1/200 Royal Navy 4"/45 BL MKIX Flowers Class (Rounded Shield)

1/200 Scale Royal Navy 4"/45 (10.2cm) BL MKIX Flowers Class (Fully Rounded Shield) as used by the Royal Navy and Allied Navies on Flowers Class Corvettes and Bathurst Class Minesweepers. Highly detailed gun modelled from plans and many reference photographs.

• 1x Mount
• Highly detailed and accurate part, modelled from the John Lambert plans and photographic reference
• Details include: Training and Elevation Gear, Accurate Breech loading mechanism, Rivets, Hex nuts and Sighting Apparatus
• Shield is the Fully Rounded version (check your reference)
• Barrel set at 3º elevation.

HISTORICAL DATA
Admiral Fisher had always objected to heavy secondary batteries on capital ships, so at his insistence, the 4" (10.2 cm) caliber was chosen for the secondary weapons on the battlecruisers of the Repulse and Courageous classes. Initially, either the 4" (10.2 cm) QF Mark V or the 4" (10.2 cm) BL Mark VIII were to have been installed, but the first weapon was difficult to arrange for director firing and the second had a low rate of fire. The best features of both, the Mark V body and the Mark VIII breech mechanism, were combined to create the Mark IX.

The Repulse class battlecruisers used both single and triple mountings, with the latter mounting having the guns individually sleeved, an unusual feature for a secondary weapon. This mounting required a very large crew of 32 and, as it lacked power assist, proved to be quite cumbersome.

During World War II, this weapon was used in single mountings on many corvettes as well as on numerous smaller ships including 1,200 on DEMS.

Mark IX was of wire wound construction with tapered inner A tube and jacket. Mark IX* differed in having no inner A tube. Mark IX** was introduced to suit older manufacturing equipment at EOC and COW and had no inner A tube, a B tube and overlapping short jacket and an old-style step wire-winding method. All had Welin breech blocks with Vickers mechanisms. Some 2,382 were built of which 2,193 were still in service as of September 1939. Actual bore length was 44.35 calibers.

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