Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Drydock - Episode 134" video.
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@TheOhgodineedaname You didn't say when that manual was written, but I'm expecting it was talking about cordite or US smokeless powder. Black powder burns fast, so peak pressure is in the chamber, and pressure falls as the shell moves down the tube. Smokeless powder burns slower, so it is still burning, and adding pressure, as the shell moves down the tube. When the USN switched to smokeless at the turn of the century, the gun designers did not understand this. The result was chamber pressure within expected limits, but the muzzle and chase blowing off the gun because the pressure down the tube was far higher than it would have been with black powder. If the shell is only a quarter to halfway down the tube, and is not instantly dislodged by the charge, then you have the combustion gasses compressed in a quarter to half of the tube, instead of distributed through the full length of the tube.
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wrt the 12" gun proposal at First London, I would say this was aimed directly at Italy, and, secondarily, at France. While First London overrode the replacement schedule in the WNT, and extended the battleship construction holiday through 1936, Italy and France each had two good until used licenses to build battleships that took effect in 1927 and 1929. At that point in time, the largest guns the RM had in service were 12", and the largest France had were 13.4". Even with the 12" proposal failing, I have read that the UK brought a great deal of pressure to bear on France to build the Dunkerques well below the treaty limits. This is clearly intended as a means to keep the Nelsons, QEs and Rs relevant, by leveraging the treaty to, as Drac correctly says, force Italy and France to build hilariously undersized and underarmed battleships. Meanwhile, the Versailles Treaty kept Germany down to the Deutschlands, with their 11" guns.
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