1/72 Royal Navy 4.7" (12 cm) BL MKI & MKII on CPVI Mount x5

PRODUCT DESCRIPTION

1/72 Scale Royal Navy 4.7" (12 cm) BL MKI & MKII on CPVI Mount x5 (Scott, Shakespeare, Modified V&W, Botha as rearmed and Amazon and Ambuscade classes) with Sighting Hatches open, as used by the Royal Navy and Commonwealth Navies. These are highly detailed parts modelled using plans and many reference photographs.

• 5x Mounts
• Highly detailed and accurate parts, modelled from plans and photographic reference
• Details include: Training and Elevation Gear, Sighting Apparatus, Accurate Breech loading mechanism, Rivets and Hex nuts
• Barrels can be elevated as desired.
  

HISTORICAL DATA

The Mark I was designed hurriedly late in World War I as a response to reports that the Germans were arming their new destroyers with heavier guns than the 10.5 cm (4.1”) weapons previously used. In fact, the Germans had armed a few destroyers with 15 cm (5.9”) guns, but the Armistice intervened before any of these saw active service. This program gave the Royal Navy some of the most powerful destroyers in the world at the end of World War I.

The mountings for these guns can be distinguished from later 4.7” (12 cm) QF mountings by their abbreviated shields, which offered little protection to their gun crews’ legs. These open-back gun mounts with their lack of integral hoists and low maximum elevations formed the pattern for the main guns used on nearly all British destroyers for the next three decades.

By 1940, many of these weapons were wearing out and the ones that remained were almost all mounted on obsolescent warships. Rather than simply replacing these worn-out Mark I guns with a similar, already available weapon such as the 4.7”/45 (12 cm) QF Mark IX, the British instead wasted scarce resources to design and manufacture a new, direct replacement gun of modern construction techniques, the Mark II. 

Mark I was constructed of a tapered inner A tube, A tube, full length wire and a full length jacket. Mark I* was the same with no inner A tube. Mark II had a monobloc barrel, breech ring and breech bush. All of these were interchangeable and used a Welin breech block with a Vickers mechanism. A total of 187 Mark I and Mark I* guns were completed out of 776 ordered during World War I. Of these, 176 were available in 1939. 32 Mark II guns were ordered in 1940 and all were completed during the war.

The 4.7” (12 cm) caliber was used on almost every destroyer built by Britain between 1917 and 1943.

Actual bore diameter of all British 4.7” guns was 4.724” (12 cm).

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