Heavy gun mountings dominated the design of larger warships, on account of their size, weight, protection and cost. In the 1890s, British gun mountings developed rapidly with new gun technologies (wire winding, cordite) and the rise of the two major ordnance companies, Armstrongs and Vickers, producing large numbers of weapons for the Royal Navy and for worldwide export. But by 1960, aircraft and guided missiles had made the big gun redundant, so the period from 1890s to 1950s covering the two world wars is the most historically significant. The focus of this book is on the larger mountings and those fitted in the larger ships - the massively engineered -non transferable- mountings, whose complexities and associated magazines took up a huge volume of the ship, unlike the smaller calibre -transferable- mountings mostly bolted to the deck. Such mountings could weigh over 1000 tons, take two years to build and make up a quarter of the cost of a battleship. Although they existed in many va
