12-inch/45 Mk.5 (305 mm)

Description

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Vehicles equipped with this weapon

• USS North Dakota

General info

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Available ammunition

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Comparison with analogues

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Usage in battles

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Pros and cons

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Pros:

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History

The 12-inch/45 Mark 5 begins its story in the late 1890s. While smokeless powder, a revolution in firearms design was invented in 1884, the United States Navy didn't adopt it until the late 1890s after the Spanish American War. The first Naval monitor battery to use these types of weapons was the 12 inch/40 caliber which would serve in Marks 3 and 4 on pre-dreadnought battleships of the United States in the early 19th century. The 12-inch/45 Mark 5 was developed as an improvement of this gun constructed the U.S. Navy Gun Factory in Washington D.C. with the specifications from the Bureau of Ordinance. The gun was made 5 calibers longer for improved muzzle velocity, range and penetration power.

The 12''/45 Mark gun entered service in 1906 which was an interesting period for warship development. The guns were first designed and used on the Connecticut-class of pre-dreadnought battleships and the latter Mississippi-class. However 1906 was the year the ship HMS Dreadnought was launched with a strictly big gun arrangement that rendered every other battleship obsolete overnight. The big gun arrangement had benefits that the US Navy was not blind to as they were working on such a design in 1903 before the HMS Dreadnought was ordered by the Royal Navy in 1905. The result ended up become the South Carolina-class ships the USS South Carolina and USS Michigan which was order a month after HMS Dreadnought was launched, but boasted a superior center-fire arrangement for the armament (HMS Dreadnought had a port and starboard turret battery the only Dreadnought to do so). However, in the summer of 1916, the USS Michigan blew out one of her turrets which prompted an investigation into her sister the South Carolina. The investigation concluded the guns suffer from what is known as "copper choke" where the copper deposits from the driving bands on the bore of the rounds narrowed the bores and created a dangerous level of pressure when firing.

The South Carolina-class was soon followed by the Delaware-class ships USS Delaware and USS North Dakota. And they United States would go on to produce a final class Dreadnoughts the Florida-class ships USS Florida and USS Utah but this would become last of ships to be armed with 12''/45 Mark 5 guns. The turn of the century marked a significant arms race among the various power around the world was intensified by the appearance of HMS Dreadnought in 1906 and escalated tension around the globe before World War I. At the end of the war, the victorious powers of the Entente banded to together and signed the Washington Naval Treaty in 1922 which among other stipulations, put a ten year hiatus or "holiday" as it was called on construction capital ships such as battleships from the five signatories. Then, in 1930, the London Naval Treaty was signed which required the Florida-class to remove their 12''/45 Mark 5s where they were transferred to the United States Army to serve as coastal defense batteries.

The most surprising element of the 12inch/45 Mark 5's history is despite serving in World War I as part of the US Navy, it was only firing in anger in Greek service. The Mississippi-class ship USS Mississippi and USS Idaho were purchased by the Royal Hellenic Navy in 1914 as an expedient measure to keep up in naval arms race against the Ottoman Empire. These ships were designated the Kilkis and Lemnos respectively after battles in the Balkan Wars and saw action in the Allied Intervention into the Russian Civil War shortly after the World War I, and the Greco-Turkish War. To guard the Port of Athens, the guns from the Lemnos were removed and placed as coastal defense batteries on the island of Aegina.

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See also

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• reference to the article about the variant of the cannon/machine gun;
• references to approximate analogues by other nations and research trees.

External links

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