The turrets were described as "three-gun" rather than "triple" because each barrel could be elevated independently. The turrets cost US$1.4 million each, excluding the cost of the guns. Each turret required a crew of 79 men to operate.
At maximum range the projectile spent almost 1 + 1⁄ 2 minutes in flight. When firing armor-piercing shells, their muzzle velocity was 2,500 feet per second (762 meters per second) with a range of up to 24 mi (39 km). They fired projectiles weighing from 1,900 to 2,700 lb (860 to 1,220 kg) at different muzzle velocities, depending on the shell. These guns were 50 calibers long, 50 times their 16-inch (406 mm) bore diameter with barrels 66.7 ft (20.3 m) long, from chamber to muzzle. The lightweight 16-in/50 Mark 7 was designed to resolve this conflict. However, the Bureau of Construction and Repair assumed that the ships would carry a compact 16-in/50 turret and designed the ships with barbettes too small to accommodate the 16-in/50 Mark 2 three-gun turret that the Bureau of Ordnance was actually working on. A cutaway of a turret mounting 16-inch gunsĭue to a lack of communication during design, the Bureau of Ordnance assumed the Iowa class would use the 16-inch (406 mm)/50 Mark 2 guns constructed for the 1920 South Dakota-class battleships.
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