three points

Nuyt,

Responding to your earlier posting, three relevant points:

1. You wrote that the two color photos of the USN Mark IX 4-inch/50cal gun were taken in the U.S. Do you know where? I know where two of these guns may be found, one in Maine and the other in New Hampshire.

2. We have discussed the prewar agreement between the Netherlands and the U.S. for the purchase of 20 7-inch (Mark II), 60 4-inch (Mark IX), and 80 3-inch (Mark III) guns of obsolescent design (mainly because all were on pedestal mounts permitting but limited range). We have located the 7-inch guns in Java and Ambon, but hitherto, no real evidence of the other guns. Several of the ex-KPM vessels in the SWPA merchant fleet were armed with a motley array of American and British deck guns of 3-inch bore, but no proof that the U.S. guns were Mark IIIs or their origin was the prewar sale of 80 such guns. The presence of Mark VI (and perhaps Mark VIII) 6-inch guns at Fort Nieuw Amsterdam brings a whole new caliber of ex-USN guns provided the Netherlands. The possibilities:

(a) The guns in Suriname (and perhaps elsewhere) were an extension of the original sale.
(b) They were a substitution for guns purchased in the original sale, or an outright replacement of similar but not identical guns lost to the enemy.
(c) They had nothing at all to do with the original sale and were provided the Dutch by some other means, lend-lease or whatever.

IF so, the 4-inch guns could be part of one means of acquisition and the 6-inch guns another, or neither size gun may have had anything to do with the prewar sale. Until we know a lot more, we may not assume that the Mark IX 4-inch guns in Batterij Purmerend offer proof that the original sale was consumated (other than, of course, the 7-inch guns lost in the NEI).

3. The photo of the putative 7-inch gun at or near Fort Nieuw Amsterdam looks to me like one of the four 6-inch guns mounted there (several salient points of identification). Do remember that optical perspective comes into play. When shooting a gun from the breech end, the perspective is a natural one in the sense of looking toward the smaller end at the greater distance, but when shooting from the muzzle end, the photographer is bucking the natural progression of greater to smaller, and thus the near portion of the object, in this instance the second-largest shrunken hoop muzzleward of the trunnion point, appears from the perspective to be deceptively large. I THINK the gun is one of the quartet of 6-inch guns still in place in Batterij (Nieuw) Amsterdam. Of course, I could be wrong, but be assured that the gun is NOT an 8-inch one, just too small.

Nelson