Shipbucket

Hello, long time browser first time poster. Crossing my fingers that I did this right. I decided to design a part, it took me a long time to get photoshop set up (gotta disable that anti-aliasing). So this is a 34 inch coastal defense gun, but it also has a somewhat diabolical secondary use. Being a turret, it can turn around all the way and fire inland. It is my own design for my own timeline, meant to watch over the Panama Canal doing triple duty as a not-terribly-practical propaganda weapon, coastal defense gun and able to cover the Panama Canal region from possible attack from Columbia.

Alright, here it is. I hope I followed the style rules correctly. It was really a challenge to scale things at least somewhat correctly.



Alright, this second one is more to illustrate how the gun works. I realize that the lines are screwed up because I directly rotated the object instead of rebuilding it, which is what you need to really do at this scale. I just went into Preferences>General> and changed the image interpolation from Bicubic to Nearest Neighbor to reduce anti-aliasing and keep it closer to the required style. But it still butchers the lines at this scale.



Oh, and I used a template from the main page, but I wasn't sure if templates should be used with a single part.

Welcome.

I like the idea and pic,

My only comment would be would you bother fitting rangefinder to it ? Costal guns normally had separate range finders, you can mount the higher and make them with massive equivalent lengths (ie link 2 that are 100+m apart)

JSB

Originally, I was considering it more for a battleship-island type defense. Like Fort Drum in Manila Bay. I imagine it having some redundancy for its fire control, with towers, its own fire control and aircraft.

I certainly would not want to be on the receiving end of a brute like that. One at each end of the canal would certainly have given some coverage against sea attack, while the range of a monster like that would probably just about fire from coast to coast.

Welcome aboard.

_________________
𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐍𝐄𝐓- 𝑻𝒐 𝑪𝒐𝒈𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝑺𝒐𝒍𝒗𝒆

Thanks all. I am going to try doing a top-down version of the turret, but first I am still tweaking the design.

Here is a fairly radical overhaul that involves a hugely elongated turret with supporting rails. The basic idea is this: huge guns tend to have barrel problems after firing a lot. I would hazard to guess this gun can cycle about 260 rounds through a barrel before needing a replacement. The elongated turret now holds a spare barrel that can be mounted quickly, within roughly 2 hours.

The front rail has also been elongated and I plan on redoing the guns mounting rail to be more heavy duty and with space so the gun can achieve higher elevation.

I think fitting a crane next to the turret and a storage with spare barrels allows a much better system then the lengthened turret

_________________
Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

I am just thinking about having it armored and ready to swap internally because I think a crane would be really vulnerable during an attack.

might be, but there are solutions for that. a moving (rail, for example) crane, which can be stored elsewhere. there are always vulnerable parts, but I personally think the only real vulnerable thing in an attack for this gun would be it's ammunition

_________________
Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

Ammo I feel would be stored deep underground. For me the biggest vulnerability is for when the gun is at maximum elevation and partially leaves its protective housing. The front of the turret is basically open at that point. But its also firing at maximum range, so unless a plane gets in close its not really vulnerable. But if a bomber hits it, then it is in trouble. These types of guns are pretty easily defeated by air power.

I wanted to run some further ideas by you guys. Would naval canister shot work with the size of the shell this thing fires? I am thinking a cluster of 6" APHE shells within a larger shell that comes apart on descent.