Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Drydock - Episode 116" video.

  1. wrt the question about barrel life, Drac didn't touch on the issue of relining worn barrels, which was routinely done by WWI, if not sooner. There is a 1915 edition USN Midshipman's text book on Google books that describes the process. Initially, guns were built without liners, so the barrel had to be bored out to provide room for the liner. In the boring operation, we are talking about a feed rate for the boring head of about 6" per hour. On a USN 14"/45 from a Pennsylvania class BB, with a bore length of 630", that means that one operation takes 105 hours, or a bit under 4 and a half days, running continuously, and several cuts are made before reaching the finish dimension. The gun factories changed to building new guns with liners already in place. Then the process for refurbishing the gun was to put the gun in an oven heating the outside, to make it expand, while running cold water through the bore to cause the liner to shrink, to loosen it. Then a hydraulic press was used to push the worn liner out. Then a new liner was fitted the same way. Initially, liners were made with the same outside diameter their entire length, but it was found that sometimes they refused to come out, and had to be bored out. Then they hit on the idea of putting a slight taper on the liner, which eased removal.
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  2.  @prussianhill  offhand, my suspicion is the PoW and Repulse were no more than a speedbump to the IJN. If they had not been sunk that day, they would have been sunk on another day, unless they got out of there.
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  3.  @kalinmir  The guns were not outrageously long, some 45 feet/13.75M. That is not unheard of for shipping by rail. I have seen photos of guns that size shipping from the US Naval gun factory on rail cars. The turrets are another matter, due to their width. My first thought is river barge, but from Plzen you end up on the Elbe, ending up at the North Sea. Entirely the wrong direction from Trieste.
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  4.  @seppokajantie9588  I just did a comment on this post, outside of this Q&A thread, on relining barrels. Once the new liner is in place, restoring the original inside diameter to the barrel, new rifling is cut in the liner.
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