Is Misfiring Naval Artillery Common? 

Misfires with small arms can be nerve wracking enough - can’t imagine hearing *click* on 660 pounds of powder and 2,700 pounds of projectile 😅

quote> At close range the Johnston’s entire chorus of weaponry came to bear on the island. There was the sharp, ear-ringing bark of the five-inchers, the rhythmic thumping of the twin-mounted forty-millimeter machine guns, and the faster metallic chatter of the single-barreled twenties. Men from a damage-control party broke out rifles and made like Davy Crockett from the main deck. Lt. (jg) Ellsworth Welch took out his. 45-caliber pistol, outstretched his arm, and enfiladed the distant enemy with the handgun. From his perch in the gun director, Hagen spied a Japanese officer on the beach, waving a saber, rallying his troops to the fight, and thought, Why not? He put the officer in the sights of his slewing device. The fire-control computer clicked and whirred and zipped coordinates to the Johnston’s five main gun turrets. When Hagen closed the firing key, they all barked as one. The technology lived up to its brutal promise. The five-shell salvo obliterated the man. “Mr. Hagen, that was very good shooting,” called Captain Evans from the bridge. “But in the future, try not to waste so much ammunition on one individual.” James D. Hornfischer - Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors

I always assumed that the guns were pretty much 100% reliable. Now I understand why they need so many guns, not just for volume of fire, but for redundancy.

Honestly the WV getting five straight full gun salvos at 40 second increments sounds damned impressive to me.

I got to see the New Jersey fire her big guns, all I can say is, that on that occasion, they all worked perfectly. I must say that it was one of the most amazing spectacles I have ever witnessed in my life. The sheer power they generate when they fire is nothing short of staggering.

I was a Royal Navy gunnery officer in ships for 14 years. Never had a misfire. Misfires are no real problem, It is a hang fire that causes grey hairs. A misfire means that you pull the trigger, and nothing happens. A hang fire means that you pull the trigger and it doesn't go bang, but fizzles gently. It may go bang at any time, particularly if it is jerked or knocked. It is difficult to tell whether it is a misfire or a hang fire externally, so you always act as if it is a hang fire, and keep the weapon pointed safely down range for at least 30 minutes before unloading, and then immediately storing that cordite safely overboard!

Misfires are no joke. My grandfather was onboard the USS Mississippi (BB-41) when they had a full-on backblow during gunnery practice in 1924. A gun in the no. 2 turret exploded when a small ember from the previous shot was undetected as the power bags for the next shot were being loaded. Something like 40+ men died in the explosion, then several more died when a remaining bag detonated during the rescue attempt. Fortunately, my grandad was stationed up high as a rangefinder and was nowhere near the turrets. Very sad.

Prior to watching your videos, I would have never guessed that loading the shells/powder was such a labor intensive task. I certainly never would have guessed that there were so many men in each of the turrets.

One of the best videos on battleship I have ever watched.

I was really excited to hear about New Jersey's engagement at Truk. Could we get a video about the history of the engagement? Thanks Ryan.

Thank you for sharing your vast knowledge on this subject. I really enjoy listening to the stories of the inner workings of it all!

Hi Ryan Great Video. If you notice in the link you included about the West Virginia there is also a navigation chart and time of the battle. About the time the number of shells fired drops she made a starboard turn. This would account for going from 8 to 7 then 3 to 2. At the time of the cease fire only her forward guns 4 barrels. Plus her rear turrets would need to swing around 180 degrees to the port for them to reengage on the port side. From 03:55 to 04:00 she was not broadside across the T but at an angle. I surmise that turret #3 right hand barrel stopped firing due to being too close to the superstructure. At 04:01 was the last turn to starboard. This was probably communicated to the gun crews and the rear turrets ceased firing leaving the forward 4 guns left till ceasefire at 04:02. So if you take the course changes into account the West Virginia was mostly using her full available battery during the battle.

I had (mistakenly) assumed that, in a battleship vs. battleship engagement, the nonlinear behaviour of the Lancaster equations would so severely punish a ship for any loss of main battery fire that any ship that did suffer a misfire was almost certain to be destroyed. For that reason, I concluded ship designers had done everything in their power to prevent such misfires. As you point out, though, there are two missing pieces to that logic: first, all ships suffer from it, so in reality both battleships would have guns missing their salvo time; and second, a "misfire" only very, very rarely means something that disables a gun or turret for the rest of the engagement. Thank you for this very interesting video, and for the reminder not to forget about operational realities in conducting tactical analysis.

