Talk:Barbette

Created
The article "Barbette" was created on 4 October 2004, by long-term editor User:Stan Shebs, with 2 meanings: as the base of a gun turret, or the enclosure surrounding the guns before gun-turrets were developed. -Wikid77 (talk) 12:48, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Redirected names
27-April-2008: The following names connect to article "Barbette" using keyword #REDIRECT for redirecting those names: The German word for the plural is "Barbetten" as used in describing ships in World War I.
 * Barbettes - the plural (added 27Apr08), because the singular word might not be obvious to the reader, in context (Google hits: plural=9050 alone, singular=43,900).

Other redirected names should be added here, if needed. -Wikid77 (talk) 12:48, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Most barbette mounts were land-based, unarmored...
Most barbette mounts were land-based, unarmored (except by stone, perhaps) and used for nearly 500 years. This article is overly based on brief naval experiments. Anmccaff (talk) 23:20, 16 November 2015 (UTC)


 * WP:SOFIXIT. Nobody said this article was complete. Parsecboy (talk) 00:25, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * It's not merely incomplete, it's at odds with itself, with sections directly contradicting each other. Anmccaff (talk) 01:07, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I see nothing that contradicts itself - care to elaborate? Parsecboy (talk) 01:20, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Let's see...we have -or rather had, a claim that "a barbette" was armor used for heavy guns, with an illustration of an unarmored en barbette mount nearby, and a quote -from Mahan, no less- explaining that -light- guns should be barbette mounted. It speaks...well, spoke... of "field guns," while correctly showing an example of fortress pieces.  It falsely claims the usual use was in coastal works, but shows an unambiguously land-based illustration.  It talks of a disappearing gun hiding behind the "barbette," which was a usage never used for land guns, which is reflected by the accurate use of "parapet " a line or two away.  Anmccaff (talk) 02:12, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * None of that contradicts itself. Barbettes used in ships (i.e., the photo to which you are referring) used heavy guns. Barbettes in land fortifications tended to use smaller guns. The two are not the same. The line about coastal works refers specifically to disappearing guns. Parsecboy (talk) 02:36, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * ...and yet the big Columbiads and Rodmans, the largest guns of their era -which was also the era of so-called "barbettes" on battleships, were almost exclusively mounted en barbette, for obvious reasons. Odd, that.  And their positions were never called "barbettes".  Disappearing guns lowered behind "parapets" or into "gun pits."  Your usage here is simply wrong. Anmccaff (talk) 02:59, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Does the article say that large caliber guns could not be mounted en barbette? Or that only light guns were used? No, it just provides a quote from Mahan, a noted expert, that suggests that light guns were best in barbette positions. And if you're claiming that the use of "barbette" to refer to mounts on ironclads is incorrect, frankly, you're out of your depth. As for disappearing guns and parapets, try looking at this illustration. Barbette guns in land fortifications are, by definition, behind a parapet. Parsecboy (talk) 03:06, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

No, that is simply, completely, and unequivocally untrue. By 1900 or so, many barbette mounts were often no longer placed en barbette, but rather depended on shielding, or even on superior counterbattery alone. Batteries Hearn and Smith are the classic examples of this for anyone familiar with the subject. Barbette mount was used for "turntable mount" in both naval and army usage long since. There were also a huge number of semi-casemated "barbette mounts," some shielded, but many not. As you would be aware if you were familiar with contemporaneous sources, Barbette, by itself, in the age of the ironclad, was ambiguous, but initially referred to the mount more often than the circular shielding. Anmccaff (talk) 05:27, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * If the guns are no longer placed en barbette, they are not barbette guns. It doesn't matter what kind of carriage they're on. You might as well say that some automobiles don't have engines and are pulled by horses, but they're still automobiles. Parsecboy (talk) 13:35, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

