I tried to send you an email, but it kept bouncing back, so I am doing it this way...
I have a few questions. I see on your site that you have an article of the 15cm Schiffskanone i.R. L/40. Now, I am looking for the dimensional information of this gun. I have the barrel length (5960 mm), but I need the firing height (Feuerhöhe), wheel base (Gleisbreite), height of the wheels (Raddurchmesser), etc. You mentioned that you had a copy of the book by Schirmer: Das Gerät der Schweren Artillerie. Could you please scan the page that contains this info? I have looked at my files, and all I have on 15cm guns is the 15cm Kanone i.S., and the K16 (Krupp and Rheinmetall). This is page 260, so it should be close to there.
I also have another question. On your site you mention there also was a 15cm Schiffskanone i.R. L/45. I have seen the pictures of it, and it indeed is a L/45, but where do you base the information on? I have found no evidence of this gun ever existing in the inventory of the German Artillery. There is a L/45 gun, but this was used on a Barge (Prahm) or a railway carriage (Nathan). I can see that the barrel of these guns is identical to the ones put in the carriage of the L/40 i.R. Were the 150 produced mixed in L/40’s and L/45’s? Or when barrel explosions began occurring in the L/40’s, where the barrels replaced by the L/45’s?
I have yet another question. The 15cm L/30. Is this a 15cm barrel of 1883 dropped in the carriage of the 13cm K09 or is it a completely different gun? I have seen pictures of a gun (see enclosed) that is sometimes described as a 13, sometimes as a 15cm gun. As I have no info on either, I am not too sure what to believe. If you have any dimensional information on both the 13cm K09 and the 15cm L/30, I would be most grateful if you could send them.
The 3rd and 4th I believe are both 15cm L/40. you will note they differ in splinter shield detail, and the later dated gun has verticle recouperators/hydrolic buffers cylinders atop the receiver as opposed to the earlier gun with recoil tubes on the breach sides. These variances existed depending on which second line ship they were removed from. Obviously the older ships carried the 2nd described piece. The reason I assume them to be L/40 is because the tube lengths appear identical. I've never seen an SK L/45 with saddle buffer cylinders. When they were introduced the buffer design had already changed to place them atop the receiver.
These guns are displayed in Woodbridge, Ontario, Canada.
Even an impressive book like the Ehrenbuch der Schweren Artillerie does sometimes describe the, what I think to be a 13cm gun, as a 15cm gun. If they, being the experts, get it wrong, what chance do we have...?!?
To add further confusion, I have enclosed of the 15cm Schiffskanone in a barge, and in a railway carriage. The one in the barge does suspiciously look like the 2nd picture of the Schiffskanone i.R. that I attached in my previous post. But the one in the railway carriage doesn't look a bit like it, and they were both supposedly the same gun, L45. Why couldn't they just stick to one type and be done with it?!?
The first two photos are indeed of the 13cm K 09 (actual caliber 135mm). The 15cm L/30 M-1883 naval gun had no relation to it (it was also used on extemporized field carriages like its later 40 cal. and (alleged) 45 cal. replacements, and as such was simply designated 15cm K i.R. L/30). 28Juni may be right that the two other equipments are just simply different models of L/40 naval ordnance, which ones would be nice to know. I may have been searching down a blind alley all this time as I am just not sure any more.