1632 Series personnal comment

On Thu, 17 Jun 2004 13:37:12 GMT, pyotr filipivich
<phamp.DeleteThis@mindspring.com> wrote:

>It being a dull day, I decide to respond to what
>Brian_knowspam.McDonald@shaw.ca (forkliftramp.com) fosted Sun, 13 Jun 2004
>21:59:46 GMT on alt.books.david-weber , viz:
>>On Wed, 9 Jun 2004 16:23:11 -0400, Ben Bishop <aci.DeleteThis@shore.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>
>>>The biggest evolution in artillary pieces came just before the first
>>>world war when the french developed a recoilless rifle (which the
>>>austrians, germans, and russians then copied without restraint). This
>>>allowed you to fire at the enemy and then adjust your fire onto the
>>>target rather than starting over from scratch again. It was one of THE
>>>major innovations that lead up to the war.
>>>
>>>I don't recall the title of the book right now, but the author is David
>>>Herman, a historian out of (at the time) Tulane...
>>>
>>>
>>assuming you are speaking of the wonderful little french 75mm gun it's
>>not recoiless. it does however have a hydraulic shock absorbers on it
>>to absorb the recoil.
>
> The quick firing 75, by comparison, was recoilless. Not saying much,
>but I take your point.
>

More precisely, the trail and spades were able to absorb the reduced
recoil in such a way as to not disrupt the lay of the gun...so that
the next round would have a decent chance of hitting on or near the
same spot as the first without having to re lay the gun...

ck
--
country doc in louisiana
(no fancy sayings right now)
 >> Stay informed about: 1632 Series personnal comment 

charles krin <ckrin.TakeThisOut@bayou.com> wrote in
news:nji6d0l8ih5dntvdqgq672me6v0ituna2a@4ax.com:

> On Thu, 17 Jun 2004 13:37:12 GMT, pyotr filipivich
> <phamp.TakeThisOut@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>>It being a dull day, I decide to respond to what
>>Brian_knowspam.McDonald@shaw.ca (forkliftramp.com) fosted Sun, 13 Jun
>>2004 21:59:46 GMT on alt.books.david-weber , viz:
>>>On Wed, 9 Jun 2004 16:23:11 -0400, Ben Bishop <aci.TakeThisOut@shore.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>The biggest evolution in artillary pieces came just before the first
>>>>world war when the french developed a recoilless rifle (which the
>>>>austrians, germans, and russians then copied without restraint).
>>>>This allowed you to fire at the enemy and then adjust your fire onto
>>>>the target rather than starting over from scratch again. It was one
>>>>of THE major innovations that lead up to the war.
>>>>
>>>>I don't recall the title of the book right now, but the author is
>>>>David Herman, a historian out of (at the time) Tulane...
>>>>
>>>>
>>>assuming you are speaking of the wonderful little french 75mm gun
>>>it's not recoiless. it does however have a hydraulic shock absorbers
>>>on it to absorb the recoil.
>>
>> The quick firing 75, by comparison, was recoilless. Not saying
>> much,
>>but I take your point.
>>
>
> More precisely, the trail and spades were able to absorb the reduced
> recoil in such a way as to not disrupt the lay of the gun...so that
> the next round would have a decent chance of hitting on or near the
> same spot as the first without having to re lay the gun...
>
> ck

A recoiless rifle/cannon is usually just a open tube and is used for
pretty much flat trajectories. It is open at both ends because when the
shell fires, the head goes out the front and an approximately equal
amount of material is vented out the back, thus balancing the recoil.

The French 75 however had a recoil system that absorbed the backwards
energy of the shell without moving the gun from where and how it was
laid. The trail is usually not part of the recoil system, unless of
course it carries some of the machinery used but it's size/weight isn't
that much of an impactor. Spades are usually used when the recoil is
more than the system can handle. IIRC, the 75 could be fired when it's
trail was being held up, without battering the men and surrounding area.
 >> Stay informed about: 1632 Series personnal comment 

"Michelle Steiner" <michelle.RemoveThis@michelle.org> wrote in message
news:michelle-BF0FD3.12055309062004@news.west.cox.net...
> In article <ea2dcca7.0406091046.4487843e.RemoveThis@posting.google.com>,
> mcb26.RemoveThis@hotmail.com (Mudbunny) wrote:
>
> > Again, this is opn the 105mm howitzers I trained on, although it the
> > theories are transferrable to cannons/cannonballs.
>
> What are the differences between a cannon and a howitzer? I think that
> someone once told me that howitzers have rifled barrels, and cannons are
> smoothbore, but I'm not sure of that, nor whether that is the only
> difference, if it is true.

