Artifact Gallery:
Battleship USS Iowa Museum Los Angeles collects relevant artifacts to help tell the story of the ship and the Surface Navy to a broad audience. Below you will find some of our accessioned artifacts in our collection. Not all items are on display and are monitored according to our collections management policy.
We accept new items in the collection on a case-by-case basis. Click here for more information.
Oerlikon 20mm Drum Magazine
Object/Artifact
Sixty round capacity cylindrical drum magazine for Oerlikon 20mm anti-aircraft gun. Made to mount on top of and off to the right side of the breech casing of the gun. Originally painted grey. The ends appear to be zinc castings, while the sides are sheet steel. Handles are formed steel. Eight steel threaded rods with nuts on the ends hold the entire assembly together. The magazine has a mouthpiece (slot opening) through which rounds are loaded, and then fed into the gun during firing. A set of spiral grooves in each end of the magazine keep the rounds organized. The magazine has a carrying handle on each end. A loaded magazine weighs 63 pounds, while an empty is 31 pounds. A main shaft and coupling protrude from one end. This coupling is used with a winding handle to tension a clock spring inside the magazine that feeds rounds toward the magazine mouthpiece and the gun. An indicator block on the end near the coupling shows how much tension is on the clock spring. To load the magazine, it was mounted in a loading frame. Rounds were inserted one at a time by hand into the top of the mouthpiece. Unloading was the reverse of loading.
USS Iowa in World War II mounted 52 single Oerlikon 20mm guns.
N1600011
