Tag Archives: disappearing gun

108 years ago today: 356 millimeters of BOOM

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Here we see an early Watervliet-made 14-inch (356mm)/34 caliber M1907 “disappearing” seacoast gun of the U.S. Army Coastal Artillery at Fort Hancock’s Sandy Hook Proving Ground on the New Jersey coast, 27 November 1912.

Photo: George C. Bain Collection. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Official caption:

“The first coast defense gun of 14” bore has just been tested at Sandy Hook. 14” were also on U.S. Navy ships and the Army has been working for a long time to adapt that size of the weapon to the coast defense in Manila Harbor.”

The gun was lit off for the first time the same day.

“In the first test of the gun, six shots were fired in three minutes and forty-five seconds. The projectile fired weights 1660 pound and is 65 inches long. The only point at which the new gun has not the advantage is in the trajectory point at which is more curved and the speed of the shot which is somewhat less.”

Photo: George C. Bain Collection. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

With a range of 25,000 yards, a full dozen M1907s on disappearing carriages were deployed overseas, four in Hawaii and eight in the Panama Canal Zone.

By comparison, the best U.S. Naval guns afloat in 1912, the 12″/50 Mark 7s aboard the newly-built USS Wyoming (B-32) and USS Arkansas (BB-33), fired an 870-pound shell to a theoretical maximum of 24,000 yards, meaning that the Army could out-gun the Navy until at least the 14″/45 Mark 1 guns of the USS New York (B-34) brought parity in 1914. It was not until the Colorado-class battleships, with their 16″/45cal guns firing a 2,100-pound shell to 40,000 yards, that the sea service managed to turn the tables in 1921.

In the 1950s, all of the M1907s were removed from Army service, leaving only their mounting pits behind.

US Army document World War I Fortifications of the Panama Canal – 14-Inch DC Gun Emplacement (Battery BUELL), shown in 1965.

Eight further examples, using a longer version of the same gun, the M1910 14″/40cal, were mounted on the same M1907 disappearing carriage, and emplaced at Fort Frank and Fort Hughes in Manila Bay as well as Fort MacArthur outside of Los Angeles.

Four more 14″/40s, dubbed the Model 1910, were emplaced on twin turning M1909 mounts in the “concrete battleship” that was Fort Drum in Manila Bay, as well.

The M1909 mount being tested at Sandy Hook Proving Ground, New Jersey before shipment to the PI. Only two of these mounts were ever constructed and, to the credit of the Army, are both still in existence despite an epic trial by combat.

And just like that, it was gone

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Below is a 10-inch (254mm) Watervliet M1888MI rifle on an M1896 disappearing carriage at Battery Jasper on Fort Moultrie Sullivan’s Island during World War II, as manned by the U.S. Army’s Coastal Artillery. The battery was named after SGT. William Jasper, 2nd South Carolina Regiment, who, during the attack of the British fleet on Fort Sullivan in 1776, heroically restored to the fort the flag which had been shot away by a ball from a RN ship.

Per Ft. Moultrie NPS:

Battery Jasper on Sullivan’s Island was completed in 1898 and boasted four 10-inch guns mounted on “disappearing” carriages. A 55-ton counterweight moved the gun to its firing position en barbette. The recoil from firing the 571-pound shell lowered the gun behind the protective, 80-foot thick embankment where it could safely be serviced and reloaded. Though it took 43 men to load and fire a gun, a skilled crew could aim and fire it every 30 seconds. The 10-inch disappearing could fire an armor-piercing shot 8.5 miles.

Today, there are no 10-inch guns at Battery Jasper. They were taken out of service and scrapped for the war effort in 1943. However, visitors can tour one of the gun positions and follow the steps the crew would have taken to fire one of these impressive guns.