Naval Hotchkiss revolving cannon

I have previously posted about the Hotchkiss Revolving Cannon (here) design along with pics of a nice museum piece.  Yesterday I came across a nice example of a Naval version on a pedestal mounting at the Royal Australian Navy's Heritage Collection at the Garden Island naval base, in Sydney.

RML 9 inch Armstrong Fortress Guns, Fort Gellibrand, Melbourne

These 9 inch (228mm) Rifled Muzzle Loading guns are 12 ton Armstrong Fortress guns (300 pounder guns - actual weight of shot was 256lb). With a 9 man crew, rate of fire was approx one round every 3 minutes with either solid palliser shot or exploding shell ammunition, cast in water cooled moulds to harden the tip to enhance armour penetration. Effective range approx 5000 metres

This pair are situated in Williamstown (near my parents' house), an inner suburb of Melbourne, and cover the final approaches to the port. These guns (Nos 1679 and 1683) purchased by Sir George Vernon in 1866 to upgrade the existing 32 pounder smoothbore guns at Fort Gellibrand, constructed in 1855 during the Crimean War "Invasion Scare", to cover the southern approaches to the harbour.  

The Point Gellibrand shore batteries were first developed as part of an immediate defensive system for the city and port of Melbourne. The strategy for the defence of the port of Melbourne at this time was based on a number of shore batteries inside Port Phillip Bay. 

From the Military History and Heritage of Victoria website here: http://www.mhhv.org.au/?p=2351

"1869 Sir William Armstrong rifled muzzle-loading fortress gun"
- Military History & Heritage Victoria

This pic appears to be the same location as the one above it - quite unchanged really for well over a century earlier (other than a fence!) 

The first permanent battery was built by penal labour on Gellibrand’s Point in 1855. Convicts from the hulks moored offshore were employed on these works and accommodated in an old military barracks at the Fort. The buried central magazine at the Fort dates from this period. Further gun emplacements were added by private contracts, along the foreshore in the 1860’s."

The importance of the Fort batteries declined from the 1890s with the advent of new technologies allowing enemy ships to stand further out and shell Melbourne at range. Accordingly, they were replaced by new outer harbour defences at Queenscliff and Point Nepean, though they were still used for gunnery practice. Local residents, through the Williamstown Town Council, complained to the Acting Minister for Defence that the concussion from the guns damaged windows, walls and foundations of buildings. 

When the cannons were relegated to garden ornaments

Now deemed not just obsolescent but also a public nuance, the Armstrong Cannons were moved from Fort Gellibrand to the Williamstown Gardens in 1906 as static displays, where they stayed until 1970 when the development of the Esplanade saw them taken to their current position.

"Williamstown cannons being fired in 1988" (assumed for the Australian Bicentenary celebrators).
This was the last time the guns were fired

In addition to coastal fortifications, this type of gun was also typically fitted to smaller British ironclads and as the secondary broadside armament on larger battleships. The primary ammunition was solid Palliser shot, primarily employed for Armour Piercing work. Initial design was 1865 and 3 successive upgrades were implemented.

http://www.mhhv.org.au/?p=2351

Two additional Armstrong guns, also originally emplaced at Fort Gellibrand, are displayed in another nearby Melbourne suburb where they were relocated in 1910.

https://historicalragbag.com/2024/07/

https://www.gleneira.vic.gov.au/our-city/history-and-heritage/our-monuments-and-sites/cannons-in-hopetoun-gardens

Nordenfelt Gun

A very Happy New Year to one and all!

As the next instalment in my weaponry posts, here are some snaps I took of a 4 barrelled Nordenfelt gun I came across at the Tower of London recently.

The Business end - note this particular gun was captured from the Ottomans at Gallipoli 

The organ gun design of this weapon was patented in 1873 and ammunition was gravity fed from a hopper above the breach (see diagram below) and fired in volleys.   The Nordenfelt came in various calibers, many of them .45 small arms, but this particular version is the larger 1-inch model which fired solid shot (explosive shot being banned by treaty).  Primarily designed for torpedo boat defence, it also had an excellent capability to suppress shore targets.

This is how the two man crew operated with the gunner loading and firing while the gun captain aimed via the elevation and training hand wheels

And here is a deck mounted version in action - this pic was taken on the Australian monitor HMVS Cerberus

And if you want to go really mad for the Nordenfelt, here is a copy of the drill manual used by the Victorian Navy: Handbook of the 1" 4-barrel Nordenfelt gun, 1894

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More facts from the Old British Guns site here: http://oldbritishguns.com/the-nordenfelt-gun

The 19th Century saw a proliferation of hand operated machine guns, that was kicked off by the success of the Gatling Gun. In the beginning, the Nordenfelt  gun had 4 to 10 barrels operated by a crank on the right side, using back and forth motion as opposed to the Gatlings rotary handle. Invented and built by the Swedes, the British Navy adopted it in the 1870's, mainly in calibers as large as 25mm for use against the new torpedo boat threat. 

However, in rifle calibers, the gun can keep up a semblance of automatic fire by how quickly the handle is operated and the ammunition kept supplied. In a test by the British, the gun demonstrated 3000 rounds a minute with no stoppages. During the Sudan War in the 1880s, the Nordenfelt was mounted on General Gordons Nile riverboat fleet, to good effect. In the end the Maxim gun replaced this, as well as the Gatlings in British service, when the Nordenfelt Guns and Ammunition Company was absorbed by Hiram Maxim in 1888. The Nordenfelt was fielded by the British navy to counter the new torpedo boats, which were quickly spreading to all navies in the late 1870's. A small fast steam powered boat loaded with torpedo's could take down a capital ship, and losing some of these cheap boats in the attempt would pose little loss for the user.  In the end, the defense against the torpedo boat became a new class of fast fighting ship, the destroyer.

