The Adriatic was basically a pressure cooker for mad inventors during WW1. Somebody has already pointed to the Grillo-class tracked torpedo boats, but let me also indicate the Versuchsgleitboot, a torpedo-armed proto-hovercraft/ground effect vehicle.
In 1915 Italy was busily fighting the Austo-Hungarian Empire around the top of the Adriatic, and it quickly dawned on the brass that dropping extremely large shells on top of the enemy's head might be militarily desirable.
Unfortunately the Adriatic is - and here comes the science - wet. That gets in the way of shifting heavy artillery.
It's also pretty shallow inshore, which is why Venice wasn't a completely stupid place to build a city. That is as long as you didn't want a basement...
That means it's too shallow to use conventional warships.
One answer to this is to build "river monitors" - small warships designed to patrol up and down, safe in the knowledge nothing bigger is likely to be about. It's certainly what the Austro-Hungarians did...
See, Italy had a load of big guns just lying about - you build more than you immediately need as they take ages to manufacture - and a burning desire to use them.
What ensued was a festival of fitting the biggest possible gun to the smallest possible vessel.
Looking at whatever those things are that are supposed to keep the barrel attached to the pontoon-thingy, I wonder how firing that thing wouldn't lead to the barrel merrily flying to the next postal code.
HMS furious is one of those ships that you can safely insert in any conversation about madcap design ideas and reasonable aircraft carriers, depending on refit.
Yup. Its like that meme about 'you can't summon a whole generation just by playing one song' except its more 'you can't summon a whole field with just one word' and the entire naval history field and the word Kamchatka just sit there like 'bet?'
Punt guns were giant shotguns lashed to small rowing boats used for duck hunting. They could take out a whole flock of water fowl in one shot.
The photo above looks similar but even more insane.
If you search for Punt Gun on YouTube you can find video’s from a channel called Kentucky Balistics who has a modern reproduction. Its quite something to see being used.
Russian naval engineering is a bit like a child’s drawing. Sure, they have no idea what they’re doing and they’re bad at it, but by god they’re not going to let that stop them. You have to applaud the effort if not the execution.
I think the USS Vesuvius deserves an honourable mention 1) Armed with an experimental gun system with short range
2)The explosive was so sensitive that compressed air had to be utilized as the propellant.
3) Named after something that famously exploded and killed lots of people
4) torpedoed itself
I'm fairly sure I've never got around to taking about dynamite guns. I've seen the pit for one in Pembrokeshire though - albeit I didn't know what I was looking at at the time
In 1897, an 8.4-inch (210 mm) Zalinski dynamite gun was fitted to the first commissioned US submarine USS Holland (SS-1). It was later removed in 1900.
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It's also pretty shallow inshore, which is why Venice wasn't a completely stupid place to build a city. That is as long as you didn't want a basement...
One answer to this is to build "river monitors" - small warships designed to patrol up and down, safe in the knowledge nothing bigger is likely to be about. It's certainly what the Austro-Hungarians did...
What ensued was a festival of fitting the biggest possible gun to the smallest possible vessel.
Incidentally the Regia Marina relied on conscription. I'm beginning to see why.
This is quite a small Venn diagram
She looses a lot as a pure flat top, apart from the retractable conn in the middle of the flight deck
Ok, they are proper looking ships but with one massive gun
https://naval-encyclopedia.com/industrial-era/1890-fleets/japan/matsushima-class_cruiser.php#google_vignette
Kaboom is a big bang!
It's great.
The photo above looks similar but even more insane.
https://blade-city.com/blogs/gun-knife-blog/2-gauge-shotgun-the-punt-gun-is-the-world-s-largest-scattergun
Thank you for teaching me.
https://youtu.be/sV4lZJGsMm4?si=Lymu9cNJTTNwCqQ5
That's not a trained turret it just sticks out sideways
2)The explosive was so sensitive that compressed air had to be utilized as the propellant.
3) Named after something that famously exploded and killed lots of people
4) torpedoed itself
In 1897, an 8.4-inch (210 mm) Zalinski dynamite gun was fitted to the first commissioned US submarine USS Holland (SS-1). It was later removed in 1900.