(not how the template works)
I dunno. There's a presumption that the lead covers, with a certain degree of impartiality, all the salient points of a subject. So, what tag'd fit better? Anmccaff (talk) 01:06, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Lead sections are supposed to summarize the article. This lead section does indeed summarize the article. Undue is for cases where a certain viewpoint is given predominance, in violation of WP:NPOV, which is not the case here. The template is also not placed directly after a sentence. Parsecboy (talk) 01:21, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * It may, or may not summarize the article, but it hardly does the subject. It's a long-standing, mostly landlocked practice with an article aimed at a brief sea-based usage, and some amateurish misnomers for aircraft. The piece also showed an ignorance of the different meaning of the term when used for artillery and when used in naval architecture. Anmccaff (talk) 01:58, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Again, WP:SOFIXIT. If you have material to add on use in land fortifications, by all means, add it. But do not remove valid material because you think the article is unbalanced. That is not the way to correct the issue. Parsecboy (talk) 02:38, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * You are assuming the material removed is valid, and you are also assuming some material is so very, very extra-specially valid it needs to be said twice.
 * Let's look at this in detail.

A barbette is a protective circular armour mounting for a cannon or heavy artillery gun. The name comes from the French phrase en barbette, which refers to the practice of firing a field gun over a parapet rather than through an embrasure in the fortification. The former gives better angles of fire but less protection than the latter. The disappearing gun was a variation on the barbette—it consisted of a heavy gun on a carriage that would retract into the barbette for reloading. They were primarily used in coastal defences, but saw some use in a handful of warships. Next, find a decent source that claims ""a disappearing gun was a variation on the barbette." Or try to, because anything that says that won't be a decent source, and will probably track right back to Wiki itself.  Montcrief proposed his DCs to fire en barbette like any other gun; no variation was required.  Other makers proposed their use in casemates and embrasures, see King's ''Counterpoise Guns" for several examples.
 * Not on land, it ain't. That's an exclusively naval usage that lasted less than one hundred years, coming in with the big-gun ships, and leaving with them, roughly 1880, say, to 1960. Improvements in automatic shell handling and downsizing of naval guns met at the 8incher, and those turrets are a very different animule from what you find on yer dreadnought.  The turrets are far smaller and lighter, and the supporting/protective structure below it has changed from a huge, thick cylinder to something much more modest.
 * Next, note the word "parapet;" that's the thingie a DC hides behind.  Not a "barbette."
 * Then support the idea that all DCs mounted "heavy guns." Balanced pillar designs were often thought of as a type of DC.  Even the 6" were on the small side during some eras.

Barbettes were primarily used in armoured warships starting in the 1860s during a period of intense experimentation with other mounting systems for heavy guns at sea; alternatives included the heavily armored gun turret and an armored, fixed central gun battery. By the late 1880s, all three systems were replaced with a hybrid barbette-turret system that combined the benefits of both types. The heavily armored tube that supported the new gun mount was referred to as a barbette.


 * Barbette mounts had been used then for over 300 years, conservatively. Stating in with naval usage, without something to disambiguate, is misleading.  Unbalanced, even.

Guns with restricted arcs of fire mounted in heavy bombers during World War II—such those in the tail of the aircraft, as opposed to fully revolving turrets—were also sometimes referred to as having barbette mounts, though usage of the term is primarily restricted to British publications. American authors generally refer to such mounts simply as tail guns or tail gun turrets.


 * Very, very few expert sources use this widely; it's mostly a foamerism.

