in a 1988 made-for-TV movie in which Rick Schroeder plays the part of an underaged WW2 sailor serving combat duty on a battleship, one of the details is that sailors on deck are supposed to retreat below deck (for safety) when they hear the warning that the 16-inch guns are about to be fired. Somewhere in the movie there is an occasion where some sailors are unable to retreat in time, and when the guns are fired, the resulting blast waves are shown violently blowing the sailors around on the deck.
So that’s the Hollywood version, no doubt amped up for dramatic reasons. But how dangerous was it to be on the deck of a battle ship when those big guns were fired? Ruptured eardrums, shattered organs or instant death??
There’s also Under Siege where being on the deck near the gun when it fires leaves the character deaf for a while. I would imagine that would result in real ear damage, especially repeated exposure.
So in WWII as just an example, the gunners manning the smaller guns and ack-ack and other sailors were on deck while the big guns fired.
You needed to be a certain distance from the guns and hopefully wearing hearing protection, but being on deck was not a very dangerous thing.
The 16" guns are very loud. I watched from the fantail of the USS Ranger, the USS New Jersey fire volleys from both sides at once and while it was the most awesome firework I’ve every seen it was loud from at least 2000’ away. I can’t image being near the guns without hearing protection. Probably both the foam inserts and mickey mouse ears in the 80s.
The Japanese developed and used anti-aircraft shells for the main batteries of their battleships and heavy cruisers in WWII. They were used in action, and the only danger that I’ve read of them posing to the crews of smaller anti-aircraft guns on the deck was that
The blast of the main guns turned out to disrupt the fire of the smaller antiaircraft guns. In addition the copper drive bands of the rounds were poorly machined and constant firing was damaging to the gun rifling
So, they were not only ineffective as anti-aircraft weapons, but actively disrupted the fire of ‘proper’ anti-aircraft guns. The Yamato fired these shells from her 18.1" guns during her final sortie to little actual effect alongside her enormous complement of 5" DP and 25mm antiaircraft guns, and as can be seen from a line drawing of her at the time of her sinking triple 25mm batteries were strapped down almost anywhere there was room to put them, including right next to and on top of the 18.1" turrets.
Video from the Battleship New Jersey museum about what guns they can still fire, which they can’t, and why.
Video is cued to discussion of main gun, including whether the firing blast can cause damage and if that blast is dangerous to people on deck.
TL;DR: Being before the muzzle can be incredibly damaging (as witnessed by blast-dented bulkheads and cracked frames), but no explicit statement of what would happen to a body in that case. Standing a few feet away from the sides of the barrel, or behind the turret, is not damaging and not injurious.
My father served in the Army, as a tank driver, for three years in the 1950s. Hearing protection was insufficient (if if even existed) back then, and he suffered significant hearing loss. I suspect that it was extremely common back then, for any serviceperson who worked closely with heavy machinery or weaponry.
Saying they were not very effective is giving them the benefit of the doubt; I’ve not heard of them ever actually shooting anything down, and I think it’s a safe assumption that a plane being lost in such a spectacular fashion would have stuck out in people’s memories. Japanese AA was pretty lackluster in general, especially when compared to mid/late war Allied AA with superior fire direction overall and radar direction and proximity fuses on 5"/38s. Only 10 out of 386 planes that attacked Yamato’s task force when she was sunk were shot down.
I seem to recall an incident described in Robert Massie’s book Castles of Steel where an unwary individual was too close to a British WWI battleship’s 12-inch gun when it fired, blowing his pants off. But that may be apocryphal.
Yes, if I recall correctly, by the combat air patrol.
The torpedo bombers did important service even if they got almost completely shot down while delivering no effective torpedo hits: they pulled the Zeros defending Soryu, Kaga, and Akagi to low level, sent them hying off after a late-arriving torpedo bomber squadron, and expended a lot of ammo amd fuel so that there was no one to stand in the way of the dive bomber strike when it appeared undetected right above the carriers.
As were most Japanese warships, Yamato and Musashi were provided with a special anti-aircraft incendiary shrapnel shell officially designated as “3 Shiki tsûjôdan” (Common Type 3) and supposedly nicknamed “The Beehive,” but this could be apocryphal. This round weighed 2,998 lbs. (1,360 kg) and was filled with 900 incendiary-filled tubes. A time fuze was used to set the desired bursting distance, usually about 1,000 meters (1,100 yards) after leaving the muzzle. These projectiles were designed to expel the incendiary tubes in a 20 degree cone extending towards the oncoming aircraft with the projectile shell itself being destroyed by a bursting charge to increase the quantity of steel splinters. The incendiary tubes ignited about half a second later and burned for five seconds at 3,000 degrees C, producing a flame approximately 5 meters (16 feet) long.
The concept behind these shells was that the ship would put up a barrage pattern through which an attacking aircraft would have to fly. However, these shells were considered by US Navy pilots to be more of a visual spectacular than an effective AA weapon.
The 25mm mounts that could be exposed to blast from the 18.1” guns had shields to reduce blast damage. The 25mm mounts on and next to the 18.1” guns were not shielded. These would not be exposed to the worst blast because they’re inside the arc of the main guns muzzles.
