Sixteen-inch guns fire at once and the sea around the battleship blows out sideways, like the whole ship just got shoved across the ocean. It didn’t move.
Each shell weighs 2,700 pounds and leaves the barrel at about 2,500 feet a second, pushed by 660 pounds of powder. That kick is real — so where does it go?
Do the math. Nine shells come to 24,300 pounds, against a ship of 58,000 tons. That is about 5,300 times heavier. Even sitting on frictionless ice, the kick would slide the hull sideways at less than eight inches a second. Not even a walk. And at that speed there is barely anything for the water to stop.
But the push has to go somewhere. No amount of steel deletes it.
So the answer runs the other way. Instead of letting the hull take the hammer blow, each gun takes it. The barrel alone weighs about 239,000 pounds. When it fires it slides back about 47 inches, gets caught, and is pushed forward again. The ship feels a shove spread out over time, not a slap.
And the wall of water? That is the blast — nearly 6,000 pounds of powder exploding out of the muzzles and hitting the sea. The hull doesn’t move an inch, or even lean.
Every turret needed at least 77 men to keep that up, two rounds a minute. It’s the same reason a parked pickup doesn’t roll when you throw a baseball out the back. One side is just too heavy to notice.
—— SOURCE MAP (timecodes) ——
0:00 broadside from the air — NARA 428-NPC-40033
0:11 shell handling and hoist — NARA 428-NPC-13527
0:24 ship under way — NARA 428-NPC-40033
0:34 mass comparison — original blueprint
0:44 turrets and barrels — NARA 428-NPC-40033
1:13 recoil diagram — original blueprint
1:18 firing and barrels — NARA 428-NPC-40033
1:44 preserved battleship — DVIDS 342950
1:47 closing broadside — NARA 428-NPC-40033
Sources: NavWeaps tech-022, “Do Broadsides Move a Battleship Sideways?” · NavWeaps 16″/50 Mk 7 · Battleship Missouri Memorial fact sheet
Archival footage: NARA 428-NPC-40033 · 428-NPC-13527 · DVIDS 342950 (public domain). Diagrams are original. Educational reconstruction.
#battleship #iowaclass #broadside #recoil #navalgunnery #physics #momentum #engineering #howitworks #thewayitworked
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