The exchange considers replacing one of SMS Budapest's twin 24-centimetre turrets with a single 15-inch siege howitzer for coastal bombardment. Firing the weapon on the broadside reportedly produced a roll of about thirty degrees. That violent response made the arrangement operationally unattractive and the experiment was abandoned. The dry suggestion that torpedo bulges might have helped points to the underlying naval-architecture problem: weapon calibre, recoil, hull size, and stability must be treated as a connected system when converting a ship.
Notable Point · 21:54-22:16
SMS Budapest's destabilizing single-gun conversion
A proposed conversion of SMS Budapest illustrates how fitting one much larger weapon could overwhelm the stability limits of a small coast-defence ship.