Thanks Ryan - one of your best. Clearly failures increase over the length of the engagement. This gives much-needed context to the criticism you see on sites like navweapons of British 14” & 16” turrets during much longer engagements.

Great video Ryan. I am impressed, and not surprised about the raw data the Navy collects on the operation of these massive guns. Kudos to my brothers, the Gunners Mates that maintain and operate these systems. After watching many videos on the USS Iowa turret explosion and ensuing investigation about the cause, it becomes apparent that each step in the process of firing a gun turret, is important for success and safety. I was hoping in this video you would address the steps undertaken during a misfire. We have all had them will small arms, and they can be tricky. With a 16 inch gun, I personally would be terrified. With that said, I have no doubt that there are standard operating procedures and our GM's have knowledge on how to proceed when a misfire occurs. To this day, I am proud to say we operated with the New Jersey and made a port call together in Sasebo, Japan. What a sight to see those 16 inchers!

Very cool episode Ryan thank you.

Good topic Ryan. Thanks again

I have never before been given insight to this topic. This is new and very interesting. The strategy, the target, the worth of a target, conservation of ammo is not discussed much. More, more! 🙂

I'm in the Midwest, next vaycay is to USS New Jersey. Love your content and your passion for naval history.

Hi Ryan, according to the post action gunnery report of the Prinz Eugen, after battle of the Denmark Straits, B-turret suffered a technical problem which caused it to miss a salvo with both guns, and the right barrel 13 consecutive salvos; A-turret missed four salvos during the action due to operational errors, while C and D-turrets each missed one salvo.

Always nice to hear about BB48 great video about challenges of firing the main guns

I never really gave it much thought, because there was not a lot of exposure about misfires on Battleships. I know that there have been accidents, and you have covered that huge device for dislodging a 16 " projectile from a gun. I guess we are all sort of spoiled by computer wargames where the only way a battleship's guns were silenced was either through a turret being struck by enemy fire or the magazines being flooded to prevent an explosion. My favourite game was Steel Ships, it gave a great simulation of battleship and torpedo action.

Great job exploring an interesting question!

So wise , Thank You .

I never had given it must thought but it make sense that such a complicated system would have reliability issues.

Thanks for this interesting insight. To date I have only heard of the problems experienced by Prince of Wales and King George V against Bismark. I never had any account on the problems the US battleships had until now. Cheers!

I love this channel. Thanks for another great video! 👍🏻

I thought it was something like this where guns would go down but not that quickly. Very interesting Ryan

It never occurred to me to wonder about this, but the result is understandable.

In the propulsion plant on my Destroyer (2 fire rooms, 2 engine rooms) I don't think we ever made it more than 2 days without something breaking down. A lot of moving parts that all depend on all the others to operate correctly. One simple failure in the system and it begins to cascade quickly.

Very informative. Love it.

The Nowaki record is interesting. It is a stern chase, so the roll of the ship throws off aim, this is where the stable element input to keep the guns on target becomes important. Only turrets 1 & 2 bear, so they alternate salvos. The constant left and right adjustments show that Nowaki is evading by splash chasing. If the previous salvo landed to the left, you wait for the flash of the next salvo firing, then change course slightly to the left, as the shooter will have adjusted to the right. This is why destroyers at long range are impossible targets, no fire control system will hit a well handled dd at long range. Look at Commodore Goodenough at Jutland if you don't think this is true. As for casualty rates, on NAVWEPS there is the record of the time the USN fired out the entire magazine of a BB in one sitting just to learn how it worked trying to get every last round out of the magazines.

Wow, this is quite fascinating! Thank you for sharing this insightful information with me. I'm eagerly anticipating more of your enlightening insights.

I knew that it was common, I had no idea it was quite so prevalent even without damage from return fire. Great video!

Awesome !! James.

Pretty wild to find out that something that seems so critical on the ship is actually prone to a such a high rate of failure. I would have expected this to be a rare thing.

Thank you.

