The 7"/44 caliber gun Mark 1 (spoken "seven-inch-forty-four--caliber") and 7"/45 caliber gun Mark 2 (spoken "seven-inch-forty-five--caliber") were used for the secondary batteries of the United States Navy's last generation of pre-dreadnought battleships, the Connecticut-class and Mississippi-class. The 7-inch (178 mm) caliber was considered, at the time, to be the largest caliber weapon sutiable as a rapid-fire secondary gun because its shells were the heaviest that one man could handle alone.