8"/55 Rapid Fire Gun & Turret | US Navy instructional film

The 8"/55 calibre gun (eight-inch-fifty-five-calibre) was the main armament weapon of US Navy heavy cruisers during World War II.
These were fitted in a variety of mounts with several different types of loading mechanisms during their 28-year career. The final (depicted in this training video) was a self-loading Mark 16 triple mount weighing about 20 tons, first fitted on the USS Des Moines.
Separate projectile and powder casings were loaded separately. The 35kg smokeless powder pack propelled a 152kg projectile at some 760 meters per second over a range of about 27km. The useful barrel life was about 780 rounds per gun.

[@stephenrickstrew7237]

Wow … what an excellent restoration Thanks for Bringing this one to us ..!

[@bjturon]

Great video, it's too bad the USN didn't stick with these guns for some of the bigger "cruisers" of the Cold War.

[@forthleft]

Lovely work. I had no idea.

[@Lamprolign]

Thank you for posting this film.

[@mikebrase5161]

Take a drink every time he says stucture..

[@brucemcpherson8832]

Only the cruisers Des Moines, Salem and Newport News used the Mark 16 self loading guns as shown in the video. All other US 8 inch gun cruisers used earlier model, non self loading guns

[@downunderrob]

Wasn't it the Newport News that had the accident where one of the guns blew up?

[@cassidy109]

@@downunderrob That is correct. In 1972 while conducting shore bombardment off the coast of Vietnam, one of the 8-inch guns on the Newport News suffered a premature detonation of one of its projectiles while still in the barrel. If memory serves me correct the culprit was a faulty fuse. Probably worth noting that the USS St. Paul also suffered a turret explosion while conducting shore bombardment off the coast of Korea. The St. Paul was a traditional bag propellant gun though, not the semi-fixed auto loading guns like on the Des Moines class.

[@rickstone6633]

Was a crew member of Newport News. 12 shipmates lost in that explosion.

[@willl7780]

@@rickstone6633 dam...thats awful man...

[@SuperDriver379]

A single turret of like this inside of gun range would convert any modern warship into a submarine with the longest endurance in human history. Nothing is armored like it was when this was in use.

[@theblackbear211]

Thanks for sharing.

[@cheez71]

Is there by any chance a documentary on the 5"/38?

[@ArmouredCarriers]

If I stumble across one in the various archives ... yes.

[@TJeffersonForPresident2024]

It would have really been interesting if the Navy had these ships in 1942/43 for the Solomons Islands campaign.

[@kebabsvein1]

Hi, do you have access to the same video but for the automatic 6`/47 gun on the Worcester cruisers?

[@ArmouredCarriers]

I've not yet found one. Though I'll keep an eye out for it.

[@jeffren70]

How is the primer installed?

[@joshuathom1398]

Battleships would fire a salvo and watch the splash to know what corrections were needed to the firing solution. These guns fire so fast that they would not have been able to do that. This ship would have been able to fire 120 shells per minute. So what did they do for fire control with these guns if salvo and correct after splash were not an option?

[@RT-mm8rq]

They did have an early form of radar directed gun control and I'm sure they wouldn't rapid untill they had thier target bracketed. Besides at that time an actual ship to ship gun battles had become less likely and big guns were put to good use in shore bombardment.