Talk:BL 6-inch 80-pounder gun

Confusion between Mk I and Mk II
There is some confusion as to the exact model, the Mk I or Mk II, of 6-inch gun carried by a number of sloops and corvettes during the 1880s. Ballard, Winfield, and Gardiner all list Mk Is firing an 80 lb shell. Campbell, however, specifically lists most of these ships as carrying Mk IIs that could fire 100 lb shells. He even describes an incident where one of the guns aboard Active blew up in November 1884. Furthermore, Campbell says that only 19 Mk I guns were built and that they were mounted on two Comus-class corvettes and then on HMS Rover (1874). He says that 143 Mk II guns were built and armed the Bacchante-class corvette and Comus-class ships, among others. It seems odd that the Mk I and II weighed nearly the same amount, but the Mk II fired a much heavier shell. Perhaps the simplest way to reconcile these problems is that Campbell made a typo when giving the shell weight fired by the Mk II and that both marks fired the same 80-pound shell. The relevant gunnery handbooks need to be consulted to see if Campbell made a mistake or not.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 17:42, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Mk II definitely fired a 100-pound projectile, according to all contemporary manuals. It appears to have been a dud and quickly withdrawn from active service. The answer appears to be that they eventually needed to increase the weight to 5 tons of steel to achieve a reliable 6-inch gun firing a 100-pound shell at full charge (Mk III) compared to the 4 tons of previous models. Rcbutcher (talk) 06:39, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for checking, as one of them cited in the article was off-line. Then we have some real issues trying to reconcile Campbell's article with what everyone else is saying armed those ships.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:30, 11 March 2012 (UTC)