Gun bank

Gun turret with gun bank (English barbette ) on an Iowa-class battleship

Gun bank (barbette) of a battery on land

A gun bank , also known as a barbette , is a form of gun support.

In this country

On land, this can be a pile of earth behind the parapet of fortifications and field entrenchments in order to be able to fire the cannon (en barbette) over the crown of the parapet (fire over the bank) without having to cut loopholes in the parapet. The barbette was an easier target for the opponent than the usual loopholes. For this you could expand the battlefield further to the right and left.

See also : Gun well

To water

Modern gun turret with barbette (8) on a warship

The idea was adopted by the warships . In warships, the barbette was a ring-shaped armor connected to the hull for the heavy turret guns, which were mounted on a turntable mount. To do this, you build a recess in the ship's hull to accommodate the gun turret . Originally, the Barbette only protected the carriage and the substructure, the guns themselves fired over the wall of the Barbette (fire over the bank) and were only protected by the surrounding armor of the Barbette, the construction was open at the top. With the advent of armored turrets, the barette only formed the armored base of the turrets.

The tower can be moved freely in it using special guides (e.g. gear wheels). The guns are not attached - they are kept in the barbeds purely by their weight. So if such a ship sinks, the turrets separate from the ship when it capsizes (which happened, for example, with the Bismarck ). Barbettes usually have to be very deep, as turrets still have a considerable substructure (which is then below deck) - ammunition guides, motors, etc. then disappear in the ship's hull.

On today's ships, the gun bank is an integrated part of the turret (see picture above and graphic on the right), while at the beginning of modern times the gun banks were mostly below deck.

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  Barbette the Redoutable (1876)

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  C-gun bank (Barbette)

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  Gun bank of the Bruno der Bismarck tower

NR-23 cannons in the stern barbed of the Il-28 bomber

In the air

In the case of combat aircraft, this is simply understood to mean the gun support.

Trivia

Also shoot in the phrase about the bank, i. H. The term has found its way to shoot directly over the top of the wall without notches .

swell

• Wissen.de
• Meyers Konversationslexikon
• Fortress construction in: Lueger: Lexicon of all technology, 1904
• Lueger, Otto (editor): Lexicon of the entire technology , Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart and Leipzig, 2nd edition 1904–1920

Web links

• Guide for visiting gun banks (PDF file; 5.37 MB)
• see: Fortress ABC
• Torsion fire: reconstruction of ancient guns
• Fortress construction

Individual evidence

1. ^ Friedrich Engels : Barbette (September 1857 ), Karl Marx / Friedrich Engels - Works, (Karl) Dietz Verlag, Berlin. Volume 14, 4th edition 1972, p. 84.
2. ↑ bank . In: Heinrich August Pierer , Julius Löbe (Hrsg.): Universal Lexicon of the Present and the Past . 4th edition. tape 2 . Altenburg 1857, p. 275 ( zeno.org ).
3. ^ Lueger, keyword Barbette
4. ↑ Hagedorn, p. 84 (PDF; 2.0 MB)
5. ↑ see: Bank (PDF; 111 kB)