You might try going to goole and type define: cannon etc. and see what it
says. In my reading cannon are normally any big guns and howitzers are one
kind meant to be able to fire level or at a high angle.
>
> > It also depends on how the gun is used. Two fashions are
> > possible:Direct fire and indirect fire.
> >
> > Direct fire is where your trajectory is, more or less straight. In
> > this case, you pack in all 7 charges, put the barrel horizontal, and
> > line up the barrel by eye.
> >
> > Indirect fire is where the trajectory is an arc.
>
> More precisely, direct fire is when the gun's elevation is 45° or less;
> indirect fire is when the elevation is greater than 45°.
>
> Mortars always are indirect fire weapons, for instance.
>
> The advantage of indirect fire is that it can shoot over obstacles. The
> advantages of direct fire are that it can knock down obstacles.
>
> Also, the flight time of a direct-fire round is shorter than that of an
> indirect-fire round.
>
> --
> Stop Mad Cowboy Disease: Vote for John Kerry.
 >> Stay informed about: 1632 Series personnal comment 

"John G. Morrison" <Labyrsmn.TakeThisOut@eskim-remove-o.com> wrote in message
news:Xns950CB9351FFAELabyrsmneskimocom@204.122.19.7...
> charles krin <ckrin.TakeThisOut@bayou.com> wrote in
> news:nji6d0l8ih5dntvdqgq672me6v0ituna2a@4ax.com:
>
> > On Thu, 17 Jun 2004 13:37:12 GMT, pyotr filipivich
> > <phamp.TakeThisOut@mindspring.com> wrote:
> >
> >>It being a dull day, I decide to respond to what
> >>Brian_knowspam.McDonald@shaw.ca (forkliftramp.com) fosted Sun, 13 Jun
> >>2004 21:59:46 GMT on alt.books.david-weber , viz:
> >>>On Wed, 9 Jun 2004 16:23:11 -0400, Ben Bishop <aci.TakeThisOut@shore.net> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>>The biggest evolution in artillary pieces came just before the first
> >>>>world war when the french developed a recoilless rifle (which the
> >>>>austrians, germans, and russians then copied without restraint).
> >>>>This allowed you to fire at the enemy and then adjust your fire onto
> >>>>the target rather than starting over from scratch again. It was one
> >>>>of THE major innovations that lead up to the war.
> >>>>
> >>>>I don't recall the title of the book right now, but the author is
> >>>>David Herman, a historian out of (at the time) Tulane...
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>assuming you are speaking of the wonderful little french 75mm gun
> >>>it's not recoiless. it does however have a hydraulic shock absorbers
> >>>on it to absorb the recoil.
> >>
> >> The quick firing 75, by comparison, was recoilless. Not saying
> >> much,
> >>but I take your point.
> >>
> >
> > More precisely, the trail and spades were able to absorb the reduced
> > recoil in such a way as to not disrupt the lay of the gun...so that
> > the next round would have a decent chance of hitting on or near the
> > same spot as the first without having to re lay the gun...
> >
> > ck
>
> A recoiless rifle/cannon is usually just a open tube and is used for
> pretty much flat trajectories. It is open at both ends because when the
> shell fires, the head goes out the front and an approximately equal
> amount of material is vented out the back, thus balancing the recoil.

You might add that at close range these things are at least as fatal to be
behind as in front. If a nice solid stone wall is behind them or you fire
one out a window while inside a room expect to see Jesus or the compitition.

>
> The French 75 however had a recoil system that absorbed the backwards
> energy of the shell without moving the gun from where and how it was
> laid. The trail is usually not part of the recoil system, unless of
> course it carries some of the machinery used but it's size/weight isn't
> that much of an impactor. Spades are usually used when the recoil is
> more than the system can handle. IIRC, the 75 could be fired when it's
> trail was being held up, without battering the men and surrounding area.
>
 >> Stay informed about: 1632 Series personnal comment 

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, deowll wrote:

> They can say that a rock thrown with a sling at subsonic speed will go
> farther than a large lead ball fired faster than the speed of sound if they
> want to but it doesn't take much math to know they are wrong.

