In his younger days, my former coworker, Mike, was in the Army. This was back when we were still embroiled in the Cold War, and he spent several tours near potential ground zero in West Germany. Considering their mission of halting a mechanized Soviet incursion, the artillery pieces his unit had in its arsenal were massive. He told me some of the rounds they could send downrange had restrictions on how many could be fired in a given time frame. Apparently, the backblast from them could cause concussions. Luckily, the only long term damage Mike incurred was a bit of hearing loss. I always seemed to be able to surprise him if I approached from his bad hearing side.
As big as Mike's field pieces were, they paled in comparison to naval artillery. Naval architects were free from the Army's restrictions of "How the bloody deuce am I going to move this thing?" Given some admiral's wish list for gun size, shipbuilders just had to design a big enough ship around it.
The first live-fire from a Naval gun I experienced was on board a frigate, the USS Truett. During an exercise, several salvos were fired from her 5" deck gun. I was watching from the bridge less than 50 yards away and I could feel every one of them in my chest.
Those were pea shooters compared to the 16" guns of the battleship, USS Alabama. On one tour, I broke away from the crowd and wound up deep in the bowels of the hull where I ran into one of the curators, a retired Navy guy. I saw him eyeball the "Old Ironsides" patch on my jacket, and he took me for a kindred spirit rather than typical tourist flotsam. I followed him on a private tour to areas normally not accessible to the public. We wound up in fire control where he stood me in front of a panel. "Guess what these are." I looked down and saw a series of levers, each topped with a squeeze handle.
"Are those triggers?"
"Yep. Those are what makes the big guns go 'boom'." I had no idea how far I was from Alabama's turrets, but I can imagine the noise in fire control would be deafening, and you'd definitely feel the concussion deep in your bones.
The biggest guns the Navy ever installed were on the Iowa-class battleships. The last of these to fire her batteries in support of US ground forces was the USS Wisconsin. She was capable of sending 2600 pound shells a distance of 23 miles. That's like hurling a Volkswagen over the visible horizon. How's that for fahrvergnügen?
Last fall, after the last day of Rock-tober, Andrea and I attended a downrigging festival up the road in Chestertown, MD. Before the rigging on the regional fleet of sailing ships was secured, or downrigged, for the winter, they took the public on one last daysail of the season. We were fortunate to be aboard the Lynx as her skipper was a bit of a rogue. As we approached the rest of the sailing fleet tied up at the dock, he ordered the ship's cannon to be primed for action. When he asked for volunteers for this mission of mischief, you can bet your belaying pin I was front and center.
The little deck cannon could probably only accommodate a 3-inch cannonball, but it was a beast to move using only block and tackle rigging. After a few minutes of grunting, we managed to run the barrel out the open gun port. Slowly and silently, the skipper maneuvered the Lynx until we were abreast of the anchored fleet. On his command, a deckhand touched off the powder charge. Seconds later came the thunderous report.
Holy cow! I felt that one. For a tiny little thing, that cannon packed a heck of a shockwave, and I had to brace myself against its push. The gun carriage recoiled backward and strained against its lines. Black powder smoke filled the air and our lungs, and onshore, the pollywog tourists not fortunate to be onboard the Lynx were scurrying for cover. I was gleefully taking in all the commotion like the Dread Pirate Roberts incarnate when I saw Andrea trying to get my attention. I couldn't hear what she was asking over the ringing in my ears, but the big, goofy grin plastered on my face told her what she needed to know.
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