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Jean Thibodeau




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PostPosted: Sun 23 Jul, 2006 4:56 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Randall Moffett wrote:
Thanks for the links. The only question that comes to mind is that velocity does not equal distance right? I still am curious if the design of ball slows it as will calibre. The bullets they use now are shaped to cut through the air with the lease resistance. Now I assume this would not severly limit the flight of a ball but it could knock yards off. Thanks for the info though, this post has been good. Any idea the distance on cannon I remember reading early on they were fairly close to the walls as well?

Randall


Thanks, I'm glad if it's been helpful: This is not my area of expertise but one does pick up a lot of information reading guns magazines for 30 years about ballistics etc ....... And target shooting for about 25 years. The thing is that a lot of the time one doesn't remember the sources of what one knows or " thinks " they know.

A modern conical bullet will have greater range, everything else being equal, than round ball that has a lot of drag, so there will be a loss of range, but it wouldn't be safe to shoot even the weakest hangonne at 45° with it's normal charge if anything was down range for a good distance.

As to velocity a large caliber handgonne won't necessarily have a lower velocity than a smaller caliber one.

Powder charge, length of barrel, strength of the gun making it possible to use a lot of powder without blowing up would be some of the variables.

With long barrelled muskets or Kentuky rifle the velocity of a 20 gauge might reach close to 2000 ft/sec. but a brown bess being closer to 12 or 11 gauge and with a loose ball to caliber windage might be closer to 1250 ft/sec. with the normal fighting load.

I think proof loads could be close to twice the normal amount of powder and twice the charge weight ! But fact check me because I'm again just going from the top of my head. I wish some black powder shooters would chime in as I'm just basing this on my memory of stuff read over the years. I'm sure the ballistics of round ball and their maximum range can be found somewhere or calculated if the weight and muzzle velocity is known.

Oh, with shotgun pellets and round ball in general the larger calibers are less affected by wind resistance in proportion to their mass as the air resistance will increase at the square of the diameter but the mass increases at the cube: So larger ball carries further at equal muzzle velocities. ( The actual formula may be more complex than this, but I think I am correct in general principal. ) I think this is called sectional density, while the shape affect ballistic coefficient. ( Conical versus round. )

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Randall Moffett




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PostPosted: Sun 23 Jul, 2006 9:10 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

I found another one. Martin Pegler's 'Powder and Ball Small Arms'. He tested using one 1450 handcannon and a hackbutt from the late 15th. In his opinion if was difficult to use as the priming powder often got blew off and affected by weather as well as having to hold it at a lower lever than a crossbow makign aiming hard. Looking at the handgun website it seems he holds the handgun low as well and it seems to move alot when fired, not helping accuracy. With the hand cannon he penetrated 2mm at thirty yards, with the hackbutt they failed any good hits (or any, cannot remember). It does not seem he feels the earl gun was useful more for its slowness and somewhat diffucult use.
About the hand gun website. He does not tell where most on his gallery were recovered? Does anyone know? Having spoken with some people who are in the know, existant 14th century handguns could be listed on one hand from what I thought and yet he had half a dozen labeled 14th century, anyone have more info? I think I will leave medieval handguns to those who like them, the darwin awards if full of them already..... I feel whole lot safer with later black powder rifles.
I am away for holiday but I will get the range info once back. I am sure their testing will be useful to see what ranges they achieved as well as accuracy. It seems that uncorned powder polpular from 14th to mid/late 15th) has 1/3 less power than corned powder per the notes in Strickland. I am sure this effects distance and thence accuracy but how much, i don't know but will also lok into a formula for it.
Lookud up firing distance from Napolean's time. I guess it is 60 yards when they start volley's.

Randall
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Randall Moffett




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PostPosted: Sun 23 Jul, 2006 9:22 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Just looking through some physics stuff and realized the numbers I put in were not correct because the equation I used required a constant acceleration.... Anyone remember the way to determine distance from a varying acceleration?

Randall
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Carl Scholer





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PostPosted: Mon 24 Jul, 2006 12:28 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

To get the formula for drag you have to know the rate at which the projectile de-accelerates, it gets trickier when you realise that the rate of de acceleration drops as the velocity drops as the amount of air per second that the projectile is cutting through is reduced. However,I was able to dig up some data from the medieval gunpowder tests using a small cannon, the result is that the lead ball, when projected at 224mps makes it 1100 meters. Considering that the flight dynamics should be the same, despite the greater size of the cannon sized projectile, this illustrates that a brown bess or pretty much any musket or arquebus should project their ball to over a km.

I have no doubt about the authenticity of the mongol archer loosing an arrow out to over 500 meters, but it doesn't mention the size of the target. It's not unusual to use large targets for longer ranges in traditional archery. For example in Tibet their is an archery competition where each archer on a team is given three shots to hit a 3 meter square target at 100 yards with a hit anywhere on the target counting as a score. The 500 meter shot sounds more akin to flight archery, in which case the current world record for flight archery is over 1300 yards. Of course flight arrows are specifically designed to travel long distances: they lack points and fletching and are made to be as light as possible. I also don't doubt that the English trained at 200 yards. After all the traditional English clout shoot takes place at 180 yards. In clout shooting a flag is placed out at 180 yards and the goal is to get an arrow to land in the ground as close as possible to the flag. The point is that all of this is beyond what is considered target archery range though.

