The Canet guns were a series of weapon systems developed by the French engineer Gustave Canet (1846–1908), who worked as an engineer from 1872 to 1881 for the London Ordnance Works, then for

Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée Forges or Les Forges may refer to: In Belgium *Forges, Belgium, a village and a former municipality that is now a part of Chimay, Wallonia In France *Forges, Charente-Maritime, in the Charente-Maritime department * Forges, Maine-et-Loire, in th ...

, and from 1897 to 1907 for

Schneider et Cie Schneider may refer to: Hospital * Schneider Children's Medical Center of Israel People *Schneider (surname) Companies and organizations * G. Schneider & Sohn, a Bavarian brewery company * Schneider Rundfunkwerke AG, the former owner of the D ...

Le Creusot Le Creusot () is a Communes of France, commune and industrial town in the Saône-et-Loire Departments of France, department, Regions of France, region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, eastern France. The inhabitants are known as Creusotins. Formerl ...

320 mm naval guns

Canet developed a 38 cal naval gun, an extremely powerful weapon for its time, specifically for the export market. The gun was first selected by the

Spanish Navy The Spanish Navy or officially, the Armada, is the maritime branch of the Spanish Armed Forces and one of the oldest active naval forces in the world. The Spanish Navy was responsible for a number of major historic achievements in navigation, ...

in 1884 as part of a large naval expansion program which called for six new

battleship A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. It dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The term ''battleship'' came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ...

s. The Spanish armaments firm Hontoria obtained a manufacturing license to produce the weapon, but due to budgetary reasons, only one vessel, the , was completed. Canet was more successful in sales to the

Empire of Japan The also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II 1947 constitution and subsequent fo ...

, when the gun was selected by the French military advisor and

naval architect This is the top category for all articles related to architecture and its practitioners. {{Commons category, Architecture occupations Design occupations Architecture, Occupations ...

Louis-Émile Bertin Louis-Émile Bertin (23 March 1840 – 22 October 1924) was a French naval engineer, one of the foremost of his time, and a proponent of the "Jeune École" philosophy of using light, but powerfully armed warships instead of large battleships. ...

as the

main battery A main battery is the primary weapon or group of weapons around which a warship is designed. As such, a main battery was historically a gun or group of guns, as in the broadsides of cannon on a ship of the line. Later, this came to be turreted ...

of the , new type of cruiser he had designed in 1887. The usage was consistent with the

Jeune École The ''Jeune École'' ("Young School") was a strategic naval concept developed during the 19th century. It advocated the use of small, heavily armed vessels to combat larger battleships, and the use of commerce raiders to cripple the trade of the r ...

philosophy, which advocated placing overwhelming firepower (strong guns,

torpedo A modern torpedo is an underwater ranged weapon launched above or below the water surface, self-propelled towards a target, and with an explosive warhead designed to detonate either on contact with or in proximity to the target. Historically, su ...

es) on relatively small ships. This philosophy was of great interest to the

Imperial Japanese Navy The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN; Kyūjitai: Shinjitai: ' 'Navy of the Greater Japanese Empire', or ''Nippon Kaigun'', 'Japanese Navy') was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945, when it was dissolved following Japan's surrender ...

, which lacked the resources at the time to purchase modern

pre-dreadnought Pre-dreadnought battleships were sea-going battleships built between the mid- to late- 1880s and 1905, before the launch of in 1906. The pre-dreadnought ships replaced the ironclad battleships of the 1870s and 1880s. Built from steel, prote ...

s. The guns supplied to Japan equipped the cruisers , , and . Each gun weighed 67 tons, and had a barrel long, firing a long projectile with weight of (or high explosive) for an effective range of . The guns proved only marginally successful during the

First Sino-Japanese War The First Sino-Japanese War (25 July 1894 – 17 April 1895) was a conflict between China and Japan primarily over influence in Korea. After more than six months of unbroken successes by Japanese land and naval forces and the loss of the po ...

, due to a slow rate of fire, and numerous mechanical problems. The guns could not be aimed abeam, as their weight would cause the ship to roll over when fired. In combat, gunners were able to fire only around one shot per hour due to the time it took to reload.

Other guns

M.Canet is also known for the development of the Schneider-Canet gun system for 75 mm iron BL

mountain guns Mountain guns are artillery pieces designed for use in mountain warfare and areas where usual wheeled transport is not possible. They are generally capable of being taken apart to make smaller loads for transport by horses, humans, mules, tractor ...

, and rapid-fire 120 mm and 152 mm guns.

References

Bibliography

* *

External links

The Canet gun
{{Commons category, Canet artillery Naval guns of France Artillery of France 320 mm artillery