13.5 inch/45 Mark 5(H) (343 mm)

Description

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Vehicles equipped with this weapon

• HMS Marlborough

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

After the 12 inch/50 Mark XI failed to the high-velocity improvement over the 12 inch/45 Mark X the Royal Navy expected, they concluded they reached the limits to what could be achieved with that caliber and moved onto a larger low-velocity design which became the 13.5-inch 45-caliber Mark 5 gun. The Anglo-German Arms Race was in full swing by this point and with the Hague Convention of 1907 failing to restrict the size of naval guns, the Royal Navy requested a gun that was either 13, 13.5, or 14 inches that fired with the nominal velocity of the 12-inch gun Mark X in October 1908. Vickers went with the 13.5-inch design which was adopted in January 1909. Firing even more explosive power to their shells than the 12-inch predecessors with similar range and penetration, the British decided to conceal the true caliber of these weapons by designating them the 12-inch 'A'. This did not prevent the Germans or the Americans from learning the true size of the guns leading them to upgrades to 12 and 14 guns for their respective navies.

There are two variants of the 13.5 Mark V the (L) and (H) which differ from the weight of the rounds. The Mark 5(H) was first used for the King George V-class dreadnoughts which carried 1,400-pound rounds with the loading machinery modified to accommodate the new rounds. This modification gave the ship the ability to use rounds 150lbs heavier than the ones found on the preceding Orion-class which was armed with Mark 5(L) guns and the first dreadnought in the Royal Navy to adopt the centerline mountings that were standard on designs from other nations. The Mark 5(H) was also used on the Iron Duke-class dreadnoughts, the dreadnought HMS Erin originally built for the Ottoman Navy as Reşadiye before being acquired by the Royal Navy under the orders of Winston Churchill when World War I began, and the battlecruisers HMS Tiger and HMS Queen Mary.

The13.5 inch Mark 5 bears the unique distinction of being the first gun to the longstanding problem of "steel choke" which plagued Royal Navy large caliber guns starting with the 12-inch/35 Mark VIII in 1895 which caused the cannons to blow out their liners. The fix came with a low taper fit between inner A and A tubes along with moving the locating shoulders to well back in the guns instead of at the front to reduce longitudinal stress.

By the time World War II began in 1939, the 39 guns were still in service along with six turrets removed from both HMS Tiger and HMS Iron Duke to comply with the 1930 London Naval Treaty where the former was scrapped and the latter demilitarized to serve as a training ship retaining three turrets. Three of the remaining guns were converted to railway guns named the Gladiator, Peace Maker and Scene Shifter. They were deployed to Dover to bombard German batteries and shipping across the English Channel at Calais in occupied France. Another three guns were relined to 8-inches in caliber in an experiment to make hyper-velocity guns a Kent during the war that did not amount to anything.

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See also

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External links

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