![DisappearingGunFort Wint](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/DisappearingGunFort_Wint.jpg)
A disappearing gun, a
gun
A gun is a ranged weapon designed to use a shooting tube (gun barrel) to launch projectiles. The projectiles are typically solid, but can also be pressurized liquid (e.g. in water guns/cannons, spray guns for painting or pressure washing, p ...
mounted on a ''disappearing carriage'', is an obsolete type of
artillery
Artillery is a class of heavy military ranged weapons that launch munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during siege ...
which enabled a gun to hide from direct fire and observation. The overwhelming majority of carriage designs enabled the gun to rotate backwards and down behind a parapet, or into a pit protected by a wall, after it was fired; a small number were simply
barbette
Barbettes are several types of gun emplacement in terrestrial fortifications or on naval ships.
In recent naval usage, a barbette is a protective circular armour support for a heavy gun turret. This evolved from earlier forms of gun protectio ...
mounts on a retractable platform. Either way, retraction lowered the gun from view and direct fire by the enemy while it was being reloaded.
It also made reloading easier, since it lowered the breech to a level just above the loading platform, and shells could be rolled right up to the open breech for loading and ramming. Other benefits over non-disappearing types were a higher rate of repetitive fire and less fatigue for the gun crew.
Some disappearing carriages were complicated mechanisms, protection from aircraft observation and attack was difficult, and almost all restricted the elevation of the gun. With a few exceptions, construction of new disappearing gun installations ceased by 1918. The last new disappearing gun installation was a solo
16-inch gun M1919
The 16 inch gun M1919 (406 mm) was a large coastal artillery piece installed to defend the United States' major seaports between 1920 and 1946. It was operated by the United States Army Coast Artillery Corps. Only a small number were ...
at
Fort Michie
Fort Michie was a United States Army coastal defense site on Great Gull Island, New York. Along with Fort H. G. Wright, Fort Terry, and Camp Hero, it defended the eastern entrance to Long Island Sound as part of the Harbor Defenses of Long ...
on
Great Gull Island
Great Gull Island is a island separating the Long Island and Block Island sounds, located approximately southwest of Little Gull Island. Both islands are located in the town of Southold in Suffolk County, New York, and lie roughly midway be ...
,
New York, completed in 1923. In the U.S., due to lack of funding for sufficient replacements, the disappearing gun remained the most numerous type of coast defense weapon until replaced by improved weapons in
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
.
[Complete list of US forts and batteries at CDSG website](_blank)
/ref>[Berhow, pp. 200-228]
Although some early designs were intended as field siege guns, over time the design became associated with fixed fortifications, most of which were coastal artillery
Coastal artillery is the branch of the armed forces concerned with operating anti-ship artillery or fixed gun batteries in coastal fortifications.
From the Middle Ages until World War II, coastal artillery and naval artillery in the form of ...
. A late exception was the use in mountain fortifications in Switzerland, where six 120mm guns on rail-mounted Saint Chamond disappearing carriages remained at Fort de Dailly until replaced in 1940.
The disappearing gun was usually moved down behind the parapet or into its protective housing by the force of its own recoil, but some also used compressed air[Disappearing Guns](_blank)
(from the Royal New Zealand Artillery Old Comrades Association) while a few were built to be raised by steam.
History
Captain (later Colonel Sir) Alexander Moncrieff improved on existing designs for a gun carriage capable of rising over a parapet
A parapet is a barrier that is an extension of the wall at the edge of a roof, terrace, balcony, walkway or other structure. The word comes ultimately from the Italian ''parapetto'' (''parare'' 'to cover/defend' and ''petto'' 'chest/breast'). ...
before being reloaded from behind cover. His design, based on his observations in the Crimean War
The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia.
Geopolitical causes of the war included the ...
was the first widely adopted, used in many forts of the British Empire. The first experimental carriages of this type were wheeled. His key innovation was a practical counterweight system that raised the gun as well as controlled the recoil
Recoil (often called knockback, kickback or simply kick) is the rearward thrust generated when a gun is being discharged. In technical terms, the recoil is a result of conservation of momentum, as according to Newton's third law the force r ...