Also, the musket range quote:

"A soldier's musket, if not exceedingly ill-bored (as many of them are), will strike the figure of a man at eighty yards; it may even at 100; but a soldier must be very unfortunate indeed who shall be wounded by a common musket at 150 yards, provided his antagonist aims at him; and as to firing at a man at 200 yards with a common musket, you may just as well fire at the moon and have the same hopes of hitting your object. I do maintain and will prove, whenever called on, that no man was ever killed at 200 yards by a common soldier's musket, by the person who aimed at him."

Col. George Hanger, To all Sportsmen and Particularly to Farmers, and Gamekeepers (London, 1814)


BTW here is a link to the Tibetan archery competition,

http://www.atarn.org/letters/letter_summaries.htm#qinghai

Also an interesting article on smooth bore use during the civil war,

http://civilwartalk.com/cwt_alt/resources/art...thbore.htm

http://www.iusb.edu/~journal/2000/stanage.html
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Benjamin H. Abbott




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PostPosted: Mon 24 Jul, 2006 10:42 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Quote:
The 500 meter shot sounds more akin to flight archery, in which case the current world record for flight archery is over 1300 yards.


No, it doesn't sound like flight archery to me. They hit some target or another. It wasn't just shooting for maxium range. You're right that we don't know how big the target was, though.
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Geoff Wood




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PostPosted: Mon 24 Jul, 2006 11:07 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Carl Scholer wrote:
To get the formula for drag you have to know the rate at which the projectile de-accelerates, it gets trickier when you realise that the rate of de acceleration drops as the velocity drops as the amount of air per second that the projectile is cutting through is reduced. However,I was able to dig up some data from the medieval gunpowder tests using a small cannon, the result is that the lead ball, when projected at 224mps makes it 1100 meters. Considering that the flight dynamics should be the same, despite the greater size of the cannon sized projectile, this illustrates that a brown bess or pretty much any musket or arquebus should project their ball to over a km.



I may be misunderstanding what you are saying on the last point. If a musket ball starts at the same angle and velocity as a cannon ball, and they are both the same shape and density (assuming both are lead and roughly spherical in this case), then the greater surface (inducing drag) to mass (maintaining momentum) ratio of the musket ball to the cannon ball will mean that the musket ball doesn't go as far as the cannon ball. To put it its simplest, it slows down more rapidly. It is pretty much the same reason that rain falls and mist doesn't when both are made of water. As i said at the start, I may have misunderstood you (in which case apologies).
Geoff
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Carl Scholer





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PostPosted: Mon 24 Jul, 2006 1:08 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Your right, a heavier projectile would have a greater surface area and thus greater drag but it would also have greater volume which would offset this drag and then some. As the projectile increases in diameter its mass would be increasing to the third power while its air resistance would be increasing to the second. Thanks for catching me on that one.

Any way the "canon" (I thought the gun was a small canon but apparently it's technically an early hand gun... a very big early hand gun Eek! ) used was a duplicate of the Loshut gun which has a 31mm diameter bore while a brown bess has a 19.1mm diameter bore. So technically the brown bess should experience 50% more air resistance in proportion to its mass. So, being very rough about things, it looks like a bess would need between 300 to 350mps to project its ball to 1km. Maybe a little more because at greater velocities it will be experiencing greater drag.


Last edited by Carl Scholer on Mon 24 Jul, 2006 1:49 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Geoff Wood




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PostPosted: Mon 24 Jul, 2006 1:46 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Carl Scholer wrote:
Any way the "canon" (I thought the gun was a small canon but apparently it's technically an early hand gun... a very big early hand gun Eek! ) used was a duplicate of the Loshut gun which has a 31mm diameter bore while a brown bess has a 19.1mm diameter bore. So technically the brown bess should experience 50% more air resistance in proportion to its mass. So, being very rough about things, it looks like a bess would need between 300 to 350mps to project its ball it 1km. Maybe a little more because at greater velocities it will be experiencing greater drag.


31mm hand gun! Heck of a wound channel. I assume it was propped somehow for firing?
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Matthew Amt




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PostPosted: Tue 25 Jul, 2006 5:27 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Carl Scholer wrote:
"A soldier's musket, if not exceedingly ill-bored (as many of them are), will strike the figure of a man at eighty yards; it may even at 100; but a soldier must be very unfortunate indeed who shall be wounded by a common musket at 150 yards, provided his antagonist aims at him; and as to firing at a man at 200 yards with a common musket, you may just as well fire at the moon and have the same hopes of hitting your object. I do maintain and will prove, whenever called on, that no man was ever killed at 200 yards by a common soldier's musket, by the person who aimed at him."


