carapace de tourelle

CONT: ... removal of the turrets from the [warship] had actually begun prior to any thought of their reutilization, ashore or elsewhere. Since no effort was then being made to preserve their integrity, the turret shells were cut at an extremely delicate point in the interests of salvage expediency. Consequently, their reassembly some two years later demanded that the segments be aligned and welded with painstaking accuracy.