. Moncrieff promoted his system as an inexpensive and quickly constructed alternative to a more traditional gun emplacement.
The usefulness of such a system had been noted earlier, and experimental designs with raisable platforms or eccentric wheels, with built-in counterweights, were built or proposed. Some used paired guns, in which one cannon acted as the other's counterweight, or counterpoise. An unsuccessful attempt at a disappearing carriage was King's Depression Carriage, designed by William Rice King of the United States Army Corps of Engineers in the late 1860s. This used a counterweight to allow a 15-inch (381 mm) Rodman gun
Drawing comparing Model 1844 8-inch columbiad and Model 1861 10-inch "Rodman" columbiad. The powder chamber on the older columbiad is highlighted by the red box.
The Rodman gun is any of a series of American Civil War–era columbiads designed b ...
to be moved up and down a swiveling ramp, so the weapon could be reloaded, elevated, and traversed behind cover. The carriage was subjected to six trials in 1869–1873. It was not adopted; an 1881 letter to the Chief of Engineers by Lt. Col. Quincy A. Gillmore stated that it "still leaves a great deal of heavy work to the slow and uncertain process of manual labor".[ Part of a test installation at ]Fort Foote
Fort Foote was an American Civil War-era wood and earthwork fort that was part of the wartime defenses of Washington, D.C., which helped defend the Potomac River approach to the city. It operated from 1863 to 1878, when the post was abandoned ...
, Maryland remains. King's design was better suited for breech-loaders; had the US not had a plethora of new muzzle-loaders just after the Civil War it may have seen wider use.
Buffington and Crozier further refined the concept in the late 1880s by allowing the counterweight fulcrum to slide, giving the gun a more elliptical recoil path. The Buffington–Crozier Disappearing Carriage (1893) represented the zenith of disappearing gun carriages, and guns
A gun is a ranged weapon designed to use a shooting tube (gun barrel) to launch projectiles. The projectiles are typically solid, but can also be pressurized liquid (e.g. in water guns/cannons, spray guns for painting or pressure washing, ...
of up to 16-inch size were eventually mounted on such carriages. Disappearing guns were highly popular for a while in the British Empire, the United States and other countries. In the United States, they were the primary armament of the Endicott- and Taft-era fortifications, constructed 1898–1917. Simpler carriages with a limited disappearing function were initially provided for smaller weapons, the balanced pillar for the 5-inch gun M1897
The 5-inch gun M1897 (127 mm) and its variant the M1900 were coastal artillery pieces installed to defend major American seaports between 1897 and 1920. For most of their history they were operated by the United States Army Coast Artillery ...
and the Driggs-Seabury masking parapet for the manufacturer's 3-inch gun M1898. However, these could only be retracted at a specific traverse angle (90° off the emplacement's axis), thus could not be used in action. Due to the mount's undesired flexibility when fired interfering with aiming, both types were disabled beginning in 1913 in the "up" position, with installations circa 1903 and later having received pedestal mounts. Both carriage types and their associated guns were removed from service in the 1920s; in the 3-inch gun's case a tendency for the piston rod to break was a factor in their removal.[Berhow, pp. 70-71, 88-89]
Several mobile disappearing mounts appeared in France and Germany circa 1893. These included both road-mobile and rail-mobile designs. In France, Schneider and St. Chamond produced road-mobile design and rail-mobile designs, in 120 mm (4.7 inch) and 155 mm weapons. The 0.6 meter rail ''affût-truck'' system was used tactically for 120mm and 155mm guns in WWI. Six 120 mm Modèle 1882 guns on St. Chamond mounts were deployed at Fort de Dailly in Switzerland from 1894 to 1939. Krupp produced a rail-mobile 120 mm disappearing gun in 1900.
Though effective against ships, the guns were vulnerable to aerial observation and attack. After World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
coastal guns were usually casemated for protection or covered with camouflage
Camouflage is the use of any combination of materials, coloration, or illumination for concealment, either by making animals or objects hard to see, or by disguising them as something else. Examples include the leopard's spotted coat, the b ...
for concealment. By 1912, disappearing guns were declared obsolete in the British Army, with only a few other countries, particularly the United States, still producing them up to World War I and retaining them in service until replaced by casemated batteries in World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
.
