Re: HMS Warrior vs. USS Monitor

Jack Linthicum wrote:
On Mar 20, 4:57 pm, David Starr <dstarrbos...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


I have seen this "trains the guns by steering the ship" quote a couple
of times. This sounds dubious as the communications between the pilot
station where the captain was and the turret were lost when the
speaking tube broke and they were forced to use runners.

Even with the speaking tubes knocked out, a runner from the pilot house can tell the gunnery officer to train out to port or to starboard and leave them there. All Monitor's officers come to her from broadside ships where the only way to aim the guns is to steer the ship. Why should this not work in Monitor?

Quote from the book, the Monitor by James Tertius de Kay 'In contrast
to the (Virginia) the positioning of the Monitor was almost irrelevant
to the aiming of the guns.' The Virginia was aimed by the steersman
not the Monitor.

My copy of the Monitor by James Tertius de Kay says they had trouble
stopping the turret at a line so they set up a schedule of loading
with the turret turned away from the target, then rotating the turret
to bear on the target, running out the guns and firing, continuing the
rotation to reload. While the guns were run in the holes were covered
with heavy pendulums that require the whole gun crew to open. They
learned to leave them open.

This is the generally accepted history. Monitor's crew set the turret into constant rotation. They loaded the guns, ran them out, and fired as they bore on the target. They got hits this way, and the power of the 11 inch guns at half charge was nearly sufficient to pierce Virginia's armor. It should also be remembered that Monitor's crew had been rushed aboard just before departure and had no time to learn the ship and her revolutionary machinery. It's truly surprising that they could fight the ship so effectively given so little time to master the complexity and total newness of the entire vessel.


The guns could not fire directly ahead for fear of taking out the
pilot station, nor astern for fear of rupturing the boilers.

Ericcson's plans called for a 360 degree field of fire. Monitor didn't even have a stack to avoid masking the guns when trained dead astern. The pilot house was low enough for the guns to shoot over it. I've never read of any limitations of gun training angles on Monitor, or on her successors.
The lack of a stack allowed waves breaking on deck to slosh down into the boilers and extinguish the fires. Later monitors were equipped with a real, abet narrow, stack to keep the fires burning in bad weather at the cost of the ability to fire dead astern.


David Starr


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: HMS Warrior vs. USS Monitor
    ... There are several reasons the turret was fixed. ... then fire both. ... sources say Monitor was hit either 23 or 24 times, ... The turret was hard to stop at any one point so they loaded the guns ...
    (sci.military.naval)
  • Re: HMS Warrior vs. USS Monitor
    ... Would not the RN be tasked to break the Union blockade, ... sides best ships, Warrior and Monitor. ... The purpose of the turret is to allow Monitor's main battery to fire ... thus cutting the number of guns in half for the ...
    (sci.military.naval)
  • Re: USS Monitor Photo
    ... at the turret, there are two guns, greatly mismatched in size. ... of the Monitor is that it had 2 11-inch guns. ... - and it had something called a "smoke box" added inside to keep the muzzle blast / smoke out of the turret. ...
    (sci.military.naval)
  • Re: USS Monitor Photo
    ... at the turret, there are two guns, greatly mismatched in size. ... there are no photos of the USS Monitor showing both ... There are a number showing the deck and turret of the ...
    (sci.military.naval)
  • Re: Split rear armament
    ... There wera a number of proposals toward the end of WW2 for rear ... designs to carry a pair of 20mm guns in the rear of each of 2 engine ... A hit in the conventional tail turret will admitedly knock out all the ... Vickers bomber which was a high altitude aircraft) ...
    (rec.aviation.military)