|
Breakneck Battery is an artillery battery in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. It is located on Ministry of Defence property at the Upper Rock Nature Reserve, north of Lord Airey's Battery. It is one of a dozen batteries in Gibraltar that had 9.2-inch (233.7 mm) guns installed around the turn of the twentieth century. The emplacement features a 9.2-inch Mark X breech-loading gun on a Mark V mounting. The battery was refurbished by a visiting regiment in 2012, and is one of three surviving 9.2-inch gun emplacements at the Upper Ridge of the Rock of Gibraltar. By the late twentieth century, the 9.2-inch guns in Gibraltar, Bermuda (also known affectionately as "the Rock", and the former site of a Royal Naval Dockyard, and once considered "the Gibraltar of the West"), Portugal, South Africa, and Australia were the remaining examples of an emplacement that at one point had been mounted at strategic locations across the British Empire. ==Early history== Breakneck Battery is in Gibraltar, the British Overseas Territory at the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula. The artillery battery is located at the Upper Ridge of the Upper Rock Nature Reserve, on Ministry of Defence property.〔 It is positioned north of Lord Airey's Battery on a site once known as Mount Misery, which was renamed in 1901. The name "Breakneck" was inspired by the nearby Breakneck Stairs which descend part way down the sheer cliff on which the battery stands, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. The decision to mount 9.2-inch breech-loading guns on the emplacements in Gibraltar can be traced back to the explosion of one of the 38-ton, muzzle-loading guns on . After that explosion on 2 January 1879, a Committee on Ordnance was founded to analyze the United Kingdom's artillery and the direction that it would take. The committee was directed to address "the question of breech-loading guns and such other questions as may be brought before it." Following research and deliberations, the committee settled on rifled breech-loading guns, an improvement over the customary rifled muzzle-loading weapons. Although the 9.2-inch breech-loading weapon was initially employed as a naval gun, it eventually was used for coastal defence as well. It was effective in dealing with hostile warships and their associated long-range attacks. The 9.2-inch gun retained its importance in British coastal defence for more than half a century. The mounting of 9.2-inch guns on Gibraltar's batteries commenced in the 1890s. By 1914, Gibraltar boasted a total of fourteen of the 9.2-inch weapons on twelve batteries. Breakneck Battery had a 9.2 inch Mark X breech-loading gun installed on a Mark V mounting. The World War II photograph obtained of the battery ''(pictured at right)'' by Lieutenant G W Dallison in 1942 is now part of the War Office Second World War Official Collection of photographs. A shell store and bombproof shelter for the crew are located beneath the gun position, excavated from the solid rock. The gun itself originally had a steel shield in front of it to protect the crew from counter-battery fire but during the Second World War this was extended to form a steel enclosure open at the back, to provide some protection from shrapnel and bomb splinters.〔Hughes & Migos, p. 194〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Breakneck Battery」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|