They were right. The core word is effective range.

There is actual serious data about the range at which engagements were
fought. The preferred range with period weapons, at which one actually
opened fire when one finally closed, was about 25 yards. The ball
travelled much further, but it did not hit anything wiht any frequency.

There is reasonably good data on how many rounds needed to be fired to
kill someone, given the to-hit data, in period events. This data was
collected by period people, based on actual large battles. If two formed
bodies of a thousand or so men completed a volley at each other, at
extended range, there might be four dead on each side. Clausewitz I
gather notes this in his book. This leads to the interesting outcome that
if two groups of infantry of dramatically unequal size, say 2:1, engaged
each other, given the smaller would thin their lines to have the same
frontage, that the death rates from fire on the two sides would be the
same, because the side that put out more lead also had more targets.

Recall that one of the radical innovations of some American Revolutionary
period US units was inserting the command "level" between "ready" and
"fire".

> I'm not sure why but Central American Indian ranged weapons do not seem to
> have been very effective against anybody. While limited in numbers the guns
> could shatter any body of men.

No, they could not. They were a morale weapon, almost entirely, good for
one round per minute, with a misfire rate of around half.

For serious references on this see, e.g., Nosworthy's two volumes,
Nosworthy being one of the few legitimate historians who has actually
researched what happened at the time.

Period weapon muzzle velocities were not very different from those of
current weapons. Accuracies are a horse of a different color, largely due
to the use of spherical rounds.
 >> Stay informed about: 1632 Series personnal comment 

On 23 Jun 2004, John G. Morrison wrote:

> learned this long ago, one reason that they use humanoid targets for
> everything but qualifying with a rifle or pistol.

You are doing volley fire for morale effect. Volley fire--all shoot at
the same time--excludes aiming.

There is a unique occasion (Malplaquet) at which a French elite regiment
(people who would have been officers elsewhere, and knew how to aim) were
actually given the order to do so. They were covering a narrow gap, were
apallingly outnumbered and were actually told not to volley fire. They
held their position. One senior officer recalls being astonished by the
level of execution that the unit had wrought on the enemy.


> While Eric Flint may not be a good source, he does have the bravery of
> the mercenary bands of the 1600's down pretty good. These men marched
> into battle against men who essentially had shotguns, (which I consider
> all shoulder fired weapons to be at this time), artillery and pikes and
> would march into this fire with horrific casualties as a matter of
> course. Even in his books, Flint doesnt have them break fromthe known
> dangers of the battlefield but when you started getting hit from way
> beyond any known range

They effective range of a period weapon, used in hunting, was pushing
toward 200 yards. This was well beyond what the infantry could do,
because on a half-doze rounds a year actually fired by enlisted men in a
year of training any ability to hit targets was a bit limited.
 >> Stay informed about: 1632 Series personnal comment 

"deowll" <deowll.RemoveThis@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:B78Cc.923$_n6.50@bignews1.bellsouth.net...
> They can say that a rock thrown with a sling at subsonic speed will go
> farther than a large lead ball fired faster than the speed of sound if
they
> want to but it doesn't take much math to know they are wrong.

If I don't misremember, the various central and south American tribes used
atlatls; if you've never seen one used, you can't realize how fast, far, and
level a spear actually can travel. I'm an archer of better-than-average
competancy, and unless I had a compound bow I'd hate to face off against
someone with an atlatl; they'd have close to my effective (point-accurate)
range, and quite probably be throwing heavier projectiles. A bow _can_ fire
an arrow many hundreds of yards, but hitting a man-sized target reliably
require much shorter ranges; and if the other guy is using heavier arrows
with wider (more damaging) heads...

Similarly, a decent slinger could throw a rock at ranges comparable to a
conquistador's gun, with at least comparable accuracy, and have it hit hard
enough to break bones. Slings aren't as good as bows, maybe, but they're
not as pissant as most people think.

