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Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s Escapades, and Other Lesser Known Historic Events

Khalid Elhassan January 21, 2020 33 min

William Carver - Butch Cassidy — Butch Cassidy, far right, The Sundance Kid, far left, and other members of the Wild Bunch gang. Wikimedia

22. A Joke of a Warship

Novgorod monitor ship. Sea Steading Institution

The Novgorod also sucked in its core function as a fighting platform. Its two eleven-inch guns had an exceptionally slow rate of fire, at ten minutes per shot. The rotating mounts containing the guns were also slow, taking three minutes to traverse 180 degrees. The problem was exacerbated by weak locks that caused the gun mounts to rotate on their own from the guns’ recoil. And the guns’ firing caused the ship to rotate uncontrollably.

Because the flat-bottomed vessel had no stabilizing keel to keep her in line and keep her guns pointed towards the target, the only solution was to moor the Novgorod in a fixed position. That essentially transformed her from a ship to a floating fortress anchored in place, with her guns pointed seaward.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.