History
Development started in the 1960s as a replacement for the 5"/54 caliber Mark 42 gun system with a new, lighter, and easier to maintain gun mounting. In USN use, the Mark 45 is used with either the Mk 86 Gun Fire Control System or the Mk 160 Gun Computing System. Since before World War II, 5" has been the standard gun caliber for U.S. Naval ships. Its rate of fire is lower than the British 4.5-inch (114 mm) gun, but it fires a heavier 5" shell which carries a larger burst charge that increases its per-shell effectiveness against aircraft.
Read more about this topic: 5"/54 Caliber Mark 45 Gun
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