Thanks for the info that was interesting, I would have thought there would be mechanical failures with more often positioning issues and not able to bring the gun to a target. But I never imagined it was that often and that soon in a battle for failures to start in, it's still amazing what they pulled off in the heat of battle because I'm sure just to fire and load 1 of those massive guns takes a lot of resources and manpower with massive fire support system's to maintain each single gun with lots of chances for mechanical failure. As the ship is aggressively maneuvering in high seas at times when engaged with enemy ships when not sitting firing in land. Those guys where no doubt real men inside those turret's

This is an excellent use of data to illustrate reality compared to what we think life would’ve been like influenced by games and movies

Interesting video. The drop off in salvo 13 might have something to do with fact they began making something like a 120 degree turn to starboard at 0401 to come parallel to their original course prior to the first turn at 0356.

May not have been cost effective to use 16inch on a destroyer, but 2 or 3 hits should do the job. Talking board games, Panzerblitz limits you to 10 turns at best. You can go rapid fire, but they then consider the barrel lining worn out, and the unit tile is considered lost. You make a very logical argument. You might check with Drachinifel, IIRC about Jutland, a lot of the German and British ships didnt fire at times due to damage, out of range, or smoke obscured targets.

Part of what's surprised me most out of this is how much New Jersey was mostly a shore bombardment platform. Having one ship to ship engagement in it's entire life is wild.

A ton of moving parts, and after listening to the Battleship Iowas podcast mentioning how often lights would be destroyed from the guns firing, not surprised mechanical failures would creep up. It’s a massive steel vessel pumping tons of explosives out with big hoists and mechanical systems at odd angles, and relies on men, it’s a guarantee.

This is very similar to what you can expect from a gun-howitzer battery in the field artillery. Long firemissions always start off rapidly, but then slow down as the crew has to move shells around.

Your definitely right about world of war ships is the best case scenario, but in the legends version of it, the longest action is 15 minutes so it’s pretty short engagements.

I was expecting the occasional misfire, but this is a lot more than i anticipated.

You should have defined the term “misfire”. In the Army, that means you go to fire, and no big boom. Ryan is defining it as not being ready to fire when the fire control computer wants to fire. Two separate definitions. His list did include a misfire when he mentioned one powder bag didn’t explode.

I would expect that from time to time there would be mechanical issues, but never to the extent described by Ryan. The only notable out of service gun that I've read about was when turret #1 on the USS South Dakota took a Japanese bomb hit on the roof. The bomb damaged a gun from turret #2 by making large gouges into the barrel, bad enough that it was decided to secure the gun and not use it. The bomb wasn't big enough to penetrate the turret roof, but apparently scarred the roof, and also destroyed the periscopes that poke up thru the roof.

A detail I never thought about and I doubt these statistics are covered often is the reason I did not think about it.

I've been reading about the German WW1 battlecruiser Von Der Tann. In the battle of Jutland all 4 of her turrets were out of action due to battle damage jamming the training ring or over heated barrels jammed in the recoiled position. yet all 4 turrets were brought back into action before the battle was over.

Recommend the reports from the gunnery officers onboard Scharnorst and G in their engagement with Renown. Not only did the Germans experience the same sort of issues and troubles, the sisters also struggled more in bad weather. So this is not a British-US thing, it’s universal.

A misfire to me reflects either an out-of-round projectile or a powder bag that didn't ignite. We did have a out-of-round on one ship I was on, it was a 5" /.38, it took the gunnersmates a day to remove the round.

great vid Ryan, u might want to check out a hot vid on youtube of Missouri participating in Sink-Ex 89, impressive vid showing her slower rate of fire on her 16 inch guns but the 5 inch guns are maintaining a high rate of fire... I wonder if the firing stats are available for this exercise, the exercise I am assuming lasted longer than what was shown in the video... but the vid is impressive especially with the volume turned up...

Must have been a hell of a day for all the fish in the target area of the Idaho test.

While not really covering misfires (more of an overview of percentage of guns firing) still very interesting. I'd like to see instances of a loaded barrel failing to fire the loaded shell for whatever reason. Bad ignition patch or bad primer or primer connection.

