As the United States entered World War I in April 1917, questions swirled as to just what role the U.S. would play. With the Battle of Jutland already a year in the past and only a single division of American battleships detailed to the British Grand Fleet, it appeared as though the U.S. Navy might be relegated to the less glamorous roles of convoy escort and mining duties. As it turned out though, there was one pressing need on the Western Front that only the U.S. Navy could satisfy. The only problem was, that need wasn't on the high seas.
As early as April 1915, the German forces had proven their superiority in the realm of long range, land-based artillery. German artillery pieces, known colloquially as Leugenboom guns, had demonstrated the ability to strike Dunkirk, and hence other English Channel ports, from ranges more than twenty-four miles away, threatening the viability of those ports for Allied use. In need of a mobile, flexible, and adequately powerful response to the German guns, Rear Admiral Ralph Earle and the Navy's Bureau of Ordnance proposed a unique solution: mount U.S. Navy 14-inch, 50-caliber rifled guns - the same guns mounted by the Navy's New Mexico class battleships - to railroad cars.
A completed battery outside Baldwin Locomotive Works.
The Navy's plan to construct five 14-inch railway batteries was approved on November 26, 1917, and by early 1918, design drawings were in hand. By February, a contract was awarded to Baldwin Locomotive Works for the gun cars, with the support cars to be built by the Standard Steel Car Company. Once the batteries were constructed, they were disassembled and shipped to St. Nazaire, France, where they would be reassembled for deployment to the front. Following reassembly and track preparation, the batteries were moved to their forward staging yards at Haussimont, where they would be sortied to various firing locations.
Above: A 14-inch gun is lowered into its mount at Baldwin Locomotive Works; A similar scene at St. Nazaire as the battery is reassembled.
Above: Assembly and track work continues at St. Nazaire; Rear Admiral Charles Plunkett and Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt inspect a battery at St. Nazaire.
On September 6, 1918, the first combat firing of the naval railway batteries commenced when Battery No. 2 fired a single shot from its position at Rethondes. Continuing from that day until the armistice on November 11, the five railway batteries bombarded additional targets at Bensy-Loisy, Laon, Mortiers, Montmédy, Longuyon, Mongiennes, and Remoiville. As pictured below in the aftermath of a bombardment of Laon by Battery No. 1, the damage inflicted by the Navy's guns was truly devastating.
Above: A Battery firing at the front; Damage wrought by two shells on a target at Laon.
As noted below by Gunner's Mate A. W. Brandt in his introduction to the railway batteries, a single shell fired from one of the 14-inch rifles could uproot an entire field's worth of crops, obliterate a cinema filled with German troops, or demolish the headquarters of a German general.
Above: Gunner's Mate A. W. Brandt discusses the damage inflicted by the Railway Batteries on both enemy targets and morale.
Following the armistice, the great guns went quiet, with the final salvos fired by Battery Nos. 4 and 5 at targets in Longuyon. With hostilities at an end, the trains retired to Haussimont before returned to St. Nazaire for their ultimate decommissioning.
Above: Log entries noting Battery No. 5's final days of bombardment and the Armistice of November 11.
Images:
Record and Log of U.S. Naval Railway Battery 5, MS 524, Special Collections & Archives, Nimitz Library
14 Inch Naval Railway Battery MK. I: Designed by the U.S. Naval Gun Factory, Washington D.C., 1918
Sources:
The United States Naval Railway Batteries in France. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1922.
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