Sailors aboard the battleship USS Arkansas (BB-33) wave from the crow’s nest as the battleship approached the Brooklyn Bridge on 16 January 1915. Arkansas had a hectic schedule at the time. In October of 1914 she took part in fleet maneuvers off Virginia. That same month, she steamed north to the Brooklyn Navy Yard for maintenance. This repair work was interrupted as Arkansas then departed to undergo another round of exercises off Virginia. In December of 1914, she then returned to the Brooklyn Navy Yard to resume repairs before departing once again on 16 January 1915 when this photo was taken. Her destination was Virginia for, yet again, more exercises.

Firepower Friday! Crewmembers gathered on the aft deck of the battleship USS Arkansas (BB-33) watch as the big guns fire during gunnery exercises. A Wyoming class battleship, Arkansas was armed with twelve 12" (305mm) guns in six twin turrets. Two turrets were arranged in a superfiring pair forward of the superstructure. The remaining four turrets were divided between two additional superfiring pairs aft of the superstructure. The photo shows these turrets, with turret No.3 closest to the camera.

Though they looked complex, the automatic loaders for the 8" guns were actually the simplest of the models developed at the time. They seemed to have handled shock testing just as well as manually loaded mounts. I suspect removing the relatively "soft" human element would have actually benefitted shock damage in a combat enviornment. The related models developed for the Worcester class were the more problematic designs, having a few extra features such as dual ammumition feeds (so they could switch from AP to HC immediately). The Navy was so pleased with the reliability of the Des Moines autoloaders, they wanted to use them for the Worcester replacements, scaled down to 152mm. It was estimated that they could fire at 25 rounds per minute per gun. A post-war analysis on battleship design also recommended scaling the Des Moines autoloaders up to 406mm.