IIRC, the RN and the WW1 German navy didn't open fire with full broadsides - preferring to fire a salvo (typically half broadside - e.g. left guns in a 4x2 arrangement, modified by the later Nelson and KGV classes) at the estimated range, followed by another salvo at a different range before the first salvo landed. The spotting would determine if the range and line were correct. With a nominal reload of 30 seconds, time of flight about 60 seconds, this is a quicker way of getting on target. Once accurate radar range and fall of shot was available. the practice could change... HMS Duke of York fired broadsides at the Scharnhorst based on radar ranges from the onset

great vid. cool written records/stats on the in battle shooting. overall great info. as to IF the presentation matched what we expected from the vid title??? NO. mis-fire would be this to us: the trigger was pulled.. and NOTHING happened! this we are sure could be from many things other then the problems/issues you covered in this vid. it would be a situation where the the breech had been opened from last round, and all work/tasks etc were then completed to get the breech closed again, the gun set to elevation etc. and the control room told the gun was ready to fire. but NOTHING happened once the trigger was pulled. these situations we think would have to be carefully dealt with and documented as the gun did NOT fire and is still LIVE! if the round cold NOT be fired somehow. then the crew would have to open the breech and clear power and shell out as well as find what caused the mis-fire and fix it. a far more serious situation then most of those you went over. well.. that is our opinion.. you asked. we answered. keep up the great vids!!

I would love to see film from the bridge of Nowaki during her escape from Truk.

Interesting video. Would be interested to find out how New Jersey went in Vietnam with firing so many salvos for shore bombardment. If there is data on that it would make an interesting video.

I wonder what the numbers looked like for the Des Moines Class rapid-fire autoloading 8 inch guns, much less human fatigue vs. mechanical issues. Just curious. 😊

I learned something today. While I'd heard of individual ships having teething issues (e.g. King George V when engaging the Bismarck) I didn't think it would've been nearly that common that most salvoes from most ships even in mostly good order could expect to have a misfire, or several.

Interesting!

I am actually quite surprised to hear it was so common. I knew Iowa was experiencing problems with her guns frequently in shooting exercises leading up to her turret explosion, but I assumed it was mostly because of her age and the Navy's lack of funding for the ship's maintenance. I do wonder now how much of it was actually commonplace, and how much was neglect.

The reliability was almost higher than I expected it to be; the figure I had in mind was Prince of Wales ending the fight against Bismarck with onle one gun operational, so the amount of full salvos after the first one sort of surprised me

Very interesting information here. I'm curious whether the rate of gun failure is higher the larger the caliber gun you go, such that a direct correlation between caliber and incidence of failure could be established statistically? Did cruisers or destroyers have a better percentage of guns firing during ship-to-ship battles?

Yeah, I would have expected various kinds of misfires or other loading difficulties.

best sound ever !

Bismarck fired 93 of 104 possible in the Battle of Denmark straight, Prinz Eugen fired 21 salvos and fired 150 or 152. However, the rate of fire was about 1 salvo a minute per gun as Bismarck and Prinz Eugen fired A+B and then C+D. I have read but have not seen or could not tell but in the actual footage of Denmark straight, Bismarck fires one 7 gun salvo.

I was expecting that they would have the process worked out better, but it does make sense that mechanical mechanisms would break. furthermore, given the amount of work that people had to do it also makes sense that they would get tired. Games tend to be a low fidelity simulation, though some are better then others.

I always wondered how dyed shells work? As in how they stored the dye inside the shell and how much dye was used?

I’m tryin to collect them all. What a beautiful sea bird. I did sit on the guns and I’m sorry. I have such appreciation.

How were things remediated when there is a misfire with everything in the pipe? You mentioned that cordite bag failing to go off for King George V, if the shell is firmly engaged with the rifling taking it back out would ruin it right?

When you said you would discuss an older BB, my mind was screaming WV, WV. As a proud Mountaineer and future NJ visitor, hopefully this fall, thank you

I can imagine that misfires happened in the past more times than not. Not just because of Bismarck or other vessels. Where I would think, Cruisers or Destroyers could have issues with the 5 inch weopons.

Well, I had this question in my mind for a long time and it didn't come from a video game. It came from NavWeaps. In reading some guns theoretical firing rate, there's several that had caveats stating they didn't achieve this due to errors in equipment or drill. My research didn't prove conclusive.

I would be very interested to know how the reliability of the autoloading eight inch guns on the Des Moines class stack up in comparison

It never ceases to amaze me the amount of engineering that went into each of these ships, among the most complex things we've ever created, from start to finish in 2 years! Can you imagine even attempting such a thing today?

