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Archive photos
- Thread starter US-Subs
- Start date
The powder bag weight that Jeff mentioned is correct. It took six 110Lb. bags behind each projectile. The guys in the photos are shown placing the bags on the elevator that takes them up to the gun. The elevator carries 3 bags, so they ram the projectile into the chamber, then ram 3 bags behind it, then ram the last 3 bags behind it. Normally the bags are stored in powder tanks, 3 bags per tank. The tanks are about 5 ft tall. The photos showing the projectiles and powder are inside the barbette. The barbette is a thick steel tube that extends straight down through multiple decks, into the belly of the ship. It is the structure that the gun turret rests on and is the diameter of the turret base, and it serves as an armored magazine for the powder and projectiles. The curved wall behind the projectiles on the left in the photos is the inside surface of the barbette. During WWII when the battleships carried huge numbers of 40mm bofors guns, there were spare barrels with their water jackets in place for the guns, stored all around the outside wall of the barbette. They would be held vertically in place, just like rifles in a circular rifle rack.
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Yeah, it is always interesting to see at the beginning of conflict how we started out with what was leftover in the bunkers from the previous war. VB rifle grenades in the Solomons in WWII, Butterfly bombs in Vietnam - we did the same thing in Desert storm. It was like a giant fire sale, emptying out the depots of all the old stuff. Makes for some pretty interesting cleanups years later.
Jolly Green
Well-Known Member
My favorite series so far!
It's funny, but in the military photo area of the National Archives the Vietnam photo section is one of the smallest there. Don't know if it is due to remaining classification or what, but good photos - especially of ground operations - are pretty limited. Not much of interest on ground ordnance that I could ever find.
I was happy to find the third photo (color) with a piece that I had not seen in a long time. This is the 2.75-inch rocket with an adapter allowing it to use an over-caliber WP warhead from a 3.5-inch anti-tank rocket. Not a lot of these were used and very few survived in museums or collections.
I'm thinking the caption for the second photo above is incorrect. The photo looks like a close air support bomb load on an A1E Skyraider instead of an AC-119.
As to the Wp bazooka warheads, have you seen the photos of the Korean War Navy aircraft that had 2.36 inch WP warheads on larger diameter rockets?
As to the Wp bazooka warheads, have you seen the photos of the Korean War Navy aircraft that had 2.36 inch WP warheads on larger diameter rockets?