The only major campaign in which US disappearing guns played a part was the Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
invasion of the Philippines, which began shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii ...
on 7 December 1941 and ended with the surrender of US forces on 6 May 1942. The disappearing guns were the least useful of the coast defense assets, as they were positioned to defend against warships entering Manila Bay
Manila Bay ( fil, Look ng Maynila) is a natural harbor that serves the Port of Manila (on Luzon), in the Philippines. Strategically located around the capital city of the Philippines, Manila Bay facilitated commerce and trade between the Phi ...
and Subic Bay
Subic Bay is a bay on the west coast of the island of Luzon in the Philippines, about northwest of Manila Bay. An extension of the South China Sea, its shores were formerly the site of a major United States Navy facility, U.S. Naval Base Sub ...
and in most cases could not engage Japanese forces due to limited traverse. Despite attempts at camouflage, their emplacements were vulnerable to air and high-angle artillery attack.
Advantages
The disappearing carriage had several principal advantages:
*It afforded the gun crew protection from direct fire by raising the gun over the parapet (or wall in front of the gun) only when it was to be fired, otherwise leaving it at a lower level, where it was also able to be loaded easily.
*With its guns in a retracted position (down behind the parapet), the battery was much harder to spot from the sea, making it a much harder target for attacking ships. Flat trajectory fire tended simply to fly over the battery, without damaging it.
*Interposing of a moving fulcrum between the gun and its platform lessened the strain on the latter and allowed it to be of lighter construction while limiting recoil travel.
*Simple, well protected earthen and masonry gun pits were much more economical to construct than the previous practice of constructing the standing heavy walls and fortified casemates of a more traditional gun emplacement.
*The entire battery could be hidden from view in place when not in use, unlike a traditional fort, enabling ambuscade
An ambush is a long-established military tactic in which a combatant uses an advantage of concealment or the element of surprise to attack unsuspecting enemy combatants from concealed positions, such as among dense underbrush or behind moun ...
fire.
*Higher rate of repetitive fire over non-disappearing types.[
*Less fatigue for the gun crew.][
]
Disadvantages
The disappearing gun had several drawbacks as well:
*Some British carriage designs restricted maximum elevation to under 20 degrees and thus lacked the necessary range to match newer naval guns entering service during the early part of the 20th century. (Buffington-Crozier carriages, at their final development, could manage 30 degrees on a 16-inch gun.) The additional elevation gained by mounting the same gun on a later non-disappearing carriage increased its range.
*The time taken for the gun to swing up and down and be reloaded slowed the rate of fire of some designs. Surviving records indicate a rate of fire of one round per one to two minutes for a British eight-inch (20 cm) gun, significantly slower than less complicated guns. (By contrast, the Buffington-Crozier 16-inch mount could manage one round per minute; the barbette mount was only 20 percent faster, and was slower at some elevations.)
*The improvement in the speed of warships demanded an increased rate of firing. The disappearing gun was at a disadvantage compared with a gun that stayed in position as one could not aim or reposition a disappearing gun while it was in the lowered position. The gunner still had to climb atop the weapon via an elevated platform to sight and lay the weapon after it was returned to firing position, or receive fire control information (range and bearing) transmitted from a remote location.
*Their relative size and complexity also made them expensive compared with non-disappearing mounts, In 1918, the 12" DC gun cost $102,000, the barbette mounted gun $92,000. This was more than made up, for some designs, by the reduced cost of protection. From the above reference, the cost of a 16" DC emplacement was $605,000, while a turreted gun's proportional cost was $2,050,000.
