Where’s the banana for scale?
this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2025
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[OC] Projectile ring for ammunition inside the 16 inch main gun of the USS North Carolina
(lemmy.world)
And more importantly, why is that one in the back missing his hat?
Designated dud.
fucking AI at it again, duh
Photos like this are the spearhead of every propaganda campaign to soften the American opinion of war. I'm deeply sorry Venezuela. I didn't vote for this. No one did.
You got me. Donald Trump personally paid me $20 to take photos of a WW2 battleship and specifically post it here on Lemmy to influence the userbase. He told me if he loses the Lemmy support then his whole plan falls apart.
No you did it for free, fool.
I've already posted lots of military history that I've gone to the effort of traveling to see and document myself. I've posted this at whatever times I've had free to sort through it. Current news has never factored in to the timing of the posts. I am going to keep visiting historical sites and making posts about them. If you find a connection between historical sites and unrelated current events, that is out of my control.
plenty of people voted specifically for this
I am by no means an armaments expert but those look bigger than 16 inches
16 inches is the caliber, or the diameter of the shells.
The propellant is not shown here, and would be loaded separately in canvas bags behind these shells.
Is 16inches referring to the top point of the "bullet"? I've always wondered this as well.
For guns of this type 16 inches is the diameter of the barrel of the gun, measured from the lands.
The shell bodies are 16 inches, with the brass rings around them slightly wider to account for the grooves in the rifling.
Those look so much bigger than 16" oh my lord
Well you know what they say, the camera adds 10 lbs.
Your boyfriend was lying about its size.
Yeah, I was reading this thread thinking that 16” was the diameter of the bore of the gun barrel. Thanks for posting that!
I don't mean to confuse you, but yes it is the diameter of the bore. I specified from the lands since measuring land to land, or groove to groove diameter can result in different sizes.
You didn’t. I was thinking the earlier conversation was missing how the diameter was measured.
It’s long been a debate where you measure from
Base of the balls and the whole shaft
Christ sake man way to ruin the innuendo
Look man , I'm just saying it ain't no debate.
Battleships were an interesting chapter in naval history. They were first developed around 60 years before aircraft carriers, increasingly designed with the idea that they would be able to hit enemy targets while remaining out of range of returned fire. That ended up being an unrealistic expectation. Those 16 inch guns can lob a 1 ton shell nearly 24 miles but not very accurately at that range.
Battleships probably outlived their tactical usefulness. They were definitely good for projecting force. Few things say "I'm going to obliterate you" like a large, fast ship armed with 9 giant-ass canons.
The concept of a line of battle ship is really old -depends maybe on how you define weaponry. There were big ships with slingshots and trebuchets in ancient times. The first one matching the modern type was HMS Dreadnought in 1905, and the last was HMS Vanguard in 1945.
Development was really about deterrence more than anything, but then the planes came.
As for accuracy, the record for a hit at longest range is shared by Warspite and Scharnhorst, both hitting a target at 15 miles, also while steaming at high speed.
Are these supposed to be what you load into the giant guns for one of the uh... Mission types (?) in Helldivers? 🤔
They don't look that big in the game. They need to make those models bigger so I feel even stronger when I pick them up and sprint away from bugs.
I don't know much about Helldivers, but the Wiki says their artillery are 360mm, which is closer to 14 inch shells. Slightly smaller than the thread pic. The right two here:
From what I see of screenshots, those sizes still seem inflated. Something like a 155mm would be closer to the proportions somebody could fit on their shoulder.
Why did they use the same guy twice and then two different guys? Interesting haha
Even though those say AP on them, I'm pretty sure those are the heavier APBC shells used later.
The pictured shells are solid bodied all the way to the top fuze threading. There's no distinct ballistic cap, like with the below picture.
TIL. I always thought it was the opposite.
This picture is a totally different caliber, but it is a good illustration:
A "cap" on a round is a solid piece shaped to help with armor penetration, but the shape is not good for flight. So a "ballistic cap" is staked on top of it. A hat on a hat, if you will. In the smaller photo in the illustration is a general idea of how these rounds look at a distance.
Ahhh.
Ok, so then the real thing I'm learning here is that the shell is made out of the lighter, softer material to deliver the energy. They put the penetrator cap on, usually made of steel or some stronger heavier material, but it's thin so not significantly decreasing shell velocity. However, the shape of the penetrator allows for the energy to be delivered all at one precise spot, but it causes the flight characteristics to suck. To get the flight back, they add a thin lightweight material back over the penetrator that is negligible in terms of reducing the energy the penetrator delivers.
Cool
Almost.
The cap (the "penetrative cap" as the above picture calls it) protects the hardened tip of the shell itself, so that the tip doesn't deform immediately on impact with armor. Soft metal caps did exist and work, but hard metal caps became more common since the hard cap would survive a little bit longer and thus get the shell better positioned to penetrate by the cap hopefully going through the outer layer of armor before the tip on the shell came forward to penetrate the remaining armor.
BB-55 is such a nice museum now since the renovations a few years ago. Did you see any gators?
I assume those rounds are blanks?
They're randomly loaded. It's a little game they like to play.
It disgusts me