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BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
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NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (Tribune News Service) — Erik Farrell stared down the barrel of the 8-ton Dahlgren gun, not fazed by the black water spewing onto his arms, face and curlicue mustache, focused instead on keeping the drill steady as he guided it into the cannon.

The gun has sat in a chemical bath at the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News for several years. For the 140 years before that, it sat on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean about 17 miles off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. And before that, it was in the rotating turret of the famed Civil War ironclad USS Monitor, battling its Confederate Counterpart, the CSS Virginia, just miles from its current home in the Mariners’ Museum.

 

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (Tribune News Service) — Erik Farrell stared down the barrel of the 8-ton Dahlgren gun, not fazed by the black water spewing onto his arms, face and curlicue mustache, focused instead on keeping the drill steady as he guided it into the cannon.

The gun has sat in a chemical bath at the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News for several years. For the 140 years before that, it sat on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean about 17 miles off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. And before that, it was in the rotating turret of the famed Civil War ironclad USS Monitor, battling its Confederate Counterpart, the CSS Virginia, just miles from its current home in the Mariners’ Museum.

Like steam right before internal combustion for trains, this is the flower of immediate pre-smokeless gun tech.
 

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
Can you imagine the magnitude of the casting & machining operations to create that monster?
I grew up in the ‘60s, when the air itself was perfumed with Progress.

Now, with a smattering of history under my belt, the previous ‘60s must have had a similar vibe. Triple-expansion steam and Bessemer steel were the new hotness. I would love for History Channel or a congeners to show how such a gun was made. Shame they didnt have cine with audio back then. Casting and drilling out a big Dahlgren must have been even cooler than that day in ‘71 when a school friend’s dad took us to the perimeter of Dulles to watch (and hear!) the Concorde take off.
The steam tooling to make that gun happen must have had max coolness factor. The chief machinist’s job probably was prestigious.

One thing for sure ... it was massively boring. ;)
 
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