A gun turret is a weapon mount that protects the crew or mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon and at the same time lets the weapon be aimed and fired in many directions. The turret is also a rotating weapon platform. This platform can be mounted on a fortified building or structure such as an anti-naval land battery, or on an combat vehicle, a naval ship, or a military aircraft.
Turrets may be armed with one or more machine guns, automatic cannons, large-calibre guns, or missile launchers. It may be manned or remotely controlled, and is often armoured. A small turret, or sub-turret on a larger one, is called a cupola. The term cupola also describes rotating turrets that carry no weapons but instead sighting devices, as in the case of tank commanders. A finial is an extremely small sub-turret or sub-sub-turret mounted on a cupola turret.
The protection provided by the turret may be against battle damage, or against the weather conditions and general environment in which the weapon or its crew will be operating. The term comes from the pre-existing noun turret—a self-contained protective position which is situated on top of a fortification or defensive wall, as opposed to rising directly from the ground, when it constitutes a tower.
Read more about Gun Turret: Land Fortifications, Aircraft, Combat Vehicles
Famous quotes containing the word gun:
“What cannot stand must fall; and the measure of our sincerity and therefore of the respect of men, is the amount of health and wealth we will hazard in the defence of our right. An old farmer, my neighbor across the fence, when I ask him if he is not going to town-meeting, says: “No, ‘t is no use balloting, for it will not stay; but what you do with the gun will stay so.””
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)