[ Innovation ]
[ 18th of Novus 1614 ] [ Southern Manufactory, in the south of the Crown ] [ Crown Conquests ]
[ https://sparkalia.com/d/281-crown-royal-happenings/81 ]
Testing of the Großadmiral Oskar's autoloader.
To test the new carousel autoloading mechanism of the new turret, a prototype of the turret is built. The prototype turret sits in the Southern Manufactory, and was recently replenished by manually loading each round into the first stage ammunition feeder. They mount the 6-floor tall turret and loading assembly onto a chunk of the surrounding hull it's supposed to be in, then took the turret and box and stuck on some 'temporary' tracks, generator, and a driving cab.
Temporary solutions last forever if it's good enough. Hopefully, it does well enough that they take off the tracks and cab and jam the turret into the ship it's meant to go on, the Großadmiral Otto. But it seems not so...
The rack opens, two pairs of tubes rise up to meet the loading arms, opened and awaiting the shells and charges. The charges and the shells are loaded into the arm. The chain rammer behind the block in the arm where the shell and charge lie in closes down right as the hydraulics whine and screech as the arm accelerates upwards and decelerates rapidly, swinging up to the breech. The inert shell is rammed in, then the chain rammer goes back, and up goes the mini-rack in the arm, up to the tube where the charge is. The charge is loaded into, then the rammer goes back again and the tubes go down, and the arms whine again as they drop down, along with the blocks in the first rack.
The gun fires! The twin K/00 50.8cm [M] guns fire off, and the inert shells get launched out of the barrels. The turret on a block contraption shakes, and launches itself back 5 meters, grinding the tracks against the concrete floor and blowing up a few brakes, but despite that it hit the targeting square with slightly better than expected hits.
After firing a few more times, the turret on a block with tracks somehow survived, a testament to sharj engineering. Even the temporary stuff is built to good quality.
Summary of test firing of Turret A, Southern Manufactory
According to Großadmiral Reinhart, the new admiral, the results are satisfactory. They had targets set up 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 km away from the turret.
On the 10 km targets, all shells hit the target with an accuracy of 0.1 meter.
On the 20 km targets, almost all shells hit the target with an accuracy of 1 meter.
On the 30 km targets, most shells hit the target with an accuracy of 2.5 meters.
On the 40 km targets, over half the shells hit the target with an accuracy of 5 meters.
On the 50 km targets, under half of the shells hit the target with an accuracy of 25 meters.
It's slightly more accurate than the current Golden Sea's current turrets, but the reload speed of approximately 10 seconds between salvos is far faster than the Golden Sea's semi-automatic turrets, that load in at least 1 minute in optimal conditions. This block on tracks was operating at minimal operation power and still outperformed it.
Großadmiral Reinhart was later seen inspecting the turret's mechanics, reportedly she's a bit stumped as rather than a turret elevator now there's now giant 20 ton arms and breeches swinging around inside, and the only thing protecting maintenance crews from being crushed is only 10 mm of grated steel and catwalks. later Reinhart asked them to make the catwalks more reinforced and to cover some more machinery to prevent maintenance workers from being killed by fast-moving machinery.
pretty good i guess
