Product Code Database
A main battery is the primary weapon or group of weapons around which a warship is designed. As such, a main battery was historically a naval gun or group of guns used in volley fire, as in the broadsides of cannon on a ship of the line. Later, this came to be turreted groups of similar large-caliber naval rifles. With the evolution of technology the term has come to encompass and as a warship's principal offensive weaponry, deployed both on and .
A main battery features common parts, munition and fire control system across the weapons which it comprises.
Between the age of sail and its cannons and the dreadnought era of large iron warships fighting ships' weapons deployments lacked standardization, with a variety of naval rifles of mixed breach and caliber scattered throughout vessels. Dreadnoughts resolved this in favor of a main battery of large guns, supported by largely defensive secondary batteries of smaller guns of standardized form, further augmented on large warships such as and with smaller yet tertiary batteries. As air superiority became all-important early in World War II, weight of broadside fell by the wayside as a vessel's principal fighting asset. Anti-aircraft batteries of scores of small-caliber rapid-fire weapons came to supplant big guns even on large warships assigned to protect vital fast carrier task forces. At sea, ships such as small, fast assigned to convoy protection, essential in the transport of the enormous stock of materials required for land war particularly in the European Theater, came to rely more on depth charge projectors.
The terms main battery and secondary battery fell out of favor as ships were designed to carry surface-to-air missiles and anti-ship missiles with greater range and heavier warheads than their guns.David R. Frieden (1985). 087021537X, Naval Institute Press. 087021537X Such ships often referred to their remaining guns as simply the gun battery and to the missiles as the missile battery. Ships with more than one type of missile might refer to the batteries by the name of the missile. had a Talos battery and a Tartar battery.
Many later ships during World War II used dual-purpose guns to combine the secondary battery and the heavier guns of the anti-aircraft battery for increased flexibility and economy. The United States Navy battleship had a main battery of nine guns arranged in three turrets, two forward and one aft. The secondary battery was 5-inch dual purpose guns, allowing use against other ships and aircraft. A dedicated anti-aircraft battery was composed of light Bofors 40 mm guns and Oerlikon 20 mm cannon.
|
|