(illustration and table of contents skipped)

The use of barbette mountings originated in ground fortifications. The term itself originated from the French phrase en barbette, which referred to a gun placed to fire over a parapet, rather than through an embrasure, an opening in the fortification wall. While an en barbette emplacement offered wider arcs of fire, it also exposed the gun's crew to greater danger from hostile fire.[1] In addition, since the barbette position would be higher than a casemate position—that is, a gun firing through an embrasure—it would have a greater field of fire. The American military theorist Dennis Hart Mahan suggested that light guns, such as howitzers, were best suited for barbette emplacements since they could fire explosive shells and could be easily withdrawn when they came under enemy fire.[2] Fortifications in the 19th century typically employed both casemate and barbette emplacements. For example, the Russian Fort Constantine outside Sevastopol was equipped with 43 heavy guns in its seaward side during the Crimean War in the mid-1850s; of these, 27 were in barbettes, with the rest in casemates.[3]


 * Higher positions did not always offer a greater field of fire in the era of muzzleloaders, they often instead created a considerable zone of dead ground near their position. Coastal forts often relied on very low water batteries, sometimes casemated, usually "en barbette," for this reason.  (They also often did so because the largest guns were quite unpleasant to fire in closed casemates.) The flip side of this, of course, was that the battery had to stand ships off far enough that they were not vulnerable to musketry from the tops.

A modified version of the barbette type was the disappearing gun, which placed a heavy gun on a carriage that retracted into the barbette for reloading; this kept the gun crews better protected and made the gun harder to target, since it was only visible while it was firing. The type was usually used for coastal defence guns.[4]


 * See if you can find a single decent source that talks about a land-based DC gun "retracting into the barbette," or a contemporaneous naval one.

(illustration clipped.)

Following the introduction of ironclad warships in the early 1860s, naval designers grappled with the problem of mounting heavy guns in the most efficient way possible. The first generation of ironclads employed the same broadside arrangement as the old ship of the line, but it was not particularly effective for ahead or stern fire. This was particularly important to designers, since the tactic of ramming was revived following its successful employment at the decisive Austrian victory at the Battle of Lissa in 1866. Ramming required a ship to steam directly at its opponent, which greatly increased the importance of end-on fire. Designers such as Cowper Phipps Coles and John Ericsson designed the first gun turrets in the 1860s, which gave the guns a wide field of fire. These turrets were exceedingly heavy, which required them to be placed low in the ship to reduce top-weight—and produced a dangerous tendency to capsize in heavy seas, amply demonstrated by the loss of HMS Captain and Coles himself with the ship in a gale in 1870.[5][6][7]


 * First decent paragraph.

In the 1870s, designers began to experiment with an en barbette type of mounting. The barbette was a fixed armoured enclosure protecting the gun. The barbette could take the form of a circular or elongated ring of armour around the rotating gun mount over which the guns (possibly fitted with a gun shield) fired. The barbette system reduced weight considerably, since the machinery for the rotating gun mount, along with the mount itself, was much lighter than that required for the gun house of a turret.[8] The savings in weight could then be passed on to increase armour protection for the hull, improve coal storage capacity, or to install larger, more powerful engines.[9] In addition, because barbettes were lighter, they could be placed higher in the ship without jeopardizing stability, which improved their ability to be worked in heavy seas that would have otherwise rendered turrets unusable. This also permitted a higher freeboard, which also improved seakeeping.[10]


 * No. Designers experimented with en barbette mounts in the 1820s.  Earlier, in fact, de Tousard mentions the advantages in 1809. What they did later, in the age of armor, was make barbette shields.

Ironclads equipped with barbettes were referred to as "barbette ships" much like their contemporaries, turret ships and central battery ships, which mounted their heavy guns in turrets or in a central armored battery.[11] Many navies experimented with all three types in the 1870s and 1880s, including the British Admiral-class battleships,[12] the French Marceau-class ironclads,[13] the Italian Italia-class battleships,[14] and the German Sachsen-class ironclads, all of which employed barbettes to mount their heavy guns.[15] All of these navies also built turret and or central battery ships during the same period, though none had a decisive advantage over the other.[16] The British and the Russian navies experimented with using disappearing guns afloat, including on the British HMS Temeraire and the Russian ironclad Vice-Admiral Popov. They were not deemed particularly successful and were not repeated.[4]

(illustration clipped.)
 * Good summation of naval usage, but it still suffers from equivocation. "Barbette" is being used simultaneously for "barbette mount" and two types of armor shield.

