coastalartillery

I hoped this was the same gun as in a Phillips Collection (PhM) photo, but it isn't. Gun expert required!

beachcomber australia Not the same gun but a great comparison nonetheless. What interesting contraptions...

seen & admired in:

I doubt that this gun was at Middle Head, as the Middle Head guns are quie well docume ted. More likely to be at South Head. See www.panoramio.com/photo_explorer#view=photo&position=... note that the way the gun is now mounted at South Head the carriage is back to front.

Other possibility: this gun is a 9in 12 ton RML at Georges Heights (Not 'Middle Head')

Fort Wadsworth, Richmond County, New York. On Staten Island.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Wadsworth This photo was printed in The Sunday Oregonian, March 25, 1917, SECTION FIVE, Image 67 with the caption: "Big guns at Fort Wadsworth guard the entrance to the harbor of New York" oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn83045782/1917-03-25/ed-1/se...

Thanks to both of you for this information. We'll add some of it to the record the next time we update.

This is a curious scene as disappearing guns of this type were probably considered obsolete by 1917, and the wood platform at the breech would prevent it from working, as the gun would rock backward and down when fired. Compare to a similar battery being fired at nearby Fort Hamilton some years earlier (PPOC: www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ggb2004001933/ and www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ggb2004001939/ )

Wow

It appears to be a 10" coastal defense gun on a "disappearing" mounting, where the gun would fire from the raised (above a parapet) position, then the recoil would swing the gun back and down, where it would be invisible to the enemy.

Thanks! We'll change the information in the source data and reload the description.

I'm not so sure it's a 10-inch gun now that I've seen this photograph: www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2496403839 which has as the caption, "Aiming 14" gun -- Sandy Hook" Looks like a very similar gun to the one pictured here - and I think that the Sandy Hook emplacement would have been the closest to New York, and hence most newsworthy to the Bain service. However I'm not sure that Sandy Hook had a gun as big as a 14-incher. We'll have to do some more research.

Aha, you could be right. Also, 12' was a common size of gun on the disappearing mounts. In my print coastal defense references, there are many similar pics of 12" disappearing guns from the Endicott period. We need a real artillery geek to weigh in!