Monster Moves

[maxi]

This might be worth a look:

http://tvcatchup.com/programme/199376

Maxi

[Rockdoc]

That looks like the gun we saw at the IWM Fort Nelson artillery museum, near Portsmouth, a couple of weeks ago. I wonder if it is the same one?

Keith

[Andrew Upton]

That looks like the gun we saw at the IWM Fort Nelson artillery museum, near Portsmouth, a couple of weeks ago. I wonder if it is the same one?

Keith

It is, we also saw it there not long after it had arrived.

[Ron Clifton]

Just bringing this to the top again as it is on TONIGHT.

Channel 5 at 8 pm or Channel5+1 at 9pm.

Ron

[Seadog]

An excellent programme, what a professional and skilled job the crane and the truck companies did. Whilst enjoying watching this the thought did strike me as to how this huge gun was going to be transported to the Western Front if it had been required in the war years?. Sadly like all these types of reality programmes the producers seem to find it necessary to inject some false sense of danger and tension by use of the ridiculous graphics portraying various possible accidents etc presumably treating the average viewer as a 9 year old !.

Norman

Added:

A remarkable weapon, the only thing I have seen to come anywhere near this is the German WW2 K5 280mm (11 Inch) at Batterie Todt.

[peterhogg]

Oooooh. I have a 1/35 scale model of this i have yet to build.

[Seadog]

That will be one heck of a model Connor at about 3 eet long and according to one kit, over 1,100 pieces!. Be sure to post some photos when you do start building it.

Norman

[SiegeGunner]

That looks like the gun we saw at the IWM Fort Nelson artillery museum, near Portsmouth, a couple of weeks ago. I wonder if it is the same one?

Yes indeed .... http://www.royalarmouries.org/what-we-do/press/fort-nelson-gun

Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon, who commanded the Dover Patrol and 'owned' the RN Siege Guns unit emplaced on the Belgian Coast, also had his eye on a pair of 18" guns, which (assuming the success of the 'Great Landing') he planned to install inside the Palace Hotel in Westende and use to bombard German installations at Zeebrugge and Bruges.

Chapter VII of Volume 1 of Bacon's 2-volume 'The Dover Patrol 1915-1917' (pp.188-207) is entitled 'Landing the Guns on the Belgian Coast' and contains his plans for shipping the 18" guns and their mountings across the Channel aboard the monitor General Craufurd, landing them at Westende using one of the pontoons built for the 'Great Landing' and then transporting them to the Palace Hotel site on railway trucks.

In the event, the 'Great Landing' did not take place and so this exercise was never carried out, but the remainder of Chapter VII is devoted to the shipment and mounting of the big naval guns of the RNSG on the Belgian Coast, including several 12" guns weighing upwards of 60 tons each (and their mountings of approx. similar weight). The overland transport of the 12" guns from Dunkirk and their installation in their final positions was overseen by the redoubtable Commander William Bickford RN, using a modified truck-train originally designed by Bacon for the 15" howitzers, drawn by Foster-Daimler tractors borrowed from the RMA. As these operations were accomplished without any major incident or difficulty, it seems very likely that Bacon, assisted by Bickford, would also have been successful in transporting and mounting the 18" guns. Bacon's meticulously-planned method for transporting and handling big guns involved avoiding, as far as possible, having to lift the dead-weight of the gun. One way in which that was achieved was to 'wold' the tapered gun barrel in wood in order to make it a regular cylindrical shape, so that it could be rolled instead of having to be lifted.

Although the 18" railway howitzers were not exactly the same as these experimental 18" naval guns, which were originally made for HMS Furious, before her conversion to an aircraft carrier, and were in fact considerably heavier, the principles are the same, and I'm therefore fairly sure that they could have been transported to France in much the same way.

[ianhwason]

Must admit to being very disappointed in the programme - a lot too 'ice road trucking' for me with all the attempts at tension building.

I would have appreciated an injection of the gun's history.

Regards,

Ian..

[Ron Clifton]

Ian

I think we all would, but to be fair to the programme's makers it was one of a series about moving very large loads from A to B, not about WW1 hardware in particular.

I was particularly amused by the fact that the movers had to undo some of the "refurbishment" work done by the RA, because the new paint had bunged up some of the crucial nuts and bolts they needed to undo in order to split it into two (or three?) loads!

