Austrått Fort ★ Ørland ★ Norway ★ Gneisenau ★ Gun Turret ★ Atlanticwall ★ Fortress Norway 

Hi Mark, thanks for your comment. For further information please take a look into the description, I added the links that matter (I hope). :)

Slave labour

@Charlie K -I guess that was done when the ship was being built at the shipyard, as it is done everywhere in such cases...They lift the turret with a crane and place it onto the ship.

Either with a dockyard crane, not dissimilar from the ones used to transfer shipping containers, or using a crane ship. Typically the turret housing, is either lifter, and/or dismantled. Before each gun is lifted, and then either most, or all the turret basket is removed. C turret's basket was only partially removed, before covered (basically with a large sheet of metal, just to keep everything weather free). Austrått Fort doesn't need to take shells 20 metres up from a ships magazine, so most of the basket was simply upgraded, in preparation for receiving the never to be seen 380mm SK C/34's. Krupp needed to reinforce the rings and basket, to hold the weight of the turrets and guns. So, really, what you see above ground, is about 70-80% of what was stripped from Gneisenau. USS Kearsarge is an example of a heavy lift crane ship after she was decommissioned and refitted as USS Crane Ship No.1

Agreed. Full operation status as a fully functional museum.

That date is a sad one for these guns...and they keep silent in mournful remembrance of the brave ship they once belonged to...! They'd rather remember the glory days when they opened fire on the British aircraft carrier "Glorious" and sank her...!!!

@Thijs1888 the 5.25" Batteries at Princess Anne's Battery in Gibraltar are a great example. They were decommissioned in the late 80's, because they were finally deemed so out of date, in combination with the fact, no one had made ammunition for them in decades...

It was until 2000 (when it was last fired)

Greetings from a local Everything is fully operational except the rotation (the ball bearings is deformed after 80 years under heavy weight), staircase for easy exit and some seals to protect from weather. It is taken good care of by a large group of people and by the The Norwegian Defence Estates Agency. It even has its own heavy isolated winter coat (German panzer doesn’t isolate that much). Unfortunately it is not a option to fire it. It was last fired in 1953 but it is hard work and expensive to change all the broken windows in a 3+ km radius every time.

!!!! - USA has all the museum ships that fought and won the 2nd war. sad news recently about destroyer USS The Sullivans - i hope they can salvage this historic ship???

Can you tell something more about it? Do you mean the cannon in 4:20?

@Mwmpronk you are correct. If you look at pictures of the ship you see the smaller caliber secondary guns. I believe these were the 3.5" guns. They could fire several types of ammunition including anti air rounds.

@@johnstark4723 That's a 150mm (5.9"). Scharnhorst and her brother carried 4, and 4 twin turrets. They did carry forteen 10.5 cm/65 SK C/33 guns in Dop. L. C/31 Twin Mounts but that's 4.1" aswell.

The last (known) Dedicated Anti-tank cannon produced is the Norinco Type 86, from the late 80's (based off the soviet T-12) It's still in use by PLA motorised divisions today...

@@GrasshopperKelly better do some more research...