More or less confirmed my suspicion. But the disparity was greater then I imagined. Makes sense though, battle ships isn’t a real mass production item and test firing them at length to work out potentially issues, prohibitively expensive.

the battleship Alabama had a working hoist system for years I wonder how it works couldn't quite tell from the angle you had to look in

You're more likely to hangfire than misfire, but even more than that when you're in a situation where you're putting ALOT of rounds down range you start getting into hot gun territory and that can get pretty hairy. clearing a misfire in a hotgun is probably one of the scariest thing you can have happen on the ship. You have to load a clearing charge aim and fire the dud round over the side before the barrels heats the round up to the point where it might detonate in the gun. which depending on the state of the inside of the mount and the magazine can cause all kinds of fun side effects.

how do the out of battery controls work, so the single remote auto trigger doesn't fire guns that are not ready? also, how are each gun put online so the single trigger fires only selected turrets?

I was expecting that there couldn't always be flawless execution, but I figured it was very rare. I wasn't aware how much crew performance affected this, and I'm surprised at the lack of reliability of the equipment. I've always thought the military had things fairly well polished when it comes to procedures like this.

USS MISSISSIPPI is a good example,they had a turret explosion in the middle of battle

I’d love to have more information on how casualties involving a failure to fire are handled (unexploded powder)

What were the explosive mixes of US Navy shells of different sizes and uses? How and why did it change over time and why did other nations pick different mixes?

Yeah, from what I read on my own, this is pretty normal. Some guns are very reliable and some are always troublesome. Failures are not spread out evenly.

Ive read that at the end of the final battle with Bismarck that Rodney's guns were firing practically level they were so close.

I have read similar reports on battleships in other engagements, I think Washington vs Kirishima comes to mind, and have noted the tendency for guns to misfire for some reason or another on successive salvos and come back, or sometimes jam and not return at all. full 9-gun salvos every salvo is definitely not the rule.

I expected this answer. Due to my experiences, knowledge, and deductive reasoning, I figured that firing large caliber guns over any period of time can and will cause mechanical failures and crew exhaustion. Thank you for this video Ryan!!! P.S. When are you gonna cover the Casablanca-class carriers? 😉

I personally wold have been surprised if there were more full salvo shots. I think fatigue and human error would play a heavy roll in these actions! Anytime you work muscles at maximum effort repeatedly you wear down very fast, and as initial adrenaline wears out of the muscles fatigue sets in faster!

With the long reload time and inherent inaccuracies of the guns? Would you even want to fire them all at once? Fire a few? Watch for impact and adjust fire

On World of Warships the West Virginia is a pretty good ship for a tier 6 I actually like it and given it's strong armament it can actually take on ships of higher tier. I wish the West Virginia could have been saved as a museum ship but oh well.

I bet the German and British battleships and battlecruisers suffered numerous misfires during the Battle of Jutland.

I didn’t figure it was perfect but thought it would be better than that.

I am surprised, as I didn't expect it to be realistic to fire a full salvo. On a side note, do you believe it's possible to have a 100% automated reload?

I'd be curious to know how the reliability rates for guns on smaller ships compare to Battleship calibre guns. At first thought, I'd imagine the stress on both machines and man would be less so higher reliability, but I admit I'm not in a position to say one way or another with any certainty.

Honestly, a bit surprising but not as surprising as it should be to me when I sit and think about it critically. Fascinating nonetheless.

GMG1(SW) ret. Misfire indicates that you initiated a firing but gun did not discharge. Mechanical failures that prevent gun loading aren’t considered misfires. An open breech explosion is just that and not a misfire. Modern naval guns have a very low misfire rate. Most misfires are caused by faulty ammo. Over 20 years and thousands of rounds fired only had 2 big gun misfires, one ammo, one mechanical failure. Have a few misfires from small arms ammo. If the ammo quality is high you see very few misfires.

Do you have any firing statistics on the 5 inch guns that were in service on WWII navy ships? They are a bit simpler, so I'm wondering if they fired more consistently than the main battery guns.

Gentlemen, I have a technical question. While playing BATTLE OF WARSHIP, which is a "bargin basement" version of WORLD OF WARSHIP, I noticed that the ships had two types of shells: armor piercing and incindiary. The game creators say that you should use the incendiaries to set the enemy battleship afire; before closing in and finishing her off with armor piercing shells. Now, I know about armor piercing and high capacitance shell, which were used for lightly armored ships. But we're there really any shell called incindiary used?