In the late 1880s, the debate between barbette or turret mounts was finally settled. The Royal Sovereign class, mounted their guns in barbettes, but the follow-on design, the Majestic class, adopted a new mounting that combined the benefits of both kinds of mounts. A heavily armoured, rotating gun house was added to the revolving platform, which kept the guns and their crews protected. The gun house was smaller and lighter than the old-style turrets, which still permitted placement higher in the ship and the corresponding benefits to stability and seakeeping. This innovation gradually became known simply as a turret, though the armored tube that held the turret substructure, which included the shell and propellant handling rooms and the ammunition hoists, was still referred to as a barbette. These ships were the prototype of the so-called pre-dreadnought battleships, which proved to be broadly influential in all major navies over the next fifteen years.[17][18]


 * If you look at contemporaneous usage, you will see that the thing you think of as a barbette was still seen as a barbette shield by them as actually built and used it up until barbette mounts proper passed out of common naval use.

Ships equipped with barbette mountings did not see a great deal of combat, owing to the long period of relative peace between their appearance in the 1870s and their obsolescence in the 1890s. Some barbette ships saw action during the British Bombardment of Alexandria in 1882,[19] and the French ironclad Triomphante participated in the Battle of Fuzhou during the Sino-French War in 1884.[20] The two Chinese ironclads, Dingyuan and Zhenyuan, that took part in the Battle of the Yalu River during the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894, carried their main battery in barbettes, though they were equipped with extensive gun shields that resembled turrets. The shields were nevertheless only proof against small-arms fire.[21] Three of their opponents at the Yalu River, the Japanese Matsushima-class cruisers, also mounted their guns in open barbettes.[22] Those barbette ships that survived into World War I were typically used only for secondary purposes. For example, the French Marceau was used as a repair ship for submarines and torpedo boats,[23] while the German Württemberg was employed as a torpedo training ship.[15] A handful of barbette ships did see action during the war, including the British Revenge, which bombarded German positions in Flanders in 1914 and 1915.[24]
 * Again, barbettes afloat precede "barbette ironclads;" there was a real debate over what was the best way to handle floating batteries.

Use in bomber aircraft

When applied to military aircraft, largely in aviation history books written by British historians, a barbette is a position on an aircraft where a gun is in a mounting which has a restricted arc of fire when compared to a turret, or which is remotely mounted away from the gunner. As such it is frequently used to describe the tail gunner position on bombers such as the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress,[25] with American aviation books frequently describing the position as a tail gun turret,[26] or simply as a tail gun.[27]


 * as I've mentioned, most usage is foamer's misnomers.

The term "barbette" is also used by some, again primarily British historians, to describe a remotely aimed and operated gun turret emplacement[28] on almost any non-American military aircraft of World War II, but it is not usable in a direct translation for the German language term used on Luftwaffe aircraft of that era. As an example, the German Heinkel He 177A heavy bomber had such a remotely operated twin-MG 131 machine gun Fernbedienbare Drehlafette FDL 131A powered forward dorsal gun turret, with the full translation of the German term comprising the prefix as "Remotely controlled rotating gun mount".[29]

Anmccaff (talk) 04:59, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * This is said twice, why, exactly?


