The War Department did not have any 14-inch guns which could be spared from the seacoast defenses for use abroad. The Ordnance Department, therefore, inaugurated the project for the construction of 60 guns of 14-inch caliber. For the construction of such guns complete new plants were required, as all available facilities were already taken over for other projects considered more important. This contract was to have been turned out by the Neville Island ordnance plant. The Navy Department in May, 1918, expressed willingness to turn over to the Army certain 14-inch guns, 50 calibers, then under construction and of which it was estimated that 30 would be completed by March, 1919.
It was decided to place some of these 14-inch guns on American sliding railway mounts, and 16 such mounts were ordered from the Baldwin Locomotive Works, deliveries to begin February 1, 1919. The 16 units were to be delivered prior to April, 1919, but due to the signing of the armistice work was suspended on the contracts, since the mounts were designed for use in France. The contract was canceled in March, 1919.
The Navy itself placed five of these guns on railway mounts of another design to be operated in France by naval forces on shore. Eleven such mounts were built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works under the supervision of the Navy Ordnance Bureau, and six of them were afterwards turned over to the Army.
THE 16-INCH HOWITZER.
Without discussing here the 12-inch howitzers, 20 feet long, which the Ordnance Department ordered produced and mounted on railway trucks, a development for use abroad in 1920, we come, finally, to the largest weapon of all in the railway artillery program, the 16-inch howitzer, the barrel of this mighty weapon being 26 feet 6 inches long. The American 16-inch howitzer had been forged out and finished prior to the date of America's entrance into the war. It was proposed to place this weapon on a railway mount and make it available for use on the western front.
The Ordnance Department completed the design for the mount on February 10, 1918. In order to turn out the unit in the shortest possible time, the project was placed with three manufacturers, each of whom was to produce different parts. The American Bridge Co. received the order to build the structural parts, the Baldwin Locomotive Works contracted for the trucks, while the Morgan Engineering Co. undertook to assemble the unit and also to build the top carriage and other mechanical parts. The contractors did a speedy job in producing the mount for this howitzer.
In nearly all railway artillery of this size it is necessary to provide bracing when the gun is set up in position for firing. The 16-inch howitzer mount was unique in that the weapon could be fired from the trucks without any track preparation whatsoever. An exhaustive test at the Aberdeen proving grounds demonstrated that this piece of artillery ranked with the highest types of ordnance in use by any country in the world.
In the meantime orders had been placed for 61 additional howitzers. The American Expeditionary Forces asked that 12 of these enormous weapons be sent overseas as soon as they could be produced, a job which would have extended over a period of months, if not years. Since none of the additional howitzers had been produced when the armistice was signed, the project of building mounts for them never got under way. The pilot howitzer and mount were not shipped abroad.
