soc.history.war.world-war-ii

In article
<47c506e9$0$27303$5a62ac22@per-qv1-newsreader-01.iinet.net.au>,
gsinclairnb@froggy.com.au (Geoffrey Sinclair) wrote:

> Oh good another Eunometic declared result, the gun is downgraded

Besides as I said in my last post no 2pdr had a MV of 650m/s anyway.

> It would be good to define medium AA for a start, 2, 3 or 4 inch?

Medium AA was defined as weapon to fill the gap between the maximum
effective height of light AA and below the point where heavy AA
mountings lacked the angular speed to track aircraft. Both Britain and
Germany tried to build this but failed to produce satisfactory weapons.
Britis development was based on the 47mm (6pdr) coastal artillery
weapon. Germany produced guns in 50 and 55mm calibres. IIRC the Germans
mounted a few single 50mm mounts on ships. The 3 inch AA gun was
designated as heavy AA in British records.

By accepted definitions nobody had medium AA in general service during
WW2, god knows what Eunomotic thinks medium AA was.

> Ah I see, some of the RN and RAF radars were based on British
> army work, which became all RN radars were based on the work.

All British RADARS were developed by the same organisation starting
with the Chain Home at the experimental station at Bawdsey. As a result
there was a lot of overlap between Naval and Army equipment. Come to
that there was overlap between Navy and RAF systems. This was mainly in
transmitters and recievers.

> What a really strange reply, perhaps examples of this revamping
> could be given?

Presumably he is refering to the rebuilds on some BB due to the
extension of the building holiday in 1930. The County class crusers were
also rebuilt to take advantage of the fact they came out underweight
with aircraft facilities and extra AA added.

Things he has failed to mention was that the heavy and light AA fitted
to RN ships at the start of the war was much the same for ship size as
that on KM ships. The 4.5 inch fired the same weight shell and had a
better performance than the US 5/38 and German triaxial mountings did
not take kindly to shipping water.

Ken Young