The Viribus Unitis Battleship: 1:25 Model; Main Gun Turrets

I'm starting a Thread for the first time (after two years on the SDF), and I won't have a problem if it's the last time so please tell me if China-unrelated, 100+ years old topics are not not suitable for this Forum or anything

This week I finally visited the model described in

so just one quote

... on a scale of 1:25 and a total length of 6 metres, built between 1913 and 1917 by eight craftsmen of the shipyard

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. The model is true to the original in structure, layout, and engine system.

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If you decided to read on you should maybe first have a look at the animation available at

(If interested, click on "KARTE", then choose "Seemacht Österreich" (top-left), and you should see something like this:

which you can render using + - < > ^ v (bottom-right). I don't think the port side view is available there; it looks like this:

During two days, I spent in total two hours and a half in front of this model ... I was watched as if I was an Italian spy 100 years ago ... just kidding, but using flash when photographing is strictly prohibited there; that's one of the reasons why the quality of my pictures is low. Another reason is despite I had looked into Noppen's "Austro-Hungarian Battleships 1914-18" and Friedman's "Naval Weapons Of WW1" before coming, I was overwhelmed, both days ... and I didn't take the pictures of some details in the way I should have -- but that's what I realized during the four hours I was going over my pictures on the train back from Vienna ... LOL!

In future posts here, I'll try to describe how the 12" gun turrets operated, based on what I've read and what I figured from the above model plus a separate turret model in that museum ... but don't expect much, one of the problems is I don't know the German language (and the chart in front of the 1:25 model has German-only captions, and the turret model has none), so any comments would be much welcomed!

Jura said:

...

In future posts here, I'll try to describe how the 12" gun turrets operated, based on what I've read and what I figured from the above model plus a separate turret model in that museum ...

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I'll start with the very short description by Noppen (p. 5 of the book I quoted above):
"The gun turret rested on a watertight turret shaft that rotated with the turret and it extended all the way down to the double bottom. From the bottom up was the projectile loading platform followed by the cartridge loading platform. The shells were then brought up by elevators to the transfer platform, which served as a temporary ammunition stowage area until the shells were lifted into the gun platform."
I'll go through the turret from the top. To describe the first picture, I use another quote from Noppen: "A targeting station protruded through the roof at the rear of the gun platform, in which a Barr & Stroud rangefinder was located."

I assume you can tell where's the targeting station (as well as the shell, the cartridge, the gun
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and I'll wait until tomorrow morning if there's any reaction at all to this Thread ...

Jura said:

...
here's the link

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and I'll wait until tomorrow morning if there's any reaction at all to this Thread ...

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... in the meantime Equation was so kind to give Likes to previous posts, so I personally thank him and go on with the view above the water deck ("Oberdeck" -- shown in the model in left-bottom corner); in addition to the obvious (parts of) gun-elevation gears are visible in center-bottom:

(At this point I'm not going to describe the parameters of the turret, the armament, the armor: the values for training/elevation; the performance of the shell; armor thicknesses; the description of a crew operating the turret; etc. can be found in the books I quoted.)

redundant (at first the picture from the preceding post wasn't showing for a couple of minutes so I had reposted it)

in the first level below the water deck, there was the handling room for ammunition;

• from it, shells and cartridges were sent up by three auxiliary hoists (which terminated between gun carriages -- not visible in the picture, of course), and
• into it, they were brought from below by the (main) hoist (to be described later):

(this picture also shows the training gears, in the bottom-left and -right, at about the level of the gun deck ("Bateriedeck")

I think the ammunition was "organized" at that level in the way that one shell and one cartridge could be taken up "immediately" to a loading tray (located above; from the tray they were rammed into the gun)

At that level, there was an auxilliary electricity generator, too; shown in the top-left part of this picture:


Here I'll add that up in the turret, behind the guns, were spaces for 18 shells+cartridges (at the rear, not visible on my pictures)

In the middle of the above picture, the engine room (for the hoists and for pointing the guns) is shown. The engine room was separated by the middle deck ("Mittledeck") from the level containing the hoist "mostly" (for example, on the picture below, I have no idea what's the red rectangle pointed out of this level). This level is shown in the middle of this picture, and was separated by the tween deck ("Zwischendeck") from the loading space(s) which I'll describe next:

Jura said:

... the loading space(s) which I'll describe next:

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the rack for moving ammunition to the hoist is visible in the middle of this picture:

but the question, which can't be answered easily by just looking at this model is: how the ammo got into the turret?! (from the magazines around, like the one on the right in this picture, and on both sides of the turret as shown here:

I'll try to answer that question next, now I just add that below the handling space, the turret shaft ended (in between "Oberer Raum" and "Unterer Raum", upper and lower space for rotating it; beneath it is the double bottom -- clearly visible in the first picture of this post).

WOW! What a cool trip, Jura! And what a really cool model. 1/25 scale and 6 meters long! Looks like they modeled every single compartment.

Thank you so much for posting it here with your pictures!

What was accomplished with all of the old dreadnought battleships is simply amazing and this model is simply awesome. I had never seen it before.

If you ever get thte chance to travel abroad...got to Houston, TX and visit the USS Texas. That's one you can board and walk around and look at...and see the 14" guns and turrets, etc., etc. I was blessed to be able to do that last year and (despite my disabilities and difficulties moving around the ship), it was well worth it.


You can read about my visit and see a lot more pictures:

HERE ON SD

Jura said:

...go on with the view above the water deck ("Oberdeck" -- shown in the model in left-bottom corner); in addition to the obvious (parts of) gun-elevation gears are visible in center-bottom:

At this point I'm not going to describe the parameters of the turret, the armament, the armor: the values for training/elevation; the performance of the shell; armor thicknesses; the description of a crew operating the turret; etc. can be found in the books I quoted.)

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The detail on the operation of these guns is simply incredible.

Jeff Head said:

WOW! What a cool trip, Jura! And what a really cool model. 1/25 scale and 6 meters long! Looks like they modeled every single compartment.

Thank you so much for posting it here with your pictures!

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thanks Jeff for the words of encouragement ... since I see some interest here, later I'll show several more parts of this ship -- in addition to the description of how the main battery guns operated, which I hope to finish this afternoon