I also noticed that the gun is only being lent to the museum for a particular exhibition. Perhaps they should make another programme showing it being brought back, in due course?

Ron

[Seadog]

Yes indeed .... http://www.royalarmouries.org/what-we-do/press/fort-nelson-gun

Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon, who commanded the Dover Patrol and 'owned' the RN Siege Guns unit emplaced on the Belgian Coast, also had his eye on a pair of 18" guns, which (assuming the success of the 'Great Landing') he planned to install inside the Palace Hotel in Westende and use to bombard German installations at Zeebrugge and Bruges.

Chapter VII of Volume 1 of Bacon's 2-volume 'The Dover Patrol 1915-1917' (pp.188-207) is entitled 'Landing the Guns on the Belgian Coast' and contains his plans for shipping the 18" guns and their mountings across the Channel aboard the monitor General Craufurd, landing them at Westende using one of the pontoons built for the 'Great Landing' and then transporting them to the Palace Hotel site on railway trucks.

In the event, the 'Great Landing' did not take place and so this exercise was never carried out, but the remainder of Chapter VII is devoted to the shipment and mounting of the big naval guns of the RNSG on the Belgian Coast, including several 12" guns weighing upwards of 60 tons each (and their mountings of approx. similar weight). The overland transport of the 12" guns from Dunkirk and their installation in their final positions was overseen by the redoubtable Commander William Bickford RN, using a modified truck-train originally designed by Bacon for the 15" howitzers, drawn by Foster-Daimler tractors borrowed from the RMA. As these operations were accomplished without any major incident or difficulty, it seems very likely that Bacon, assisted by Bickford, would also have been successful in transporting and mounting the 18" guns. Bacon's meticulously-planned method for transporting and handling big guns involved avoiding, as far as possible, having to lift the dead-weight of the gun. One way in which that was achieved was to 'wold' the tapered gun barrel in wood in order to make it a regular cylindrical shape, so that it could be rolled instead of having to be lifted.

Although the 18" railway howitzers were not exactly the same as these experimental 18" naval guns, which were originally made for HMS Furious, before her conversion to an aircraft carrier, and were in fact considerably heavier, the principles are the same, and I'm therefore fairly sure that they could have been transported to France in much the same way.

Like a lot of plans this sounds great in theory but I bet that there would have been immense problems in actually getting the gun to the Western Front and as for "rolling" the encased barrel well that would have been worth watching!.

Norman

PS Italics because I have no idea how the "new" quote function works (or not)

PPS The crane company Ainscough is I believe featured in tonights (Sun) "The Crane Gang" (BBC2) with their amazing kit

[PhilB]

Did they say what the weight of the barrel actually was? I assume that was the heaviest component. I imagine they would have been used to shipping, say locomotives, which would weigh something similar.

[SiegeGunner]

Norman, there was nothing theoretical about the transportation of the 60 ton 12" guns .... in 1915-16 several of them were carried on the monitor General Craufurd to Dunkirk and then moved overland to battery positions on the Belgian Coast, and of course the wolded barrels were not rolled free as if they were logs. The barrels of the ex-Furious 18" guns weighed in at about 150 tons, whereas the 18" howitzer barrels weighed around 100 tons.

Incidentally, when the Great Landing was cancelled, Bacon turned to Plan B, which was to mount the 18" guns on the large monitors General Wolfe, Lord Clive and Prince Eugene. Only the first two were completed, however, and between them fired eighty-five 18" rounds in anger before the war ended.

[ianhwason]

Ian

I think we all would, but to be fair to the programme's makers it was one of a series about moving very large loads from A to B, not about WW1 hardware in particular.

Ron

Yes very true Ron.

It would have been better to paint after the monster had been broken down into its three parts wouldn't it. Planning a bit suspect.

Ian.

[T8HANTS]

I was a bit sad to see that as the carriage and truck were being moved on the rails one set of axles were frozen. I think it may have eventually freed up, but a tar-brush paint job is not the way to preserve a unique artifact.

G

[stevem49]

Did they say what the weight of the barrel actually was? I assume that was the heaviest component. I imagine they would have been used to shipping, say locomotives, which would weigh something similar.

90 Tons and the bogies 73 tons.

SM