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A casemate is a fortified gun emplacement or armoured structure from which artillery are fired, in a fortification, warship, or armoured fighting vehicle.Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary
When referring to Ancient history, the term " casemate wall" means a double city wall with the space between the walls separated into chambers, which could be filled up to better withstand in case of siege (see .)
In its original early modern meaning, the term referred to a vaulted chamber in a fort, which may have been used for storage, accommodation, or artillery which could fire through an opening or embrasure. Although the outward faces of brick or masonry casemates proved vulnerable to advances in artillery performance, the invention of reinforced concrete allowed newer designs to be produced well into the 20th century. With the introduction of ironclad warships, the definition was widened to include a protected space for guns in a ship, either within the hull or in the lower part of the superstructure. Although the main armament of ships quickly began to be mounted in revolving , secondary batteries continued to be mounted in casemates; however, several disadvantages eventually also led to their replacement by turrets. In and other armored fighting vehicles lacking a turret for the main gun, the structure accommodating the gun is also called a casemate.
In the early 19th century, French military engineer Baron Haxo designed a free-standing casemate that could be built on the top of the rampart, to protect guns and gunners from the high-angle fire of mortars and . Civilwarfortifications.com
The advantages of casemated artillery were proved in the Crimean War of 1853–1856, when attempts by the Royal Navy to subdue the casemated Russian forts at Kronstadt were unsuccessful, while a casemated gun tower at Sevastopol, the Malakoff Tower, could only be captured by a surprise French infantry attack while the garrison was being changed.Hogg 1975, pp. 79–82 In the early 1860s, the British, apprehensive about a possible French invasion, fortified the naval dockyards of southern England with curved batteries of large guns in casemates, fitted with laminated iron shields tested to withstand the latest projectiles.Hogg 1975. pp. 87-89
However, in the American Civil War (1861–1865), the exposed masonry of casemate batteries was found to be vulnerable to modern rifled artillery; Fort Pulaski was breached in a few hours by only ten such guns. In contrast, hastily constructed earthworks proved much more resilient.Hogg 1975, p. 101 This led to casemates for artillery again falling out of favor. In continental Europe, they were often replaced by rotating gun turrets, but elsewhere large coastal guns were mounted in less expensive concrete gun pits or , sometimes using disappearing carriages to conceal the gun except at the moment of firing.Hogg 1975, p. 94-95 Casemates for secure barrack accommodation and storage continued to be built; the 1880s French forts of the Séré de Rivières system for example, had a central structure consisting of two stories of casemates, buried under layers of earth, concrete and sand to a depth of , intended to defeat the new high explosive shells.Hogg 1975. p. 104
Towards the end of the century, Imperial Germany had developed a new form of fortification called a feste ( Festung#Feste), in which the various elements of each fort were more widely dispersed in the landscape. These works, the first of which was Fort de Mutzig near Strasbourg, had separate artillery blocks, infantry positions and underground barracks, all built of reinforced concrete and connected by tunnels or entrenchments. Although the main armament of these forts was still mounted in armored turrets, local defense was provided by separate protected positions for ; these concrete structures were copied by the French who called them casemates de Bourges ( Casemate de Bourges) after the proving ground where they had been tested.
The first ironclad warship, the (1858), was a wooden steamship whose hull was covered with armored plating, tested to withstand the largest smoothbore guns available at the time. The response by the British Royal Navy to this perceived threat was to build an iron-hulled frigate, . However, it was realised that to armor all of the hull to fully withstand the latest rifled artillery would make it unfeasibly heavy, so it was decided to create an armored box or casemate around the main gun deck, leaving the bow and stern unarmored.
The American Civil War saw the use of casemate ironclads: armored steamboats with a very low freeboard and their guns on the main deck ('Casemate deck') protected by a sloped armoured casemate, which sat atop the hull. Although both sides of the Civil War used casemate ironclads, the ship is mostly associated with the southern Confederacy, as the north also employed turreted monitors, which the south was unable to produce. The most famous naval battle of the war was the duel at Hampton Roads between the Union turreted ironclad and the Confederate casemate ironclad (built from the scuttled remains of ). Civilwarhome.com
"Casemate ship" was an alternative term for "central battery ship" (UK) or "center battery ship" (US).Hovgaard, William, Modern History of Warships, pp. 14–15. The casemate (or central battery) was an armored box that extended the full width of the ship protecting many guns. The armored sides of the box were the sides or hull of the ship. There was an armored bulkhead at the front and rear of the casemate, and a thick deck protecting the top. The lower edge of the casemate sat on top of ship's belt armour. Some ships, such as (laid down 1873), had a two-story casemate.Hovgaard, William, Modern History of Warships, p. 18.
A "casemate" was an armored room in the side of a warship, from which a gun would fire. A typical casemate held a 6-inch gun, and had a front plate (forming part of the side of the ship), with thinner armor plates on the sides and rear, with a protected top and floor,Hovgaard, William, Modern History of Warships, pp. 78–79. and weighed about 20 tons (not including the gun and mounting).Brown, David K, Warrior to Dreadnought, p. 129. Casemates were similar in size to turrets; ships carrying them had them in pairs, one on each side of the ship.
