283 mm/45 SK L/45 (283 mm)

Description

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Vehicles equipped with this weapon

• SMS Von der Tann
• SMS Westfalen

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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History

The 283 mm/45 SK L/45 was the cannon used to arm the original dreadnoughts and battlecruisers of the Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial German Navy). The turn of the century saw a shift in focus in multiple nations to all-big gun ships which led to an arms race that intensified after the British became the first nation to launch a ship built with this arrangement, HMS Dreadnought. Kaiser Wilhelm II ordered a battleship with a 28 cm main battery back in December of 1903 which led to the development of the Nassau-class battleships, Germany's first dreadnoughts, represented in game by SMS Westfalen. The guns were also mounted on the SMS Von der Tann, a one-off ship built to counter the battlecruiser HMS Invincible. While improved and larger armaments would begin getting mounted on their ships as the naval arms race continued, the guns saw service during World War I. Most notably, SMS Von der Tann sunk HMS Indefatigable during the Battle of Jutland.

The SK L/45 stands out from naval guns of the period by using the Krupp sliding wedge breech-block instead of an interrupted screw. This design requires a brass casing for the propellant to keep the gases from escaping. After World War I, all the Nassau-class ships were interned at Scapa Flow, Scotland during negotiations of the Armistice, but the ships were scuttled by their crew, including the Von der Tann. The SK L/45 guns would remain in service in the interwar period, but due to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, ships were not allowed to mount them so the guns were converted to coastal defense with a more powerful propellant that increased the velocity. The first battery was on Husøya Island, Norway while the second was south of Constanța, Romania and helped defend the city from the Soviet Black Sea Fleet in 1941.

Media

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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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