The Gunwagon

around a dozen years ago our steam club obtained a 1918 model
step deck rail car which originally served as platform for some form of heavy ordnance

donation from Puget Sound Naval Shipyard

we had a request from similar club 40 miles to north for use of carriage for promotional event ---3 month loan

took 6 years to get it back--I recently studied the wagon and
found the following :

the carriage was one of four 12 inch coastal mortar rail platforms dedicated to defense of Grays Harbor Wa

this gun category had 9 mile range--no example of the rail version survives

the carriage in our yard was constructed of plate girder method by Morgan Engineering Alliance Ohio

same builder of Rick Rowland's overhead crane

pics 2----------------

pics 3---------------------------

pics 4-------------------------

initials on carriage read
U S Navy Yard Puget Sound

It amazes me that with such short barrels the mortars had a nine mile range. Can't believe the accuracy would be all that good...

Milland said:

It amazes me that with such short barrels the mortars had a nine mile range. Can't believe the accuracy would be all that good...

Click to expand...

Barrel length affects velocity, not accuracy. In fact longer barrels are usually less accurate, as they whip around on firing and deform as they heat.

[486] said:

Barrel length affects velocity, not accuracy. In fact longer barrels are usually less accurate, as they whip around on firing and deform as they heat.

Click to expand...

Interesting, but sort of plays to my point about range, I'd have guessed the powder charge wouldn't have been able to transfer as much energy to the projectile. Guess just more powder and stouter casing works.

This reminds me of the Gerald Bull projects, he was looking to put payloads in orbit. Kind of sad that he ended up working for the wrong people.
Which put me in mind of a young German fellow with very similar aspirations who ended up being saved from the fire he was headed into because his knowledge of Rocketry gave him pass with the land of his enemies.
Anyway, Bull's experiments make some very interesting reading.

[486] said:

Barrel length affects velocity, not accuracy. In fact longer barrels are usually less accurate, as they whip around on firing and deform as they heat.

Click to expand...

I think that the ballistic of a mortar is quite different from a gun. The mortar shells are quite loose in the tube and fairing is always at closer to vertical angle.

Cool stuff, thanks for posting I really enjoy these threads.

Ron

Milland said:

Interesting, but sort of plays to my point about range, I'd have guessed the powder charge wouldn't have been able to transfer as much energy to the projectile. Guess just more powder and stouter casing works.

Click to expand...

I know just enough about artillery to be dangerous, but the powder used to launch the projectiles varies quite a bit. Short barrels can achieve higher velocities than you would think when loaded with fast burning powders. Longer barreled guns use powders with slower burning rates. Slower burning powders in long tubes accelerate the projectile down the tube where short barrels with fast powder essentially launch it with explosive force. That is why those mortars have such thick barrels so they can withstand the instant high pressure the powder achieves.

partsproduction said:

This reminds me of the Gerald Bull projects, he was looking to put payloads in orbit. Kind of sad that he ended up working for the wrong people.
Which put me in mind of a young German fellow with very similar aspirations who ended up being saved from the fire he was headed into because his knowledge of Rocketry gave him pass with the land of his enemies.
Anyway, Bull's experiments make some very interesting reading.

Click to expand...

Gerald Bull was fascinating man. There isn't a whole lot out there about him that I have found. I had a book titled "Arms and the Man" about Gerald Bull's life and the things he was involved in. I loaned the book to a friend several years ago and sadly never got it back. The "Super Guns" he was building for Iraq were incredible. Too bad he didn't get to work through them completely. It would have been really interesting to see if he could have solved all the technical problems he was running into.