Other applications
Gun lift battery
One very uncommon and even more complex type of disappearing gun was Battery Potter at Fort Hancock in the Coast Defenses of Sandy Hook, New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
. This and a number of 12-inch barbette emplacements were constructed due to the inability of the early versions of the Buffington-Crozier carriage to accommodate a 12-inch gun. Built in 1892, the battery covered the approaches to New York harbor. Instead of using recoil from the gun to lower the weapon, two 12-inch barbette carriages were placed on individual hydraulic elevators that would raise the 110-ton carriage and gun 14 feet to enable it fire over a parapet
A parapet is a barrier that is an extension of the wall at the edge of a roof, terrace, balcony, walkway or other structure. The word comes ultimately from the Italian ''parapetto'' (''parare'' 'to cover/defend' and ''petto'' 'chest/breast'). ...
wall. After firing, the gun was lowered for reloading using hydraulic ramrods and a shell hoist. While the operation of the battery was slow, taking 3 minutes per shot, its design allowed a 360° field of fire. Since its design was not further pursued, Battery Potter was disarmed in 1907.
Battery Potter required much machinery to operate the gun lifts, including boilers, steam-powered hydraulic pumps, and two accumulators. Due to the inability to generate steam quickly, Battery Potter's boilers were run nonstop during its 14-year life, at significant cost. After the proving of the Buffington-Crozier carriage for 12-inch guns, the United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...
abandoned plans to build several additional gun lift batteries.
Naval artillery
The concept was also attempted for conversion to a naval use. HMS ''Temeraire'' was completed in 1877 with two disappearing guns ( muzzle-loading rifles on Moncrieff-type carriages) sinking down into barbette
Barbettes are several types of gun emplacement in terrestrial fortifications or on naval ships.
In recent naval usage, a barbette is a protective circular armour support for a heavy gun turret. This evolved from earlier forms of gun protectio ...
structures (basically circular metal protective walls over which the gun fired when elevated). This was to combine the ability of the early pivot gun
A pivot gun was a type of cannon mounted on a fixed central emplacement which permitted it to be moved through a wide horizontal arc. They were a common weapon aboard ships and in land fortifications for several centuries but became obsolete aft ...
s to swivel with the protection of more classical fixed naval guns. A similar design was later used in Russia for the first ship of the ''Ekaterina II''-class battleships and also used in the monitor ''Vitse-admiral Popov''. It has been suggested that both the harsh saltwater environment and the constant swaying and rolling of a ship at sea caused problems for the complex mechanism.[The Disappearing Gun](_blank)
(from the 'navyandmarine.org' website, with further references. Accessed 2008-02-22.)
If the mechanism seemed too temperamental for the open sea, it was not true for rivers and harbors. Armstrong Armstrong may refer to:
Places
* Armstrong Creek (disambiguation), various places
Antarctica
* Armstrong Reef, Biscoe Islands
Argentina
* Armstrong, Santa Fe
Australia
* Armstrong, Victoria
Canada
* Armstrong, British Columbia
* Armstrong ...
and Mitchell
Mitchell may refer to:
People
*Mitchell (surname)
*Mitchell (given name)
Places Australia
* Mitchell, Australian Capital Territory, a light-industrial estate
* Mitchell, New South Wales, a suburb of Bathurst
* Mitchell, Northern Territo ...
's 1867 HMS ''Staunch'', a gunboat described as a "floating gun carriage", used a single Armstrong rifled muzzle loader on a lowering platform with next to no armor. It was a resounding commercial success; there were 21 direct copies, and another six near-sisters, plus six near-copies (see List of gunboat and gunvessel classes of the Royal Navy
This is a list of gunboat and gunvessel classes of the Royal Navy.
For gun-brigs see List of gun-brigs of the Royal Navy.
Steam gunboats
Wooden paddle gunboats (Indian service)
*
Wooden paddle gunboats (Great Lakes)
Iron paddle gunboa ...
). Known as the "flatiron" gunboats, these vessels had a single large gun kept behind hinged shields, rather than a complex disappearing mount. The simplified mounts were intended as much to lower the center of mass as to afford protection, and resembled a "lift battery." The gun was not normally lowered between shots.
Related and parallel systems
U.S. Endicott-era balanced pillar and masking parapet mounts were, in a sense, a hybrid of simple pedestal mounts and disappearing mounts: the guns were hidden from observation while out of action, but, once engaged, remained vulnerable to direct observation and direct fire. The emplacement designs only permitted retraction with the gun barrel at a specific traverse angle, usually 90° off the emplacement's axis. Since the barrels substantially overlapped the parapet of their installation, it was impossible to point the piece while concealed. The balanced pillar mount was used primarily with the 5-inch gun M1897
The 5-inch gun M1897 (127 mm) and its variant the M1900 were coastal artillery pieces installed to defend major American seaports between 1897 and 1920. For most of their history they were operated by the United States Army Coast Artillery ...
