1.1-inch Quadruple Mount Gun

1.1-inch Quadruple Mount Gun. U.S.S. North Carolina. , Not in Original Location , This weapon is a 1.1 inch anti-aircraft gun. When built, North Carolina had four quadruple (4 barrels) mounts placed several levels above the main deck: two on each side of the Ship, one pair forward, one pair aft (towards the back)., Each gun had a crew of 15 men: gun captain, pointer, trainer, sightsetter, right and left cradleman, right and left loader plus six passers and a repairman. The nearby director had a crew of 3: officer, pointer and trainer. The loaders fed ammunition into the W-shaped cradles. Each barrel had a cradle that held two 34-pound metal clips containing 8 rounds each. The cradle rocked back and forth. Once the guns started firing, the projectiles dropped one at a time into the gun's receiver. When the clip was empty, the heavy weight of the full clip caused the cradle to swing and the loaded clip started to feed into the receiver. Meanwhile, the empty clip was removed and the loader replaced it with a new clip. With a practical rate of 100 rounds per minute, clips were replaced every five seconds., A Mark 44 Director aimed and fired the gun. It was a basic optical director, so it did not contain the lead computing components of later directors. It did, however, remove the operator from the weapon's noise and smoke. It served as the basis for future development of remote control directors for antiaircraft weapons such as the Mark 51 used with the Ship's 40mm guns., Following world war one, airplanes rapidly improved, becoming faster and capable of carrying much heavier bomb loads. Nations scrambled to develop better machine guns since the .30-caliber and .50-caliber machine guns were not effective. A new weapon, the 1.1-inch gun, was rushed into development with production beginning in 1934. They were not available in quantity until 1940 and by then they were inadequate against the aircraft in service. They also had a tendency to overheat and jam., The Navy began to replace these inadequate guns with Swiss Oerlikon 20mm guns and Swedish Bofors 40mm guns., The Ship's twelve .50-caliber and four 1.1-inch mounts were removed at Pearl Harbor in November 1942. The Ship received six additional 20mm guns (she already had 40 in place) and ten Swedish Bofors quadruple 40mm gun mounts. Five more 40mm guns mounts were installed by November 1943. , , The Battleship acquired this gun for display. Originally, there were two .50-caliber guns mounted here. They were replaced by a quadruple 40mm mount and a 20mm mount. , , Statistics , effective horizontal range: 3,000 yards , rate of fire: 150 rounds per minute, average 100 , weight of projectile and powder: 1.9 rounds , gun crew: 15 men, Crew Memories , We had about four 1.1 guns and they were very faulty in their recoil and ejection system so that it required a great effort on the part of the gunner's mates to keep them firing. , , John E. Kirkpatrick, Air Defense Officer, At the time of the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, we had the 1.1 guns and the 1.1 was the diameter of the projectile. The gunner's mates deserve Congressional Medals of Honor in my book because many of them sat on the mount. It was an exposed mount much like the 40mm guns, with mallets hammering the breeches because those things would jam. You didn't know if the thing would blow up in their faces or not. Their job was to keep those guns working. You think of these individual acts of heroism that go unrecorded. I think that was the nice thing about the crew of the North Carolina: a job was to be done and they did it. , , Larry Resen, principal assistant, Air Defense, The Navy intended to re-arm ships with the new 20mm and 40mm guns as the weapons became available. They never became available to my ship, USS Connolly, DE-306 (destroyer escort). For over two years I suffered with a weapon that you could never be sure of what it would do. On Christmas Eve 1944, that gun took off firing and spent 64 rounds before it stopped. I was called to the bridge and asked by our Captain, "What happened?" The only reply I could think of was, "Captain, I think it just got the Christmas Spirit." Needless to say that did not go over very well. In all fairness, we fired thousands of rounds and it was a very important part of our anti-aircraft defenses. The biggest headache was maintaining it. All in all, I would say it had a mind of its own. , , Samuel Saylor, USS Connolly