C.S.S. Virginia

John Dahlgren, designer of the guns, did not agree with the 15 pound assessment. He was overruled by his more conservative superiors.

 

I would imagine those guns were expensive to make and lets face it blowing your own gun up is a stupid way to loose a gun.

Mind you it would have been worth testing one of the guns to destruction to find out what they could take.

 

But then you would have to fire a selection of guns (one with 15lb, one with 20lb, one with 25lb) until they burst, and then repeat the experiment a few times to smooth out statistical flukes due to possible flaws from the manufacturing stage etc...

Which would take more time than they seemed to have.

 

I was thinking more in terms of working your way up. Firing bigger charges with each shot.

You'd still have to use two or three guns to as you say smooth out statistical flukes.

 

But then you won't know if the 20lb charge fatally weakened the gun, and it could not take more than a few of those, or if the 25lb charge would simply blow it up first time every time.

 

I maybe talking out of my backside here but I think weaker shots actually strengthen a gun. All I have is a vague memory of an epsodio of Scrapheap challange. I have also heard of shotgun barrels being tested by firing them with a heavier charge than normal.

 

Dahlgren designed his guns to fire heavy charges without bursting; he was a positive genius when it came to the design and construction of heavy ordnance. His guns were, in the opinion of many historians, the pinnacle of the muzzle loading smoothbore naval guns. And bursting guns were nothing new to any navy; such was going to happen from time to time. In fact, certain models of the Parrott rifle were notorious for bursting; they were still used. I know of no instance of a Dahlgren gun bursting.