a bigger "hole" in the front of the armored turret to permit such elevation. While the bigger hole saved weight, it also represented "more weakness" to return fires.

So, the 14"/45s on USS Texas (and her sister New York) only elevated to 22°--which was more than sufficient for the visual range-finding and pointing used on those ships. When the Iowa Class was laid down, their 16"/50 Mk7 rifles could elevate to 45°. The 1900# armor-piercing rounds had an m/v for 2500 fps, and took a minute and a half to reach out to 24 miles (39km).

The terminology of "naval rifles" came about to distinguish them from the various smoothbore weapons then at sea. There was a time where rifled muzzle loaders were a thing, with the Brits & Italians dallying with 50 & 100 ton RML in their mutual Mediterranean arms race in the 1870s. To say that these weapons had a complicated loading sequence, ashore or at sea, is a bit of an understatement. (Armstrong built 100 ton RML for the Italian Navy, and also for the Royal Navy garrison ashore at Malta, where the last of the rifles still exists today.)

By custom, the bore diameter wants to be 2" or greater and the barrel 20 or more calibers long, to be called "rifle." Otherwise they are just "gun." So, the 1.5" QF (Quick Firing) tertiary weapons on, say, USS Olympia, are "QF guns" (if also called, confusingly, "one pounders" as well).

"Caliber" is still an important term in gun design. It is the ratio of bore diameter to bore length, it is useful as it as it is proportional to the volume the of the gas and the amount of work done by the gas. It is dimensionless, so designs can be scaled easily.

It turns up often in big guns, WW2 German 8.8cm/L56 and the 7.5 cm/L70, the modern M256 120mm/56, M199 155mm/39 (on Mount, M198), and the M2 105mm/22 (on Mount M101), as well as naval ordnance.

For comparison, a 7.62mm with a 22 inch barrel is a 73-1/3 caliber barrel, and a .22 caliber with a 14.5 inch barrel would be 65.9 calibers long.

Robert said:

Drach's YouTube channel is absolutely worth a check for anyone interested in naval history of WW2 and earlier. His multiple video series on the naval battle of Guadalcanal and the Battle of Jutland are absolutely outstanding.

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With the exception of Adm. Willis Lee and the USS Washington - is was a goat-rope.

Here is an information placard on the side of one of USS North Carolina main gun turrets. The Showboat had 45 caliber 16" guns. Iowa class battleships had 50 caliber 16" guns.

Gun-Reck said:

With the exception of Adm. Willis Lee and the USS Washington - is was a goat-rope.

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In my own case, Drac's vid lead me to buy and read the book:



Willis "Ching" Lee was one heck of a rifle marksman, acting as an ad-hoc counter-sniper in the 1914 Veracruz incident and winning medals in multiple shooting disciplines at the 1920 Olympics.

Dave DeLaurant said:

In my own case, Drac's vid lead me to buy and read the book:

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Willis "Ching" Lee was one heck of a rifle marksman, acting as an ad-hoc counter-sniper in the 1914 Veracruz incident and winning medals in multiple shooting disciplines at the 1920 Olympics.

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If you haven't seen this - it is outstanding:

Admiral Jackie “Dreadnaught” Fisher.
“Gunnery, gunnery, gunnery, all else is twaddle.”
Of course that was before those troublesome aeroplanes.

Jim Watson said:

Admiral Jackie “Dreadnaught” Fisher.
“Gunnery, gunnery, gunnery, all else is twaddle.”
Of course that was before those troublesome aeroplanes.

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I suspect most of the aces would tell you that gunnery is important in the air, too.

At around the holidays, USNI has a great half price sale on their books. Worth waiting for. I've a shelf full of them. I got interested in naval history as a kid when I read a kid's book by Fletcher Pratt on the Monitor and Merricmac - Virginia. I gave it to my nephew many years ago. Then recently, I bought a used one on Ebay, it's still a good read. The Civil War river naval battles are fascinating.

And too top all off the navy tried to can willis lees bum out of the navy as he wore glasses.. the man that sat on crubs at mexico to draw fire to shoot mexican army snipers and gold metal at the Olympics.

MoscowMike said:

While Naval Rifles are somewhat larger than the ones we generally talk about on this site I thought some people might be interested in their design and construction. Drachinifel has a good, reasonably technical, site specializing in naval history.

Battleship Gun Construction

The 18.1 inch Naval Gun

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You might like this book that is an interesting read.

My grandfather Frank Cormeir served in the #2 turret to an 8 inch rifle on board the USS Tuscaloosa, '37 to Dec '45. That was his battle station, while his duty station was the crane operator for the retrieving the seaplanes they carried for spotting the artillery aboard, among other things.

I recently bought a Italian Made Carcano, sold to the Japanese in 6.5 Jap, as the Type "I" Navel rifle.

Because I've got entirely too much time on my hands I decided to look up the etymology of the word.

inside diameter of a gun barrel," 1580s, from French calibre (by mid-16c., perhaps late 15c.), often said to be ultimately from Arabic qalib "a mold for casting." Barnhart remarks that Spanish calibre, Italian calibro "appear too late to act as intermediate forms" between the Arabic word and the French.Oct 8, 2022

According to etymology online the word originated with the Arabic word qalib which meant mold

I read somewhere that crew members in battleship turrets might carry a Remington 2 barrel 41 caliber revolver in case they were stuck in a turret and unable to get out in a burning or sinking ship. Ouch!

Big naval guns are done for. Their range is too short and coming close to shore makes you easy targets for truck mounted antiship missiles that easily outrange the guns. That was a problem with the Zumwalts. Shore bombardment was obsolete and the ammo for the small number of ships was too expensive.

GEM said:

I read somewhere that crew members in battleship turrets might carry a Remington 2 barrel 41 caliber revolver in case they were stuck in a turret and unable to get out in a burning or sinking ship. Ouch!

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I doubt that. Anything that could cause a spark could set off the gunpowder charge and blow the entire ship. Keeping a clean turret, preventing sailors from bring matches, lighters, or anything that might spark, was critically important as battleships did have turret explosions, and they did blow up. If you were in the turret, and the turret blew, you were a goner. The HMS Vanguard turrets were blown over 100 yards from the ship, which implies, a very high arc, say 300 to 500 yards. (a guess) If a shell managed to penetrate, steel fragments would slice and dice everyone in the turret.

Cordite and Poudre B - Why things start exploding at just the wrong time




And don't forget the WW2 era West Loch disaster. If the Officer corp is not vigilant watching the enlisted men, someone will be welding and smoking next to gasoline drums. And then, big, badda, boom!


What always surprises me, was the weight of a turret. There were three turrets on post WW1 American battleships.





One Iowa class turret was almost the weight of an entire Fletcher class destroyer! .

The Night Rider said:

Because I've got entirely too much time on my hands I decided to look up the etymology of the word.

inside diameter of a gun barrel," 1580s, from French calibre (by mid-16c., perhaps late 15c.), often said to be ultimately from Arabic qalib "a mold for casting." Barnhart remarks that Spanish calibre, Italian calibro "appear too late to act as intermediate forms" between the Arabic word and the French.Oct 8, 2022

According to etymology online the word originated with the Arabic word qalib which meant mold

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The term is even older than that. "Qua Libra" is Latin for what weight (balance).

Gun-Reck said:

With the exception of Adm. Willis Lee and the USS Washington - is was a goat-rope.

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What you got against ol Ching Lee? The Fat Electrician did a feature on him and it sounded like the dude did a lot of good but even for TFE the story seemed a bit over the top.