Naval guns below about 10-inches have brass powder casings. Under 5-inches, more or less, they are a fixed piece like a gigantic small arms cartridge. 5 inches and up the shell and case are loaded separately. Ten inches and up are the “bag guns” where the powder is in silk bags that are consumed when the gun is fired.
Below is a photo of USS Brooklyn CL-40 with six-inch casings accumulated on the main deck during the invasion of Sicily. At the end of the action they’d be tossed overboard with no attempt to recycle.
All the naval guns above caliber 5"/54 have long been retired*. None of the current 5"/54 rounds have a brass cartridge case. The 6" rounds were the only ones in the large caliber category that used a cartridge case. 8", 14" and 16" guns used bag charges. Cartridge cases of that size would be too unwieldy. The navies have always just pitched overboard.
*There is at least one 8’/55 gun around for test purposes.
And if Russia is blaming it on Ukraine, what that means is that Ukraine has the capacity to launch assassinations in Moscow, the heart of the Russian security state.
If only there were a way to say a loose cigarette caused the explosion…
if anything, the war showed the russian incompetence so far and that NATO - with just sending in 16 trucks can pretty much run havoc on russian warfare … It was quite normal to hear - 6 months ago- that russia could basically overrun half of europe if they wanted … now it turns out that they cant even overrun (insert avg. nebraska county here)
so my takehome is that NATO (with just sending 0.1% of their assets) beat russians asses all day long …
and that an army of 10.000 committed fighters is more worth than one of 100.000 non-committed non-fighters
The gun in question was a semi-fixed round, with separate ammunition and a brass propellant cartidge:
So, still ejecting brass after the shot, but less unwieldy than a fully-fixed round. Also gave some versatility, since there were two different propellant cartridges: Mark I full charge and Mark 2 reduced charge.
That seems a suspiciously fast “solve” to me, almost like the story had been set up in advance for the FSB could have a small dossier on the “suspect” immediately…
Russia has already started a war. They do seem to want to drag other parties into it. Why, I cannot fathom, but then, I’m not a power-made dictator.
Yeah, well, car bombs are very, very seldom an accident…
Yeah, as plenty of Russian dissidents living abroad have pointed out, how come they can’t seem to solve any other political assassinations this quickly?
US govt announced a $3 billion aid package to Ukraine, larger than any other previous such military shipment. Waiting like Christmas to see what’s in it…
Morbid question: If Trump had been president in Feb-2022 and ordered the U.S. military to help Russia conquer Ukraine to do buddy Putin a favor, what percentage of the military would mutiny against such “bomb Kyiv” orders? 80%?
Trump wouldn’t have helped, but he might have (probably?) stayed out of it and without US leadership you probably don’t get the response we’ve seen. No expansion of NATO; Poland, the UK, and the Baltics the only countries chipping in; minimal intelligence sharing. Putin maybe stops avoiding attacking arms shipments while on Polish territory, Poland invokes article 5, the US doesn’t answer and NATO dissolves.
That’s a realistic worse case for Trump being president. Joining Russia wouldn’t happen. Might as well wonder what happens if Trump sprouted wings and flew to gumdrop island.
Yup. I think Putin had this all planned out. Trump was going to win, so don’t have to worry about the US helping Ukraine. But, the ball was already rolling when Trump lost.
I mean, Trump had already tried to extort Zelenski. Zelenski wouldn’t have it, so Trump is very unhappy with him.