The first battleships to carry them were the British laid down in 1889. They were adopted as a result of live-firing trials against in 1888.Brown, David K, Warrior to Dreadnought, pp. 101–02, 129. Casemates were adopted because it was thought that the fixed armor plate at the front would provide better protection than a turret, and because a turret mounting would require external power and could therefore be put out of action if power were lost – unlike a casemate gun, which could be worked by hand. The use of casemates enabled the 6-inch guns to be dispersed, so that a single hit would not knock out all of them. Casemates were also used in protected and armored cruisers, starting with the 1889 Brown, David K, Warrior to Dreadnought, pp. 134–35. and retrofitted to the 1888 during construction.
In the pre-dreadnought generation of warships, casemates were placed initially on the main deck, and later on the upper deck as well. Casemates on the main deck were very close to the waterline. In the Edgar-class cruisers, the guns in the casemates were only above the waterline.Brown, David K, Warrior to Dreadnought, p. 136. Casemates that were too close to the waterline or too close to the bow (such as in the 1912 Iron Duke-class dreadnoughts) were prone to flooding, making the guns ineffective.Brown, David K, The Grand Fleet, Warship Design and Developments 1906–1922, p. 42.
Shipboard casemate guns were partially rendered obsolete by the arrival of "all-big gun" battleship and battlecruiser, pioneered by and Invincible, respectively, who carried their main guns in turrets and secondary armament upon the superstructure in exposed single mounts. Casemates would be quickly reintroduced in succeeding battleship and battlecruiser classes for secondary armament due to the increasing torpedo threat from .
Many World War I-era battleships that remained in service had their casemates plated over during modernization in the 1930s (or after the Attack on Pearl Harbor, in the case of US vessels) but some, like carried them to the end of World War II. The last ships built with casemates as new construction were the American s of the early 1920s and the 1933 Swedish aircraft cruiser . In both cases the casemates were built into the forward angles of the forward superstructure (and the aft superstructure as well, in the Omahas).
During World War II, casemate-type armored fighting vehicles were heavily used by both the combined German Wehrmacht forces, and the Soviet Red Army. They were mainly employed as and . Tank destroyers, intended to operate mostly from defensive ambush operations, did not need a rotating turret as much as offensively used tanks, while assault guns were mainly used against fortified infantry positions and could afford a longer reaction time if a target presented itself outside the vehicle's gun traverse arc. Thus, the weight and complexity of a turret was thought to be unnecessary, and could be saved in favor of more capable guns and armor. In many cases, casemate vehicles would be used as both tank destroyers or assault guns, depending on the tactical situation. The Wehrmacht employed several casemate tank destroyers, initially with the still- Panzerjäger designation Elefant with an added, fully enclosed five-sided (including its armored roof) casemate atop the hull, with later casemate-style tank destroyers bearing the Jagdpanzer (literally 'hunting tank') designation, with much more integration of the casemate's armour with the tank hull itself. Examples are the Jagdpanzer IV, the Jagdtiger and the Jagdpanther.These translate as 'Hunting Tiger' and 'Hunting Panther', respectively Assault guns were designated as 'Sturmgeschütz', like the Sturmgeschütz III and Sturmgeschütz IV. In the Red Army, casemate tank destroyers and self-propelled guns bore an "SU-" or "ISU-" prefix, with the "SU-" prefix an abbreviation for Samokhodnaya Ustanovka, or "self-propelled gun". Examples are the SU-100 or the ISU-152. Both Germany and the Soviet Union mainly built casemate AFVs by using the chassis of already existing turreted tanks, instead of designing them from scratch.
While casemate AFVs played a very important role in World War II (the Sturmgeschütz III for example was the most numerous armored fighting vehicle of the German Army during the entire war), they became much less common in the post-war period. Heavy casemate tank destroyer designs such as the US T28 and the British Tortoise never went beyond prototype status, while casemate vehicles of a more regular weight, such as the Soviet SU-122-54, saw only very limited service. The general decline of casemate vehicles can be seen in the technological progress which resulted in the rise of universal main battle tanks, which unified in them the capability to take up the roles and tasks which in the past had to be diverted between several different classes of vehicles. However, vehicles such as the German Kanonenjagdpanzer of the 1960s still let the casemate concept live on, while the Swedish Army went as far as employing a casemate tank design, the Stridsvagn 103, or "S-Tank", as their main armored fighting vehicle from the 1960s until the 1990s, favoring it over contemporary turreted designs. Other casemate design ideas, such as the projected German VT tank with two main guns, were developed even later.
Armoured vehicles
In regards to armored fighting vehicles, casemate design refers to vehicles that have their main gun mounted directly within the hull and lack the rotating turret commonly associated with tanks. Such a design generally makes the vehicle mechanically simpler in design, less costly in construction, lighter in weight and lower in profile. The saved weight can be used to mount a heavier, more powerful gun or alternatively increase the vehicle's armor protection in comparison to regular, turreted tanks. However, in combat the crew has to rotate the entire vehicle if an enemy target presents itself outside of the vehicle's limited gun traverse arc. This can prove very disadvantageous in combat situations.
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