 * On barbettes and disappearing guns - you seem to be confusing the concept of a gun mounted en barbette with the specific bits of metal that hold the gun in place. In the section above, you tell me that guns on barbette carriages placed in casemates are still barbette guns. Now you say that Moncrief proposed that his disappearing guns fire en barbette, the only difference being the fact that the carriage retracts behind the parapet, as if that means the two types of mounting are wholly unrelated.
 * It seems part of your problem is you read everything in black and white. Nowhere does the article state that disappearing guns were only heavy guns, or that medium and light caliber guns were excluded from use. In any event, "heavy gun" is of course a subjective term, and one whose definition changed significantly during the period in question.
 * On greater fields of fire - tell me, would a gun firing from, say this, have a more or less restricted field of fire than this one.
 * I assume this is the book by de Tousard you're referring to. I assume the passage you're referring to is on page 366, specifically the line "this type of carriage would be found admirably constructed for a battery en barbette. The only trouble is, he's talking about land fortifications by that point.
 * Barbette vs. barbette shield - the two terms are in fact interchangeable, regardless of your inability to grasp that the meanings of words evolve, or your lack of understanding that we are writing an encyclopedia for a 21st century audience, not a 19th century one. In other words, what contemporary sources use is completely irrelevant. Amusingly, "your" disappearing gun article refers to Temeraire as having "barbette structures", not "barbette shields".
 * On your alleged foamerism - try typing "bomber barbette" in Google books and tell me what you find.
 * As for repeating things, the two paragraphs are talking about different things. The first refers to gun mounts with restricted arcs of fire, like a tail gun. The second refers to remotely controlled guns, regardless of their arc of fire. Parsecboy (talk) 16:43, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Umm, no. The confusion is yours, and your article's.  A "barbette mount", a "barbette carriage", a (completely different kind of) "barbette mount", a barbette shield", and (naturally) a completely different kind of barbette shield, and a "barbette gun" could be, and were, all referred to as "barbettes" by ellipsis.  A "barbette" is not a single particular thing, and should not be so described in the lead.
 * yessss...so using it the way your article has is needlessly ambiguous. I don't have a problem with multiple meaning of words, I do have one with deliberate or ignorant equivocation.
 * Come back again when you've mastered the concept of "'this one' vs. 'these two'," and we can discuss why your question is unanswerable without a good map or some aerials. (By the way, that last word means "photos" in this context, please don't start yammer about antennas.) (FTL: his second link shows two rather different barbette mounts.)
 * yes; no. Why not read the table of contents instead of just doing a google-dredge for keywords?  (Hint: the word "barbette" isn't explicitly used in the relevant section.)
 * No, and it's trivial to find examples showing that, just by looking at armor tables. Sometimes "barbet shield" meant the big supporting ring, sometimes stuff like an open-backed gunhouse, and sometimes even splinter shields below.
 * About what I expected: the first page had two, possibly three decent books, and seven, maybe eight pieces of fanboiism. Lots of stuff with more pretty pictures and exclamation marks than scholarship or thought.  Several authors or publishers on the first few pages who specialize in planes-train-and-guns foameristism.  Brits. Lotsa Brits. Ballantyne has a lot to answer for.
 * That is simply a lie. The first paragraph explicitly covers guns "remotely mounted away from the gunner", to use its own words. Anmccaff (talk) 20:00, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Good for you. How, in any way, does any of that mean that barbette guns and disappearing guns are but two variations on the same idea?
 * Who, exactly, do you think we are writing these articles for? Do you know how most people who arrive on this article will find it? By clicking a link in an article about Rodman guns or Marceau-class ironclad. Laymen want a basic description of the topic, not a dissertation; they don't need the level of specificity you think they do.
 * Don't be a moron. A gun in a casemate like the one pictured has a narrow field of fire - the guns in the second photo have very wide arcs of fire.
 * I have no patience for smug condescension - tell me the page number or stop wasting both of our time.
 * Nonsense - I have never seen "barbette" used to refer to a gun house or internal bulkheads.
 * Lord have mercy, we have us here a self-appointed expert in what is and is not acceptable usage of a term. The point that you seem incapable of grasping is that a great many people do use the term to in the way this article describes.
 * I should have been clearer - your reading comprehension is apparently so poor as to miss the distinction. The first definition would not include this B-29 turret. The second would. Could it be worded better? Sure. But do not accuse me of lying simply because you're too ignorant to grasp the distinction. Parsecboy (talk) 21:03, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

What, is this a closed shop? A gun in a casemate like the one pictured has a narrow field of fire - the guns in the second photo have very wide arcs of fire. The gun shown in an embrasure has a traverse of about 135 degrees, the barbette mount on the right in that photo, you will note, is an end-pivot, with a traverse of no more than 120 degrees, from the look of it. Anmccaff (talk) 23:23, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Re "splicing"
(diff | hist). . Talk:Barbette‎; 20:51. . (-7)‎ . . ‎Parsecboy (talk | contribs)‎ (yes they are - can you read?)

