1632 Series personnal comment

"deowll" <deowll DeleteThis @bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:_YBCc.1272$un3.775@bignews3.bellsouth.net...
> 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.

Really?

" This ancient weapon was used by the natives to resist the Spanish
conquistadors and Cortex in the 1500's. Reports indicate that the atlatl
dart was capable of piercing the armor of the invaders and the barb on the
end of the six-foot darts effectively pinned the soldiers inside of their
suits of armor where they slowly died. The atlatl, a relic compared to the
firearms and armor of the Spanish, was still a formidable weapon in the
hands of an expert user who could accurately fire its deadly dart at a range
of over 100 yards."
--From MNSU's emuseum

Interesting...


> 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.

That's not saying much; the bows made by native Americans in general weren't
very good. I've never been sure why, since there are quite a few good
trees, at least in north America. Still, atlatls are as good as bows aside
from being harder on the joints. One of the ways used to identify people
who probably used atlatls was to look for exaggerated arthritis in the
elbow; throwing a 4-6 foot arrow tend to put rather a lot of stress there.


> 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.

Not using basic materials; laminated or thick wood, or something equally
sophisticated. Didn't the Aztecs used hardened leather over a wooden frame?
I haven't been able to easily dig up a reference that gives the actual
materials. Apparently at least one class, as a project, got to make their
own, so...


> 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.

Re: arrows, not necessarily; I know several people who make their own arrows
because manufactured arrows aren't reliable enough. It's just a matter of
materials and practice. (I, by the way, think they're being rediculous, but
I also don't use wood arrows anymore. Don't have to worry about
aluminum or fiberglass warping.)


> 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.

That assumes that they idiodically went sword-to-sword with the invaders;
south Americans had a prediliction for clubs spikes with teeth or flakes.
The teeth/flakes would fair poorly, but the clubs themselves would probably
fair pretty decently; it's hard to cut through a relatively soft tree, never
mind a hard wood.

> 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.

First I've heard of it; I'm not sure how "hardened linen" would be all that
effective against low-velocity low-mass weapons, much less anything with one
or the other behind it. (or both) Second, if atlatls were capable of
penetrating Spanish steel breastplates, I rather doubt salted linen would be
that useful.

Andrew L.

> The smooth bore were easy to load and you could get off three or four rounds
> before your position was overrun.

The standard drill for loading a period musket (matchlock) was 44-48
moves, and in practice allowed about one round per minute to be fired.
As a result, a critical part of operating a military unit was always
having a part of the unit with a fire reserved, because they were the only
people who got even a single round off. People who were reloading did not
if a position was attacked get even one round off.

There are a substantial number of period time tests, in which an NCO was
allowed to reload a flintlock, and the rate of fire was measured. Three
rounds per minute is the upper range, and after five minutes the barrel
was so hot it could not be held. The Prussians claimed five rounds per
minute, but that was only for the first minute or so. After that, fouling
created complications. (These rates are with metal, not wooden, ramrods,
for which rates of fire are somewhat lower.)

Turenne describes two battalions of Imperial infantry who were attack by
Turks. They got off their one round because they had already loaded.
Alas, they were on a hill, which meant that essentially no rounds hit the
target. They were overrun and wiped out before they could reload.
Turenne concluded that fire was near-useless for stopping cavalry, and the
bayonet or pike was the solution.

My quoted distances for hunting was for black powder smooth bore, not for
black powder rifles.

>
> The hunting RIFLES took longer to load as the rounds were hammered down the
> barrel (at first) in order to have the bullet engage the rifling. It wasn't
> until the mid nineteenth century that new bullets were developed that would
> expand into the rifling of the barrel.
>
> ************
>
> In addition that were differences in the way the bullets were made. The
> military bullets were cast in molds and had impurities and blemishes and tended
> to fly like a knuckle ball... every which way and they were highly effected by
> any wind.
>
> The rifled bullets, due to their being used by hunters who wanted long range
> shots, were cast using a purer lead into more perfect molds. The bullets were
> then inspected and flaws removed if possible or put aside for remolding.
>
> ************
>
> And one more little tidbit. The military use a very sloppy method of measuring
> the amount of black powder for each load.
>
> The hunters started paying very close attention to the amount of gun powder
> being use in order to improve consistency of round placement.
>
> To this day the ammunition used by the military for it's sharp shooters and
> snipers are manufactured to extremely high standards... along with their rifles.
>
> *************
>
> There is a good one hour thesis on this occasionally on the History Channel
> entitled "The History of the Gun".
>
>