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Posted by Randy Stone on May 7, 2026, 13:21:48, in reply to "Re: Lex's anti aircraft armaments were inadequate. Better guns...."
...on the Chicago Piano which expand on its' war record. I believe it saw the end of the war aboard DEs which probably speaks more to the output of shipyards than anything else. Dropping the slew function reduced its' complexity; slew saw little practical use anyway. The shell fuse was sensitive although I don't believe the old story about rain was really so.
Yours truly was able to talk about the 1.1 with several gun crew aboard Pensacola who spoke to its operation. Their take was that the tolerances on the weapon were too tight for sustained firing what with heat and all. The ships' machine shop was busy opening up tolerances on various components and producing makeshift tooling* to--among other things--drive jammed rounds back down and out of the barrel when necessary. That was a rotating duty among the crew...everybody got the chance to do it, in turn. My understanding--I haven't seen any official figures from the ship--is that the crew was happy with the 1.1-inch battery but it was a case of the 40mm being so much better.
It may be that in the opening months of '42, for all of its flaws, the 1.1 was the best heavy AA cannon at sea. It did provide Lexington--mentioned here--with the ability to put an enormous amount of lead in the air...which the Japanese rightly noted. I don't recall how many directors she had but just boring through all that lead was no doubt sobering for the CarDiv 5 aircrew.
* - All with the enthusiastic approval of the Captain who, himself, would go on to greater things.
RS 
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The Chicago Piano was actually a fairly effective weapon - when it worked. Skilled crews were able to minimize the stoppage issues and make it reasonably reliable. Prewar tests aboard Phelps and Clark showed that some crews figured out the voodoo necessary to keep the mount firing, while others did not. I would imagine that Lexington's crews were among those who could given their level of training.
What I have read is that the fuse was the really significant problem. Assuming crews could maintain and fire the mount, the shells often exploded prematurely. One account, perhaps apocryphal, was that the fuse was so sensitive that they often exploded when fired during rainy conditions after hitting drops of water. I'm not sure that I believe that, but it was something that was brought up back then. Some ships disliked live fire training for safety reasons, and even forbade it unless absolutely necessary. The fact that the mount soldiered on, even aboard front line combatants, well into 1943 in some cases indicates that it wasn't mission critical to replace it immediately. It was, "good enough." Not great, but good enough.
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