`  U.S.S. TEXAS - BB35

14" Guns

Texas was equipped with ten 14"/45 caliber guns.  This meant that they had a 14" bore and the barrel length was 45 times the bore, or a length of 630" (52.5 ft.).  The guns fired both armor piercing and high capacity shells depending upon whether they were going against hardened targets or softer buildings and troops.

Texas was built at a time when effective gun range was limited to line of sight, ranging equipment had limited accuracy and the effects of subtle variables could not be calculated.  Because of this, there was little need for the guns to have a range beyond about 23,000 yards, or about 13 miles.  Therefore, economy of design dictated that the mounts not be capable of elevating their guns more than 15 degrees.  As spotter aircraft came into use and long range accuracy improved, later ships used the same guns in mounts designed to allow elevations up to and exceeding 30 degrees, giving them ranges of 20 miles and more.

When compared to the Iowa Class ships commissioned 30 years later, the turret and ammunition handling systems on Texas are very primitive.  Unlike newer automated systems, powder bags and projectiles were manhandled many times on their way to the gunhouses.  At the very least, each powder bag was handled by six different men to get it from the magazine to the gun breech.  Projectiles were lifted, nose down, with manual chain hoists and pulled by hand along overhead tracks to the lifts.  They were moved to the shell deck (upper handling room) where they were either transferred to the upper hoist or temporarily stored.  Considering that each gun required 4 bags per shot fired at a maximum rate of once every 45 seconds, feeding the guns was hard, exhausting work.  See the link to an animation below.

 

The photos to the left show the guns of turrets 1 and 2.  The right photo shows a stack of high capacity projectiles.

The simple animation demonstrates movement of projectiles and powder bags from the magazines to the guns.  Be sure image size is full size to see it cleanly if you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or newer.

The turrets were only the tip of the iceberg.  There was a massive structure attached to the bottom of it that contained powder and projectile hoists that moved ammunition from the magazines to the guns.  The following diagram describes how projectiles and powder were stored, moved and loaded into the guns.  Click on individual portions of the diagram to go to a photo page of the desired space.