misfire procedure?

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synthesim
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misfire procedure?

Post by synthesim »

Hello and greetings to everybody.

I remember this old gent a long time ago who had been on battleships, who said that every once in a great while when they would go to fire the big 16" guns, they would get a misfire and the gun would not fire.
I think he said they would declare a misfire, and the gun barrel would be leveled at the horizon, and I think the whole ship would stand down and wait. (this was quite a long time ago he told me all this so I'm fuzzy on details now).
They didn't open the breech, they just waited.
He said it might take a few minutes, or it might take all day, but eventually the gun would finally fire all by itself.

My question is, what if you had an emergency situation where you couldn't afford to wait all day?
What if you absolutely had to clear the breech and get it back into action without delay?
How would you do it?
Would you open the breech and throw in a hand grenade, maybe a special powder burst one without fragmentation and a long internal fuse, and slam the breech shut before it goes off?
Or--what?
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tommy303
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Re: misfire procedure?

Post by tommy303 »

First step after waiting a few minutes would be to open the firing lock, remove the fired primer and insert another. Close the firing lock and try it again. This could be repeated several times, and if the gun had still not fired, water could be pumped into the chamber through the open firing lock. The breech could then be opened and the charges removed and disposed of. Fresh charges would then be loaded and the gun fired.

With guns like on Bismarck, where the primer was in the base of the main cartridge case, the above proceedures were not applicable. Normally the guns were fired by electrical current, but the primers also had a percussion element. If firing electrically did not work after several attempts, the gun might be fired by percussion using a lanyard connected to the cocked percussion firing lock. If this failed, a reasonable amount of time had to pass to insure that a smoldering ember or the heat of the gun barrel did not cook the cartridge off before the breech was opened and the case was ejected and disposed of.

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They stood and Earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned these defended;
And saved the sum of things for pay.
Foggy
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Re: misfire procedure?

Post by Foggy »

Didn't most Wellin breeches also use electric-percussion primers? I would presume, as a first step, if electrical firing didn't work, percussion firing would be attempted immediately, no? I also understand there was a long wait if the primer didn't fire the main charge (I think Gene Slover over on the BB-vs-BB board has more info on this), something on the order of a half hour?

I certainly wouldn't want to be the gun crew member who had to replace the primer and/or lock for a re-try. I don't fancy reaching up at the back of the gun and having it suddenly fire! World of hurts!
-- Wayne
synthesim
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Re: misfire procedure?

Post by synthesim »

I very much appreciate both of your answers.
I've wondered about this for ages.
Would you or anyone care to take a wild guess how they might have done it on the Yamato?

It kind of seems to me that the Japanese didn't hold the lives of their own servicemen to be worthless, but they would possibly have held a strong attitude that the mission is worth any sacrifice.
I have the books 'Requiem for Battleship Yamato' by Yoshida Mitsuru, and 'Shattered Sword' by Johathan Parshall and Anthony Tully.
They give some remarkable insights into the Japanese naval service mindset.
synthesim
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Re: misfire procedure?

Post by synthesim »

If the charge exploded right after opening the breech, would only the one gun crew for that gun be killed, or would it kill everyone in the gunhouse for all three guns?
IOW, were the individual gunhouse guns serviced by individual sealed chambers, or did they have a common compartment?
I would ask this for both the American BB and for the Yamato, please.
I realize the Yamato would possibly have to be a hypothetical, if all their records were destroyed, but I'd still more than welcome some educated guesses.
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tommy303
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Re: misfire procedure?

Post by tommy303 »

On Bismarck it would certainly take out the crew of the gun house and the working chamber below. Anti flash arrangements in the hoists would probably protect the handling room personnel. A good example of what to expect in the case of a turret with bulkheads between the guns is the case of the Dunkerque which lost half the guns in a turret due to splinters on a hit upon the turret crown igniting charges about to be loaded. The other half of the turret continued in action. However, one then has the Iowa accident back in the 1980s when charges went off during loading of one of the three guns in the turret. The entire turret crew perished as the explosion buckled the bulkheads partitioning the right and left gun rooms and the turret command booth from the center gun room. Perhaps the difference between the two incidents was the hole in the French ship's crown which allowed much of the forces to vent out of the turret.

Presumably the Japanese system would not be so much different from USN or RN protocols. While they might not have the same philosophy concerning lives of crewmen, certainly the safety of the ship was a concern. If need be, even in action, a missfire in a gun which could not be cleared by a new primer or percussion firing, a safe waiting time would be allowed. As an aside, an uncle of mine who served at sea witnessed an accident with a 4cm gun which appeared to missfire. In reality it was a hangfire, and the gunner ejected the round before allowing a few moments, with the result being the round exploded just as it cleared the breech causing casualties among the gun crew.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood and Earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned these defended;
And saved the sum of things for pay.
synthesim
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Re: misfire procedure?

Post by synthesim »

Thank you, I looked up hangfire and misfire, and also found cookoff and stoppage, which gave me something to study.

I am going to mention this next question here because I think after helping me out you might enjoy hearing what this old guy told me next, and invite comments.
He said that to weigh the ship, this time a carrier I believe, they would have all the men they could get up on deck.
They would have them all stand on one side of the ship, and someone would measure the angle of the ship's tilt.
Then the men would all be directed to the other side, and they would measure the angle again.
It seems to me they may have also weighed all the men.
From that, they were able to calculate the weight of the ship.
Why they didn't just look at the vertical set of numbered marks on the outside of the ship that go below the water line and show the ship's depth -and by that, her load?- I don't know.
Does any of this make sense to you?
I'm not making this up it's what he said.
Keith Enge
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Re: misfire procedure?

Post by Keith Enge »

synthesim - The procedure that you were describing of men being moved to port and then starboard to measure the angle of list resulting is a crude method of an inclination test. This is normally done with a very large water-filled cylinder, not a lot of men. The purpose is not to weigh the ship but rather to empirically determine the metacentric height. This is a indication of how stable the ship is and the likely period of its roll. A high metacentric height results in a "stiff" ship with a quick roll. This ship is very stable but will suffer as a gun platform because firing solutions are easier with a slower roll.
synthesim
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Re: misfire procedure?

Post by synthesim »

That's amazing. That guy who told me this knew what he was talking about. And I can see how it wasn't a carrier, it was a battleship they would have done the inclination test on. He was a black man, and he had the 'Navy look' about him. Please don't ask me to define it; he just had 'the look', kind of nonplussed, conversational and matter-of-fact. We were both employees at a NARF and I was a very young man. I wish he'd told me more about BBs.
paul.mercer
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Re: misfire procedure?

Post by paul.mercer »

Gentlemen,
Was it a hangfire that caused the explosion in one of the Iowa class battleships shortly before it was decommissioned?
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