Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!agate!apple!amdahl!amdcad!military
From: rbeville@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM (Bob Beville)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Seacoast Mortars and Nukes
Summary: devices to help direct gunfire
Message-ID: <26690@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Date: 10 Aug 89 04:08:44 GMT
References: <8630@cbnews.ATT.COM* <8675@cbnews.ATT.COM> <8800@cbnews.ATT.COM> <8892@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Sender: cdr@amdcad.AMD.COM
Organization: Tektronix Inc., Beaverton, Or.
Lines: 51
Approved: military@amdcad.amd.com



From: rbeville@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM (Bob Beville)

	Talking about shooting at aircraft with support from
	visual and microphone triangulation 'spotters' ...
	This reference has a photo of an apparatus with this caption:
	"Sound Locator M-2 was standard for detecting and locating
	sounds in pre-RADAR days."

	The apparatus has three 'trumpet'
	like tubes about the diameter of a tuba... they have beams or
	support members that terminate down to a pedestal post where
	some hand-crank wheels appear( for rotation and elevation
	control like the ACK-ACK gun). An operator standing on the 
	pedestal deck( he appears to rotate the thing he's standing on
	and stays put relative to the gear) looks like he's wearing 
	WW2 pilot headphone gear.  From the scale-height of this operator
	it's about 8 to 9 feet tall.  no further details discerned...
	On the mouth of the Columbia River, these could as easily help
	locate ships coming over the bar.

	The battery emplacement at Fort Stevens that was sealed over
	with guns inside was a conversion of BATTERY MISHLER into an
	HECP:  HARBOR ENTRANCE COMMAND POST.  The battery was camouflaged
	by great physical effort to look like its surroundings.  
	A salvage team wanted to scrap the guns/disappearing carriages 
	to help the war effort scrap drive... they were after the  lead
	carriage counterweights at 97,000 lbs. each; each steel gun barrel
	weighed  77,000 lbs ..... 237 tons in all!  The battery,
	built in 1897, was thought too unsound to disturb, and because
	of the Oregon rainfall, the comm  equipment would get leaked on
	through fractures in the structure.  
	The guns were left alone until long after the war...

	The Fort Stevens Museum/Gift Store has a muzzle of one of the
	huge guns on exhibit... a 10-inch one.  The rifling in the barrel
	looks to be one-half inch deep.

	my source...
	This is in Chapter 5, Coastal Defences in the Pacific Northwest
	discussing the fortifications of the Strait of Juan De Fuca,
	Puget Sound, Vancouver, Astoria, and the Columbia River... the
	forts and batteries, searchlights, tethered mines, and early RADARs.
	of:
	_SILENT_SIEGE_II, JAPANESE ATTACKS ON NORTH AMERICA IN WORLD WAR II
	Bert Webber, Webber Reasearch Group, Medford OR.

	that's -OWARI- from GLOWWORM-7-9-4
	best regards, rbeville@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM
	Bob Beville, Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR 97077