Tolerably well when the eyes aren't acting up, thanks. Yourself?

As to the "splicing," in neither format I've used is there any ambiguity as to who wrote what, and separating a comment meant to be read near the thing it responds to is literally taking the words out of context. Generally held to be a bad thing, that. Anmccaff (talk) 21:06, 17 November 2015 (UTC)


 * It shouldn't be all that hard to follow a handful of bullet points in order. If that's too difficult for you, perhaps we ought to separate the points into separate sections, rather than copying the same text over and over. But perhaps the wall of text serves another purpose. Parsecboy (talk) 21:13, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Nonsense - I have never seen "barbette" used to refer to a gun house or internal bulkheads.
As a casual glance above will show, I mentioned that "barbette shield" could have several possible meanings, yet you dropped an operative word. This is why I prefer to keep call and response close together, it am. Anmccaff (talk) 23:27, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Image placement
Clearly there's no room for the photo. Did you look at the article? It's pushing down completely into the section below, which is wholly inappropriate. If you have questions, see Image dos and don'ts. Parsecboy (talk) 23:48, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Then edit the format so it fits, or ask someone who knows how to, rather than remove the only example shown of the principal meaning of of the word. Anmccaff (talk) 23:52, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Uh...you can't. There's not enough text to fit both images. What's so hard to comprehend about that? Parsecboy (talk) 23:53, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Can you bother responding here or are you too busy reverting me out of spite? Parsecboy (talk) 00:25, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Oddly enough, other editors aren't some function of the wiki software that you can expect to instantly respond to your demands; even if they were, it isn't clear exactly what your demand is. If you actually think the article overcrowded, then why not take out the picture of Temeraire, a nearly unique example of a blind alley in naval design?  Anmccaff (talk) 01:02, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Is it at all unreasonable to expect a response while you're happily reverting me every chance you get? It's not exactly like you can pretend you're not sitting at your computer and/or on your smart phone... Parsecboy (talk) 01:10, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I made no edits during that time frame, by the look of my contribution history, and no one seems to have reverted you then either; is this happening in some parallel existence, perhaps? Anmccaff (talk) 02:24, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Time stamps don't lie, my friend. My reply was here at 23:53, you reverted me at 00:03, and I questioned your inability to respond here at 00:25. Parsecboy (talk) 09:38, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Quality assesment scale
After I wrote, restoring a "B" rating:(Better than it ever was in the past, so if the "B" was realistic then....)

[[U|Parsecboy}} reverted it, with a summary of...(I'm a coordinator of the MILHIST project, I think I understand the project assessment criteria better than you do...), which is hardly responsive. Someone rated this a B, apparently, when it lacked any coverage of land-based use of the term...which is to say the dominant meaning over most of history; expanded to actually cover the whole of the nominal subject is unlikely to make it worse.  00:42, 20 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Read the assessment scale, it's not complex. These and these require citations to meet B-class criteria. You know, it's ok to admit you don't know what you're talking about. Parsecboy (talk) 00:48, 20 September 2017 (UTC)


 * There are dozens of other points which, if held to the same level of nit-picking, could equally be tagged with "citation needed" which were in the the article at assessment, and are in it still. What needs a cite is a judgement call, which often comes down to the knowledge and interests of the reader.  As I said, though, the article is better overall than when it was rated B scale in the past.   Anmccaff (talk) 02:02, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * One wonders what "dozens" of points you're referring to. And no, what needs a citation is not a judgement call. Everything needs to be cited for the article to be rated as B-class. Parsecboy (talk) 09:43, 20 September 2017 (UTC)