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This old Navy gunner is glad to help whenever he can.

Here is one of a friend shooting IDPA at night.

KBCraig wrote:Naval guns are very high velocity, with a flat trajectory.

Not those guns. A 16/50 Mark 7 naval gun, which the Iowa class ships carry, has a muzzle velocity of just under 2700 fps, which could hardly be considered "very high velocity" and had a looping trajectory best described as resembling a short fly ball in baseball.

The AP (capped) 2700 pound projectiles were also designed to be high angle penetrators, so for ship to ship combat elevation angles would normally be high.

The Mark 2 turret, mounting three guns, has a lower limitation to depressing the guns based on the loading mechanism. All of the guns pictured appear to be at that elevation, leading to the assumption that a salute was being fired rather than any combat readiness exercise.

On the other hand, if those Phalanx CIWS Gatlings above the bridge were firing, then the very high velocity, flat trajectory, definitiion would fit, and it would make a pretty impressive mussle blast pic.

I will have to look around and see if I can find some muzzle blast pics from my five inch guns, including a couple of saluting round pics. The saluting rounds used black powder and really had an impressive flash along with a huge amount of smoke.

Actually that's what those battlewagon guns appear to be doing, they are depressed too far to achieve much range.