And just remember that we /still/ have trouble making metal that will take
an edge as sharp as flaked obsidian; it doesn't have the durability of
steel, but it's going to make deeper, longer wounds than a hunting arrow,
and be much worse than the piles used against armored troops. I seem to
recall an article a few years ago about using obsidian-bladed scalpels for
optical surgeries.

Andrew L.
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"George D. Phillies" <phillies RemoveThis @WPI.EDU> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.44.0406230901350.7254-100000@ccc9.wpi.edu...
>
>
> On 23 Jun 2004, John G. Morrison wrote:
>
> > learned this long ago, one reason that they use humanoid targets for
> > everything but qualifying with a rifle or pistol.
>
> You are doing volley fire for morale effect. Volley fire--all shoot at
> the same time--excludes aiming.
>
> There is a unique occasion (Malplaquet) at which a French elite regiment
> (people who would have been officers elsewhere, and knew how to aim) were
> actually given the order to do so. They were covering a narrow gap, were
> apallingly outnumbered and were actually told not to volley fire. They
> held their position. One senior officer recalls being astonished by the
> level of execution that the unit had wrought on the enemy.
>
>
> > While Eric Flint may not be a good source, he does have the bravery of
> > the mercenary bands of the 1600's down pretty good. These men marched
> > into battle against men who essentially had shotguns, (which I consider
> > all shoulder fired weapons to be at this time), artillery and pikes and
> > would march into this fire with horrific casualties as a matter of
> > course. Even in his books, Flint doesnt have them break fromthe known
> > dangers of the battlefield but when you started getting hit from way
> > beyond any known range
>
> They effective range of a period weapon, used in hunting, was pushing
> toward 200 yards. This was well beyond what the infantry could do,
> because on a half-doze rounds a year actually fired by enlisted men in a
> year of training any ability to hit targets was a bit limited.
>
Buck and ball isn't all that accurate but a tightly patched ball can do
fairly well. When you fire into a tight mass of men the idea is if you miss
one man you will hit another. Washington on at least one occasion asked his
men to triple load their guns if they were sound. (Put three loads down the
barrel)

They tended to use buck and ball because you could count on loading it in
any gun even if the barrel was fouled. Fast loading and more shots over
aimed shots at longer range.
 >> Stay informed about: 1632 Series personnal comment 

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 09:06:36 -0400, "George D. Phillies"
<phillies RemoveThis @WPI.EDU> wrote:


>
>They effective range of a period weapon, used in hunting, was pushing
>toward 200 yards. This was well beyond what the infantry could do,
>because on a half-doze rounds a year actually fired by enlisted men in a
>year of training any ability to hit targets was a bit limited.
>
200 yards seems a really long distance for one of those wpns to be
able to hit a particular man. i believe the commonly accepted range
at which a brown bess could hit an individual was about 50 yards.
W M Manufacturing Ltd.
 >> Stay informed about: 1632 Series personnal comment 

"Andrew Lannon" <ALL_games.RemoveThis@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:10dk3dn51elfec0@corp.supernews.com...
> "deowll" <deowll.RemoveThis@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
> news:B78Cc.923$_n6.50@bignews1.bellsouth.net...
> > They can say that a rock thrown with a sling at subsonic speed will go
> > farther than a large lead ball fired faster than the speed of sound if
> they
> > want to but it doesn't take much math to know they are wrong.
>
> If I don't misremember, the various central and south American tribes used
> atlatls; if you've never seen one used, you can't realize how fast, far,
and
> level a spear actually can travel. I'm an archer of better-than-average
> competancy, and unless I had a compound bow I'd hate to face off against
> someone with an atlatl; they'd have close to my effective (point-accurate)
> range, and quite probably be throwing heavier projectiles. A bow _can_
fire
> an arrow many hundreds of yards, but hitting a man-sized target reliably
> require much shorter ranges; and if the other guy is using heavier arrows
> with wider (more damaging) heads...

I was wondering when someone would notice this.

Odd as this may seem the Aztec and peers don't seem to have made or used the
best design for an atlatl and the points could have been better as well.
They were made like the indian swords at least in the graphics. This may
have something to do with mainly wanting live people to sacrific rather than
dead.

They did use bows for hunting but these were said to have been rather weak
due to a lack of a good grade of wood for making bows. I would have thought
they could have done something like using a rawhide backing but they
seemingly didn't bother.

