Talk:BL 6-inch 80-pounder gun

Confusion between Mk I and Mk II

There is some confusion as to the exact model, the Mk I or Mk II, of 6-inch gun carried by a number of sloops and corvettes during the 1880s. Ballard, Winfield, and Gardiner all list Mk Is firing an 80-pound (36 kg) shell. Campbell, however, specifically lists most of these ships as carrying Mk IIs that could fire 100-pound (45 kg) shells. He even describes an incident where one of the guns aboard Active blew up in November 1884. Furthermore, Campbell says that only 19 Mk I guns were built and that they were mounted on two Comus-class corvettes and then on HMS Rover. He says that 143 Mk II guns were built and armed the Bacchante-class and Comus-class ships, among others. It seems odd that the Mk I and II weighed nearly the same amount, but the Mk II fired a much heavier shell. Perhaps the simplest way to reconcile these problems is that Campbell made a typo when giving the shell weight fired by the Mk II and that both marks fired the same 80-pound shell. The relevant gunnery handbooks need to be consulted to see if Campbell made a mistake or not.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 17:42, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Mk II definitely fired a 100-pound projectile, according to all contemporary manuals. It appears to have been a dud and quickly withdrawn from active service. The answer appears to be that they eventually needed to increase the weight to 5 tons of steel to achieve a reliable 6-inch gun firing a 100-pound shell at full charge (Mk III) compared to the 4 tons of previous models. Rcbutcher (talk) 06:39, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for checking, as one of them cited in the article was off-line. Then we have some real issues trying to reconcile Campbell's article with what everyone else is saying armed those ships.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:30, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

References