The Glade 4.0

So my Grandfather recently passed away. He was 93 and lived a very full and complete life. He was also a WWII vet and ret. Lt. Col. after serving his 20. While he was in he commanded a number of anti-aircraft gun installations, one of which as part of the army of occupation in Japan after the war. Two items that I inherited from him are ones that I'm pleased to add to my collection of cool things(tm).

The first is a floor lamp made out of the shell of an anti-aircraft gun. It's an 8-9" diameter casing that's about 4' tall with a mohagany bullet to top it off and the lamp fixture on top of that.

The second is a 1911A1 .45 pistol that was Army issue in 1945. Manufactured by Remington-Rand and in excellent to mint condition. It also has 3 magazines and a box of Army issue ball ammo from the same time period. All in excellent condition. My intent is to place all those items in a nice display case, with a clear front, hammer on a chain and small plaque at the bottom of it that reads:

"In case of Nazis - Break Glass"

The items are in transit right now, but once I have them at the house, I'll toss up a couple of pics.

Cool Aizle, and he sounds like a Grandfather you were happy to have.

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Mighty fine idea, Aizle.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Very nice stuff, Aizle!

I'm interested to see the lamp, especially, since I can't figure out what kind of gun it could come from. 8" was a common naval and land artillery caliber, but I can't find any record of 8" antiaircraft weapons or dual-purpose weapons.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Love it, but lose the apostrophe.

I have my grandfather's pocketbook for the year I was born, along with his hand-written note about my birth.

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Once I get it to the house, I'll take a couple pics and have one with a tape measure by it for reference. I'm pretty sure he said it was from an anti-aircraft gun, but it could be that I'm mistaken on that. Either way, it's a pretty kickass lamp.

8" would be an enormous caliber for an antiaircraft, or even a dual-purpose weapon, but lots of oddities were floating around during WWII and the period after so its certainly possible.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

http://www.netplaces.com/world-war-ii/g ... eapons.htm



Nothing at 8"... your information must be incorrect.

How very cool Aizle

Can't wait to see the pics!

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Dream as if you'll live forever...
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Vivere Senza Rimpianti

So when measuring the diameter for the designation, it's the actual bullet diameter you're measuring, not the casing, correct?

That might be the confusion. I was originally looking at the base of the casing, not the actual "bullet".

I just picked up the items from my aunt, and will take some pics of them tonight and post.

Unless that casing is twice the diameter of the projectile, that's still going to be pretty large for an AA weapon. The largest one that I can think of is the German 88 mm gun that was used in WWII. (It was found to be a very affective anti-tank weapon, too.) But, 88 mm is about 3.5".

An 8" shell sounds more like a naval gun, if anything.

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The largest anti-aircraft gun I can think of in use during WWII was the 120mm (4.7") M1. An 8" shell is just huge for an AA-exclusive gun; some naval vessels used their 8" guns in an AA capacity, but that was a secondary use.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Ok, here are the pics:

Floor lamp with 48" ruler next to it


Up close of casing width at projectile


1911A1 .45 Pistol & Ammo


Close ups of .45



Close ups of ammo

Rofl... who would shoot a massive round like that for the distant probability of hitting a plane? What a waste of money.

Someone for whom that is a comparatively small caliber round.

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Also if you miss it would blow a hole in the country-side. So if you shoot it straight up at planes then you're shelling your own nearby forces.

Looking at the diameter of the actual projectile (which is what the size of the weapon refers to) the closest thing I can find is the British 4.5" AA gun, which is consistent with the length of the casing and the height of the projectiles in the pictures at the link. AA guns needed high velocity becuase of the speed of aircraft and the height their rounds needed to attain, hence the long casing with lots of powder. I believe this is an example of the British AA round.

As for Lex, just ignore him. Aside from the fact that 8" weapons would almost always be the main battery for heavy cruisers in WWII, but rarely, if ever, land artillery, you would not be "shelling your own forces" if you used an 8" gun for AA because A) most of the time the ship is going to have the round go into the sea if it does that and B) even if you do use it where land is around, the chances of it landing on your own troops is remote. Generally when troops get hit by friendly artillery fire it's because of very specific mistakes that accidentally target them. Random rounds are most likely just going to blow up dirt unless they land in a pretty urbanized area.

As for why someone would use an 8" round on aircraft - yes, it's expensive. A heavy cruiser is a lot more expensive, however, and you only have so many of them and they take a lot of time and resources to build. If you can elevate your main battery high enough to possibly hit an enemy plane, it may be worth it to take those off chances. American light cruisers often used their 6" main batteries against aircraft, occasionally with success, and Yamato supposedly even tried using it's 18" main battery against aircraft at LEyte Gulf. The real question is, is the air threat severe enough that onboard ammunition depeltion is justified. The cost of an 8" shell in the middle of WWII is... not a major factor, especially since gun rounds are really pretty cheap.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Thanks DE. The diameter might be a bit wider than 4.5" as the proximity of the camera I think skewed the readings. I'll try and get a more accurate measurement of the diameter.

I talked with my Aunt and she says that he had it made while he was stationed down in Panama, so my suspicion would be that it was from whatever they were using down there at the time.

Yeah, my Dad served on a Gearing-class Destroyer near the end of Vietnam. He used to joke to me that their contingency plan for defending against airborne assaults was to point the gun at the sky and just hope they could fill the sky with enough lead to make the pilots think twice.

I think by that time, one of the turrets had been removed, though, in a refit to boost the anti-submarine capabilities, so it was one (twin?) main gun. Wiki suggests it was a 5" gun.

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If he was stationed in Panama, then it's most likely a 105mm American AA round. We had about fifteen such guns stationed in the canal zone at the time. I was assuming he got it in Japan, and the biggest AA guns we had there were 90mm.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

In the 1950s, the Gearing class was indeed upgraded with FRAM-I in order to shift its emphasis from air defense to greater antisubmarine capability. The 5" gun was replaced with an 8-cell ASROC launcher.

Gearings never received antiair missile systems of any sort, so even by the Viet Nam war that would have been their sole method of air defense. Of course, at that time antiship missiles were in their infancy so they would have been defending against MiG-21s dropping iron bombs, which would basically have been the same as WWII but with much faster attacking aircraft.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I am very sorry for the loss of your Grandfather. I will keep you and your family in my prayers.

Know that you are blessed to have keepsakes. Seriously. Awesome. Keepsakes.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Interesting pictures, Aizle! How awsome you have something and are getting the stories behind them to remember your grandfather

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Dream as if you'll live forever...
...Live as if you'll die tomorrow

Vivere Senza Rimpianti

You know ...

I'd buy that particular pistol.

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