The single barrel Nordenfelt gun. The more interesting of the Nordenfelt guns was one that was ignored by British military leaders. The small single barrel gun was only 13 or 14 pounds in weight, not much more than a Martini-Henry. This could have been the predecessor of the Bren gun or a squad fielded mobile machine gun. The navy thought of the rifle caliber Nordenfelt as a gun to sweep the decks of an enemy ship prior to boarding, which with the big guns of the time was highly unlikely anymore. The army only thought of the machine gun as a defense for their artillery, or just an adjunct to the infantry in fending off human wave attacks. If the British military had been forward thinking, this could have advanced tactics by at least 40 years.

US Naval War College Museum

I recently had the opportunity it peruse the Museum of the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.  The Museum itself is housed in the original War College Building, which was adequate for the student body in 1884 but new facilities were soon built to accommodate the expanding program.

As the original college building, there is where Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, USN, second War College President (1886-1889) and subsequently a renowned naval historian, first delivered his lectures on sea power—lectures which were first published in 1890 as the epochal The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783.

While relatively small, the Museum has some great artefacts, particularly noting that Newport was also the US Navy's torpedo facility and training school.  Here are a couple that caught my eye:

The US Navy Protected Cruiser USS Chicago. 

The USS Stiletto (1885) - wooden torpedo boat used for experimental torpedo development 

US Navy Torpedo Boat No 1: USS Cushing (1890).  The first steel hulled, ocean going TB

USS Cushing

Newport has been key in USN torpedo development

Full size Fish and Howell model torpedoes - nose aspect.  Quite different to the better known Whitehead design

Full size Fish and Howell model torpedoes - stern aspect

And finally, some interesting relics from the War Plan Orange wargaming which was conducted at the US Navy War College.  In fact, all the Rainbow series war plans were developed, gamed and refined here.  It is truly the home of Naval Wargaming in the US.

https://www.usnwc.edu/About/NWC-Museum.aspx

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_War_College_Museum

Early Machine Guns

To add to my earlier posts of real life VSF period weapons, I offer the following early model machine guns:

Colt model M1895 Machine Gun (USMC Museum)

German Maxim Gun: note the padded knee rests on the rear of the tripod for gunner comfort and correct positioning (USMC Museum)

A different Model 1910 Maxim Gun with Gunshield and wheels which saw service in the Soviet Army of WW2 (NRA Museum)

French Machine Gun (USMC Museum)

Hotchkiss Revolving Cannon

Second in this series of period machineries of death...

A step up from the Gatling Gun (see here), which fired small arms ammunition, this Hotchkiss Revolving Cannon fired 37mm projectiles from its 5 barrels.  This version is mounted for field work, but it was frequently used on naval platforms, especially lighter craft and gunboats.  With the gun shield discarded, it could also be packed onto two mules.

Manufactured in France, 1880

Capable of around between 45 and 70 rounds per minute, it was accurate out to around 2,000 yards.  Shrapnel and canister ammunition was available but these appear to have been restricted to defensive mounts in fortifications and bursting ammunition was more standard.

 Detail of the business end

Here is an example of a Naval Deck mounting (not my pic)

The Hotchkiss also came in larger calibre - 40, 47 and 53mm with increasing weight and reduced portability.

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Additional detail from Old British Guns website, here: http://oldbritishguns.com/the-37mm-hotchkiss-revolving-cannon

The Hotchkiss revolving cannon was a 37mm hand operated machine gun that was considered light enough to travel with cavalry, although not for the British Army. A light (well sort of, around 1000 pounds) , mobile and fast firing artillery piece, it could fire up to 40 explosive or steel shot rounds per minute. With a range of 2000 yards (practical range, max was 4000 yards but wind and other things could upset accuracy), it could easily outrange rifle fire. The British Navy also adopted it around 1875 for use against the ever present torpedo boat threat, but the caliber was considered too small to be effective. It was felt to be comparable to the Nordenfelt and as in that gun larger calibers were later adopted.

It was developed by an American, Benjamin Berkeley Hotchkiss, living in France. He was approached by French officers looking for a fast firing gun, and it was soon adopted by all the major Powers, including the U.S., which went for it in a big way.

The mechanism differed from the Gatling Gun in that there were multiple barrels but only one striker, bolt and extractor. A center cam wheel is turned by the hand crank, which both rotates the barrels and holds them in place during different phases. Each rotation of the crank loads one shell, fires one shell and extracts one shell. The cam gear is cleverly shaped to turn another gear in the left side of the breech block which is pinned to 2 toothed shafts. The upper toothed shaft strips off a shell from the magazine and loads it in the chamber, while the bottom toothed shaft extracts a shell and dumps it out the bottom. The firing pin strikes the shell when the barrel is at the bottom of it's rotation.

The ammunition for the gun is a self contained cartridge, made up of brass wrapped into a cylinder with a solid center primed head, as in early British rifle bullets. An explosive shell and a canister shell were available, Canister consisted of steel shot, not unlike a giant shotgun shell, and was murderous against groups of the enemy. The shells weighed around a pound, were 5 inches long, and the tin or zinc magazine held 10. To unload the gun after firing consisted of removing the firing pin, rotating the barrels backwards with the handcrank and prying out the shells with a screwdriver, or pushing them out with a ramrod. Standing downstream from the gun had to give the gunner a moment of pause, as with unloading the Gatlings.

Some Hotchkiss guns were mounted on British ships, although they really preferred the Nordenfelt gun. Some guns were used in the Boer War, and at least one was present at the seige of Mafeking.