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Breech Markings on Gibraltar 5.25-inch Gun

Educated guess -

B.R. either Breech or Breech Ring.
L - Left. Although the piece you have is a single mount, the Navy used twins and thus they came as left or right hand mounts.
1118 - Serial Number
MOSD - Ministry of Supply Design
AN - Admiralty Number
The original number has been barred out and this might reflect that guns used by the Army used a different and strengthened breech ring which would have been of a different design.

TimG
 
TimG said:
Educated guess -

B.R. either Breech or Breech Ring.
L - Left. Although the piece you have is a single mount, the Navy used twins and thus they came as left or right hand mounts.
1118 - Serial Number
MOSD - Ministry of Supply Design
AN - Admiralty Number
The original number has been barred out and this might reflect that guns used by the Army used a different and strengthened breech ring which would have been of a different design.

TimG
Click to expand...

Thanks Tim,

That's put a few of them to bed! I knew that MOS was Ministry of Supply, but hadn't guessed what the D was for.

I'm not sure about L for left! We have seen a large number of breech markings and the only two with a "/" after the letter are "L" & "S", which I think stands for Land Service or Sea Service.

The other odd mark is the "II.V" after the "5.25"- usually there is, e.g. "Mk II" or latterly "Mk 2". Any further thoughts? Depotman
 
I would say that's an 'H' - High Velocity.

If it's not Land Service, it would be 'N' for Naval Service. Although Coastal Artillery was invariably operated by Army, the equipment was invariably considered 'Naval.'

On big calibre multi-mounts, the breeches are handed (how the centre breech of a triple mount is marked , I've no idea). I would suspect 'S' might indicate that it is for a Single mount. Do you have a photo?

TimG
 
I'm not sure about L/ and S/, but I've put some queries out. Lots of photos (nearly 1800) on the Ordnance Society 'Flickr' pages. Depotman
 
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