Bad weather sailing: turrets pointg to the sides

[marcelo_malara]

Hi guys! A common view, a warship sailing in bad weather with the guns pointed to the sides. Common knowledge says that this is done so the water would not poured into the turrets.

But there would be a not so easily understood phenomena. Pointing the guns to the sides increases the so called moment of inertia, the equivalent of mass in rotational dynamics. The moment of inertia is:

“sum of the product of mass of each particle with the square of its distance from the axis of the rotation”.

It would be similar to the bar that tight rope walkers use to maintain equilibrium. In a ship this would diminish the roll response to waves.

Question is if this was known and if the roll diminishing would be noticeably.

[chuckfan3@gmail.com]

i don’t see why it would. training the turret to the sides would slightly increase the ship’s mass moment of inertia about the rolling axis. this may increase the amount of rolling moment required to get the ship to a given roll rate. but it would also increase the amount of righting moment required to stop the roll.

[OpanaPointer]

That picture is a still from footage IIRC. Typhoon in the Pacific. Impressive.

[Fatboy Coxy]

The photo provided doesn't show bad weather, it's more likely a ship at speed, which would make sense to me, with the water breaking over the bows.
I suppose if your heading towards action or just potential danger, then your gun tampions have been taken off, and your trying not to soak the gun barrel.

In very bad weather where you're trying to ride out the storm, you would want to drive into the wave, so still water coming over the bows, the tampions will protect the gun barrel, but as suggested its about improving stability. Of course if you need to change course, say when needing to keep plenty of sea between you and the land, those barrels will have to be moved first, hate to have the guns pointing the wrong way when you take a wave broadside while turning!