Australian Army Museum of Western Australia > Records

Western Australia, Rottnest Island, Bickley Battery, Recovering barrel, 1980

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Fortress Fremantle and the Defence of Western Australia

Overview

An M543 Heavy 6×6 Wrecker of 113 Field Workshop, Royal Australian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (RAEME) recovering in 1980, a 6 inch Mk XI barrel buried at Bickley Battery, Rottnest Island. Supervising the operation is Sergeant Kevin Wotzko (on platform, RHS).
6 inch Mk XI gun components abandoned in situ after being scrapped. Barrel, pedestal and cradle visible. One barrel was cut in half but with no viable scrap option, the effort was abandoned for the second barrel

Historical information

The length of artillery barrels has often been described in terms of multiples of the bore diameter e.g. a 4-inch gun of 50 calibres would have a barrel 4 in × 50 = 200 inches long. A 50 calibre 6 inch gun (6 inch diameter shell), has a barrel length (muzzle to breech) of 50 × 6 = 300 inches (25 feet or 7.62 metres).

The Breech Loading (BL) 6-inch Mark XI naval gun was a British 50 calibre high-velocity naval gun which was mounted as primary armament on cruisers from 1906 onwards. The gun with its increased length of 50 calibres gave improved firepower over the 6-inch Mk VII gun of 45 calibres. However, increased length and weight made it unwieldy in the manually operated shipboard mountings on light cruisers, Britain reverted to 45-calibres guns in new warships from 1914 onwards with the BL 6-inch Mk XII gun.

The Mk XI gun was emplaced for coast defence in Australia leading up to World War II and remained in service until the 1960s. Guns in Australia came from the decommissioned World War cruisers HMAS Sydney, HMAS Melbourne and HMAS Brisbane. In addition to the Bickley Battery on Rottnest Island, they were emplaced in northern Australia and Torres Strait to defend against possible attack by Japan, and the Brisbane, Sydney harbour and Port Kembla defences.

When the guns were scrapped, the valuable non-ferrous fittings were removed but the steel components buried on the Island. After recovery, one of the Rottnest barrels was placed on display at Kingstown Barracks and the second eventually was emplaced at the Leighton Battery Heritage site. Other 6 inch MK XI barrels may be found in Australia at: Port Wakefield proof range north of Adelaide; Lower George’s Heights, Sydney Harbour; East Point Military Museum, Darwin; and the Fleet Air Arm Museum, Nowra.

Details

Registration number

cwa-org-32-MIL 2002.194

Themes

Defence > Army
War and Conflict

Inscriptions and markings

Gun No. 2328 which is today on display at the Leighton Battery Heritage site in Mosman Park saw service aboard the first-Australian built cruiser, HMAS Brisbane in World War One.
This gun was at Woolwich, London in 1913 and sent to Australia on September 28, 1914 as part of the armament of HMAS Brisbane, then under construction at the Cockatoo Island Dockyard in Sydney.
Commissioned on October 30, 1916 HMAS Brisbane was soon dispatched to the Mediterranean via Singapore for service with the Royal Navy.
As this gun, No. 2328 was recorded at Plymouth on May 22, 1917 it must be assumed that it had been replaced early that year before HMAS Brisbane was dispatched to Colombo as a unit of the East Indies Squadron searching for German raiders operating in the Indian Ocean.
It appears that after its removal from HMAS Brisbane, this gun was moved about as a spare being at Simonstown, South Africa in 1919, Chatham in England in 1925 and finally arriving back in Sydney, on August 27, 1938 as one of three Mark XI guns sent to Australia in exchange for worn guns.

Keywords

DEFENCE

Army

6 Inch Guns

Australian Army Museum of Western Australia

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