Crossword clues for sponson
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Sponson \Spon"son\ (-s[u^]n), n. (Shipbuilding)
One of the triangular platforms in front of, and abaft, the paddle boxes of a steamboat.
One of the slanting supports under the guards of a steamboat.
One of the armored projections fitted with gun ports, used on modern war vessels.
Wiktionary
n. A projection from the side of a watercraft.
Wikipedia
Sponsons are projections extending from the sides of land vehicles, aircraft or water craft to provide protection, stability, storage locations, mounting points, or equipment housing.
Among their uses, sponsons can:
- Extend a watercraft hull dimension at or below the waterline to increase flotation or add lift when underway.
- Serve as a mounting or enclosure for a gun projecting in part or whole beyond warship's hull, particularly in the pre-Dreadnought era.
- Serve as a mounting or enclosure for a gun projecting in part or whole beyond the hulls of land vehicles and aircraft, notably on British heavy tanks during World War I.
- Take the form of a short wing on the fuselages of flying boats, providing hydrodynamic stability when travelling through the water during take off and landing, as pioneered by German aerospace designer and engineer Claude Dornier on the Zeppelin-Lindau Rs.IV during World War I.
- Provide storage for fuel or housing for landing gear on larger helicopters such as the Sikorsky S-92 and Bell 222.
- Provide layers of bullet-proof protection and storage space, as found over the tracks of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
Usage examples of "sponson".
M3 Stoneman tanks and heavy M3 Grants with a small gun in a rotating turret and a big one in a sponson at the right front of the hull.
Apart from a lone Oerlikon on a sponson below the starboard side of the bridge, the next Condor pressed home its attack against a minimum of resistance.
On the other hand, he could not automatically endorse a pair of ungainly outboard walkways, or sponsons, which ran the length of the hull, both port and starboard, only inches above the waterline.
The crates of arms and ammunition we will distribute between the four of them and rope them down here across the sponsons, - I have welded cleats here to take the ropes.
They refuelled from the cans strapped on the sponsons, and once more they set off in column at an agonized walking pace over the rough surface, each jolt shaking driver and vehicle cruelly.
Jake Barton wriggled out of the engine hatch of Miss Wobbly and grinned at Vicky Camberwell who sat on the sponson above him swinging her long legs idly, with the wind in her hair and the tan she had picked up in the last few days gilding her arms and flushing at her cheeks.
The Victor was still two kilometers off Indy’s port beam, but through the magnification inherent in the ship optical sensory feed, the immense vessel loomed like a passing cliff face, with sponsons, barbettes, field projector arrays, and fairings turning hull metal into a landscape of faceted surfaces and complex topographies, with masts like forest giants, with gun ports grinning down her gundeck modules like bared teeth.
He climbed down on the sponson and scraped at the off-worm's knobs, to discover under the blue paint, the gleam of yellow.