Mark 42 multipurpose gun

Mark 42 multipurpose gun on the USS Turner Joy

The Mark 42 multipurpose gun is a 127 mm naval gun developed by FMC for use on US warships .

history

Development of the Mark 42 began in the early 1950s as a replacement for the obsolete 127 mm Mark 12 double mounts , which were used on almost all warships of the United States Navy during World War II , as well as for the Mark 16 guns, that were in use on the Midway class . The troop introduction of the new naval gun took place from 1954, first at the USS Northampton (CLC-1) .

Originally the gun had two optical target systems called "frog eyes", one for sea and land targets and one for air targets. The latter was removed in the 1960s, as the high speed of modern jet planes made combat with anti-aircraft guns almost impossible, and air defense at sea was increasingly taken over by ships equipped with anti-aircraft missiles .

During the Vietnam War , there was also a susceptibility to interference with continuous fire, which was caused by the high complexity of the loading mechanism and the high rate of fire. Decreasing the rate of cadence solved the problem, but it also lowered the firepower of the weapon.

In the 1960s, the development of the successor, the Mark 45 lightweight gun , marked the end of the use of the Mark 42 . At the beginning of the 1990s, the last ships that used the gun were retired from the US Navy, and the German and Greek navies also decommissioned the guns with their ships at the beginning of the 21st century.