IBM got it right yesterday, with Terrapod jumping on that bandwagon, and then Heinrichs doing his signature web-search (what, no video?) The Whatziss is an Italian howitzer captured at Caporetto. In this case, the 305mm howitzer on the "De Stefano" mount, better seen in the picture below. The "headless officer" Heinrichs pointed out is an Austrian soldier - not Allied, as several of you posited. And while IBM was correct, I'm still knocking off 5 points for his "butt-covering" answer of the Brit guns. Not.even.
That maddening "ladder to nowhere" went to the gunner's platform that is missing on the exemplar gun in the Whatziss. The De Stefano mount was intended to both handle recoil and facilitate transportation - so the sources say. My personal take is the system has more to do with ease of assembly and transportation - recoil reduction is a side benefit at best. In addition to the recuperator on the gun, the entire mount could move up the inclined ramp - if it were assembled that way. There were several variations of the De Stefano mounts - some where several different parts of the entire gun system recoiled on their own ramps.
As the first picture indicates, with Og's "Lego waffle" mud-feet, the gun could be moved limited distances on the wheels, but it was disassembled and moved in sections by truck and trailer or train for long moves. The De Stefano system was used with several different guns - more data, and pictures of what I'm talking about can be found here, at Valka.cz.
ML
*snort*
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http://www.cityofart.net/bship/rn_faadibruno.html
The amazing thing is that she was actually "designed," as opposed to having been cobbled together by a bunch of drunk college students over a weekend. Had she been steam powered rather than using a handy pair of spare internal combustion engines she'd qualify as genuine steampunk.
http://www.cityofart.net/bship/rn_faadibruno.html
The amazing thing is that she was actually "designed," as opposed to having been cobbled together by a bunch of drunk college students over a weekend. Had she been steam powered rather than using a handy pair of spare internal combustion engines she'd qualify as genuine steampunk.
is there a difference?
The RN monitors, while just as much of a slap dash jury rig, performed much better. One of the WWI ships, HMS Terror, is commemorated by the Terror Club in Singapore, where she served between the wars as guardship.