18 Inch Naval Gun

The 18" Naval Gun is the largest naval cannon fielded on a ship in RL; the most notable examples are the 18.1"/45 guns that the Yamato and her sister ships mounted. Dwarfing 16 Inch Naval Guns of all stripes and firing a 3000-4500 pound shell, 18" guns have seen somewhat more use in NationStates than in RL, being frequently found on Super-Dreadnoughts, ridiculously huge superbattleships, and the occasional overgunned lighter vessel, and have been found in ETC and (perhaps unrealistically) rail gun models on such as well as the traditional powder guns used in RL battleships.

The 18" Naval Gun never saw much service in real life beyond the Yamato class and installation on some monitors; this primarily can be traced by the relative rarity of 70,000+ ton battleships and treaty limitations, which restricted caliber of battleship guns to 16" (and later 14") and their standard displacement to 35,000 tons, at which size 18" gun turrets of the time were decidedly impractical.

Nations employing the 18" Naval Gun should remember that if a ship could mount twelve 16" Guns, it might only be able to carry eight or nine 18" Guns. Also, the larger shells will require more ammunition space, larger and more powerful training and feed mechanisms, and will have a lower rate of fire than an equivalently engineered 16" gun with proportional shells.

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