>
> Similarly, a decent slinger could throw a rock at ranges comparable to a
> conquistador's gun, with at least comparable accuracy, and have it hit
hard
> enough to break bones. Slings aren't as good as bows, maybe, but they're
> not as pissant as most people think.
>
Fastball speed with more mass. Long range accuracy using ammo that varied
slightly in shape and mass is open to question. They can certainly do a
great deal of damage (break bones, kill) but even a simple hand made sheild
using basic materials seems to be enough to defeat them.

How good a bow is depends on how good the bow is, the arrow is, and the
archer is. Again the craft made ammo means no two arrows will be the same or
shoot to the same point at any great distance even if the archer stands
still and does everything exactly the same.

> And just remember that we /still/ have trouble making metal that will take
> an edge as sharp as flaked obsidian; it doesn't have the durability of
> steel, but it's going to make deeper, longer wounds than a hunting arrow,
> and be much worse than the piles used against armored troops. I seem to
> recall an article a few years ago about using obsidian-bladed scalpels for
> optical surgeries.
>
You have so many variables in here that could move things all over the map I
can't even begin to list them. Obsidian blades which is nothing more than
broken glass is about as sharp as it gets. It's still glass with all the
drawbacks of that material. I've seen film of what happens when the native
glass edged weapons collide with a steel sword and it was eye opening. They
should have been wearing saftey glasses because the native weopon largely
disentegrated.

What the same weopon could do against animal flesh matched the metal sword
but when it hit the sword it was trash. The Spanish stated that the local
native armor worked well against the local native weapons and recorded that
many of their troops switched.

> Andrew L.
>
>
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"George D. Phillies" <phillies RemoveThis @WPI.EDU> wrote in
news:Pine.LNX.4.44.0406230901350.7254-100000@ccc9.wpi.edu:

>
>
> On 23 Jun 2004, John G. Morrison wrote:
>
>> learned this long ago, one reason that they use humanoid targets for
>> everything but qualifying with a rifle or pistol.
>
> You are doing volley fire for morale effect. Volley fire--all shoot
> at the same time--excludes aiming.
>
Say's who? I mean there is a bit of a fallacy in that bit of belief.
Even in volley fire, you are making sure that all of the men are facing
in the same direction, pointing the gun in the same direction, usually
at a huge target who is just going to stand there and take it, then
return the favor to you.


> There is a unique occasion (Malplaquet) at which a French elite
> regiment (people who would have been officers elsewhere, and knew how
> to aim) were actually given the order to do so. They were covering a
> narrow gap, were apallingly outnumbered and were actually told not to
> volley fire. They held their position. One senior officer recalls
> being astonished by the level of execution that the unit had wrought
> on the enemy.
>

The problem with volley fire is that you can advance during the loading
time and get closer to shoot your turn, at a closer range and with a
more effective aim. By the way, at what date was this battle?

>> While Eric Flint may not be a good source, he does have the bravery
>> of the mercenary bands of the 1600's down pretty good. These men
>> marched into battle against men who essentially had shotguns, (which
>> I consider all shoulder fired weapons to be at this time), artillery
>> and pikes and would march into this fire with horrific casualties as
>> a matter of course. Even in his books, Flint doesnt have them break
>> fromthe known dangers of the battlefield but when you started getting
>> hit from way beyond any known range
>
> They effective range of a period weapon, used in hunting, was pushing
> toward 200 yards. This was well beyond what the infantry could do,
> because on a half-doze rounds a year actually fired by enlisted men in
> a year of training any ability to hit targets was a bit limited.
>
>
Shooting at a front of men, some 40' wide and 500' long, which is only 8
men by 100, about 800 men, from 600' away isn't that hard. As long as
the field is fairly level and you hold the weapon fairly level as well,
your bullet is going to come rather close to those men and even if it
doesn't hit them, it might hit some of the others around them. It's a
lot like shooting a shotgun inside a room and not hitting anything, it
takes a hell of a lot of skill.
 >> Stay informed about: 1632 Series personnal comment 

There are two separate ranges, one being the range at which a
representative soldier could on occasion hit, for example, a line of men,
at which the preferred range seems to have been closer to 25 than 50
yards, and the other being the range at which someone hunting with a
quality piece, carefully loaded, and using 'aiming'--which soldiers in
line did not--could have a reasonable chance of hitting something, which
was well over 100 yards.