, while the masking parapet mount was a Driggs-Seabury patent used primarily with the manufacturer's 3-inch gun M1898. "Masking parapet" was a proprietary term coined by Driggs-Seabury to distinguish their carriage from balanced pillar designs. Beginning in 1913 these carriages were disabled in the "up" position due to undesired flexibility interfering with aiming. The M1898 3-inch gun also developed a tendency for the piston rod to break when fired, and both types and their associated guns were removed from service in the 1920s.[
]
In 1893 Germany's Hermann Gruson
Hermann August Jacques Gruson (March 13, 1821, in Magdeburg – January 30, 1895) was a German engineer, inventor and industrial entrepreneur.
Life
Hermann Gruson was a descendant of a Huguenot immigrant family, and son of Prime Minister Lieutena ...
developed an armored turret for a 53 mm gun called a "Fahrpanzer
The Fahrpanzer was a mobile artillery piece made prior to World War I in Germany, implemented in several German fortifications from 1890 onwards and exported to several foreign military powers prior to the outbreak of hostilities.
Specificatio ...
" (mobile armor) that had both road- and rail-mobile versions. These were sold to several other countries prior to World War I, notably Switzerland, Romania, and Greece, were widely deployed in that war, and were present in most major Swiss fortifications at least through World War II, including Fort Airolo. Surviving examples of the Fahrpanzer are at the Athens War Museum
The Athens War Museum ( el, Πολεμικό Μουσείο Αθήνας), established on July 18, 1975, is the museum of the Greek Armed Forces. Its purpose is the exhibition of weapon artifacts and the relevant research in the history of war. It ...
and the Brussels Army Museum. These mounts were intended for use in prepared trench-type positions that would shelter them from view when retracted; in the Swiss forts they were stored in covered bunkers until repositioned to fire. While a few units used in fixed fortifications were sometimes mounted on sinking platforms or on short rail stubs intended for tactical concealment, the overwhelming majority were not, and acted in action as completely fixed guns, and are outside the subject of this article.
Retractable turrets were also conceptually similar, but almost never depended on recoil actuation, and, like the balanced pillar systems, often remained visible when actually in operation. Unlike balanced pillar designs, the pieces could generally be pointed and trained from cover, allowing complete surprise for the first shot. They were extensively developed for Continental European land defenses, but little used elsewhere.
See also
* List of disappearing gun installations
* Coastal artillery
Coastal artillery is the branch of the armed forces concerned with operating anti-ship artillery or fixed gun batteries in coastal fortifications.
From the Middle Ages until World War II, coastal artillery and naval artillery in the form of ...
* Seacoast defense in the United States
Seacoast defense was a major concern for the United States from its independence until World War II. Before airplanes, many of America's enemies could only reach it from the sea, making coastal forts an economical alternative to standing armies o ...
References
*
*Hogg, I.V., "The Rise and Fall of the Disappearing Carriage", ''Fort'' (Fortress Study Group
The Fortress Study Group is a charity registered in the UK with an international membership. Its purpose is advancing the study of post-medieval artillery fortifications throughout the World.
History
The Fortress Study Group was formed in June 1 ...
), (6), 1978
*Hogg, Ian V., "Illustrated Encyclopedia of Artillery," Chartrwell, Secaucus, NJ, 1978
*
External links
The Moncrieff Disappearing Counterweight Carriage
at Victorian Forts and Artillery website
Sales brochure from 1895 for the Buffington-Crozier disappearing carriage
Drawing and description of the balanced pillar carriage, from ''Ordnance and Gunnery'', 1915
{{DEFAULTSORT:Disappearing Gun
Artillery by type
Military equipment of the late modern period
Warfare of the late modern period
Military history of the United Kingdom
Military history of New Zealand
Coastal artillery
Victorian-era weapons of the United Kingdom
World War I artillery of the United States
World War II artillery of the United States