So I agree with what you are saying.

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004, forkliftramp.com wrote:

> On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 09:06:36 -0400, "George D. Phillies"
> <phillies DeleteThis @WPI.EDU> wrote:
>
>
> >
> >They effective range of a period weapon, used in hunting, was pushing
> >toward 200 yards. This was well beyond what the infantry could do,
> >because on a half-doze rounds a year actually fired by enlisted men in a
> >year of training any ability to hit targets was a bit limited.
> >
> 200 yards seems a really long distance for one of those wpns to be
> able to hit a particular man. i believe the commonly accepted range
> at which a brown bess could hit an individual was about 50 yards.
> W M Manufacturing Ltd.
>
 >> Stay informed about: 1632 Series personnal comment 

See, for example, Nosworthy.

In volley fire, the men are facing the same direction. The weapons are
not facing the same direction, in that they are not leveled. The French
went to feux a deu rangs because it was clear that the rounds fired by men
standing in the third rank were fired in the air. While the target was
groups of men, the group was shallow, and the fires somewhat uniformly
went over their heads or into the ground. Also, for 1600 period
matchlocks, the spacing between files was fairly large until you got
really close, because while firing the ranks needed space to walk through
each other so the rear ranks could get toward the front and fire. The
issue was less with flintlocks than matchlocks, but pre-1700 most armies
were matchlocks.

The target is along the vertical axis small until you are really close.





On 24 Jun 2004, John G. Morrison wrote:

> "George D. Phillies" <phillies DeleteThis @WPI.EDU> wrote in
> news:Pine.LNX.4.44.0406230901350.7254-100000@ccc9.wpi.edu:
>
> >
> >
> > On 23 Jun 2004, John G. Morrison wrote:
> >
> >> learned this long ago, one reason that they use humanoid targets for
> >> everything but qualifying with a rifle or pistol.
> >
> > You are doing volley fire for morale effect. Volley fire--all shoot
> > at the same time--excludes aiming.
> >
> Say's who? I mean there is a bit of a fallacy in that bit of belief.
> Even in volley fire, you are making sure that all of the men are facing
> in the same direction, pointing the gun in the same direction, usually
> at a huge target who is just going to stand there and take it, then
> return the favor to you.
>
>
> > There is a unique occasion (Malplaquet) at which a French elite
> > regiment (people who would have been officers elsewhere, and knew how
> > to aim) were actually given the order to do so. They were covering a
> > narrow gap, were apallingly outnumbered and were actually told not to
> > volley fire. They held their position. One senior officer recalls
> > being astonished by the level of execution that the unit had wrought
> > on the enemy.
> >
>
> The problem with volley fire is that you can advance during the loading
> time and get closer to shoot your turn, at a closer range and with a
> more effective aim. By the way, at what date was this battle?
>
> >> While Eric Flint may not be a good source, he does have the bravery
> >> of the mercenary bands of the 1600's down pretty good. These men
> >> marched into battle against men who essentially had shotguns, (which
> >> I consider all shoulder fired weapons to be at this time), artillery
> >> and pikes and would march into this fire with horrific casualties as
> >> a matter of course. Even in his books, Flint doesnt have them break
> >> fromthe known dangers of the battlefield but when you started getting
> >> hit from way beyond any known range
> >
> > They effective range of a period weapon, used in hunting, was pushing
> > toward 200 yards. This was well beyond what the infantry could do,
> > because on a half-doze rounds a year actually fired by enlisted men in
> > a year of training any ability to hit targets was a bit limited.
> >
> >
> Shooting at a front of men, some 40' wide and 500' long, which is only 8
> men by 100, about 800 men, from 600' away isn't that hard. As long as
> the field is fairly level and you hold the weapon fairly level as well,
> your bullet is going to come rather close to those men and even if it
> doesn't hit them, it might hit some of the others around them. It's a
> lot like shooting a shotgun inside a room and not hitting anything, it
> takes a hell of a lot of skill.
>
>
 >> Stay informed about: 1632 Series personnal comment