Bless you, sir, I was hoping someone would quote that! I don't know much about all the physics, and I think the extremes of marksmanship are kind of beside the point. It really seems to me that the volume of fire and the psychological effects were more important. I have never heard of hand cannons or any types of musket being used (on the usual open battlefield) at high elevation for longer range. Generals and good troops knew that their first volley was always the most effective, so they wouldn't waste it at an ineffective range. After that, it was "Prime and Load!" as quickly as the officers could get the troops to go. It was very easy to rip a cartridge in half, spilling half the powder all over yourself, dump most of the rest into the pan, and shake the last few grains into the bore. Pfft, goes the musket, and no one gets hurt by that shot! There was an officer during the Seven Years' War who was hit SEVEN TIMES in one battle by "spent balls", either fired without enough powder or beyond their effective range, or ricochets. The one that hit him inside his elbow hurt a lot, but none actually wounded him. I've also heard (sorry, no documentation!) that soldiers of the time knew they had to fire their body weight in lead just to hit an enemy, not necessarily kill him.

Other tidbits I've picked up over the years:

--Apparently there is debate about the issue of "chattering", the way the ball bounces its way down an unrifled bore. Strictly speaking, the force of the combusting powder should act equally on the surface of the ball, making for very little chatter. However, the strict physicist neglects to note that even nicely spherical musket balls usually have some sprue or flashing, which tosses the neat physics out the window...

--Smoke. After a volley or two, given little wind, the target is nearly invisible. Toss out accuracy or aimed shooting.

--British soldiers in the 18th century were actually taught to turn their heads to the side when firing, to avoid being hit in the eyes by their left-hand neighbors' pan flashes. The Evil Rebels were the first to be told "Take Aim!". (Obviously, this isn't necessarily applicable in earlier eras!)

--Frederick the Great of Prussia (18th century) did a lot of experimenting with tactics. He found that having his troops volley by company or platoon in a very controlled way killed or wounded 2 or 3 times as many enemy as having whole battalions or even brigades fire together. But the psychological impact of a brigade volley more than made up for that!

--As I understand it, you could teach new troops such as Italian town militias how to fire hand gonnes relatively safely and about as effectively as possible in a few hours. The guns were cheap, as was the ammunition. Proper training with crossbows took at least a little longer, and the weapons and ammunition were much more expensive. Arrows were also more expensive than bullets, and longbow training took years. After all that, a line of novice gunners could deliver a crashing volley that might hit nothing but could still cause horses to do highly amusing U-turns. (This is old information and may be completely debunked by now, sorry! Help me out!)

--As other folks have pointed out, the Renaissance brought great improvements such as longer barrels and corned powder which greatly increased the effectiveness of the gun.

I know there is information somewhere about the muzzle velocities of muskets and earlier firearms, but I really think that all the calculations aren't going to tell you very much. The common focus simply wasn't on maximum range and accuracy (rifles aside!). Personally, I can't help thinking that a regiment from the American Revolution would be shredded by a like number of 15th century longbowmen! But that doesn't help solve the initial question!

Matthew
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Max von Bargen




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PostPosted: Tue 25 Jul, 2006 5:49 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Here's some stuff I managed to dig up about the efficiency of firearms in the Napoleonic Wars. Not really "early firearms," but they do give you an idea. All of the information presented here is from Philip J. Haythornthwaite's Napoleonic Infantry.

This is perhaps the most relevant passage (p.26). In a contemporary experiment,
Quote:
"a musket achieved a range of 1,030 yards at 45 degrees elevation, but such statistics are irrelevant to what happened on the battlefield, where 300 yards might be regarded as the maximum practical range. The 1841 test showed that at 150 yards a target twice as high and twice as broad as a man was hit three times out of four, but not at all at any greater range, nor were any hits registered on a target twice as wide at 250 yards. Hanoverian tests of 1790, against a target equating to a line of infantry found that 75 percent of shots hit at 100 paces, about 37 percent at 200, about 33 at 300, and against a similar target equating to a line of cavalry the respective hits were about 83, 50, and 37 percent."
Haythornthwaite makes no comment on the level of training of the shooters.

Another passage reads (also p.26),
Quote:
"W. Muller, author of Elements of the Science of War (London, 1811), made a distinction between 'well-trained' and 'ordinary' soldiers when conducting trials against a target representing a line of cavalry: at 100 yards, 53 percent by trained men, 40 percent by ordinary; at 200 yards 30 and 18 percent respectively; at 300 yards 23 and 15 percent. French tests with a fixed musket, at a target 3x1.75 metres registered 60 percent hits at 75 metres, 40 percent at 150 metres, 25 percent at 225 metres, and 20 percent at 300 metres."


I don't have any particular opinion on this, but I thought they might be able to help you guys out. This book is pretty useful for combat efficiency of many different weapons. As to the relative efficiency of archery to muskets, on p.73 he mentions a proposal by Benjamin Franklin to use the pike and the bow as a substitute for the musket. Franklin's calculations appear to be based entirely on rate of fire; unfortunately there is no range or power estimate provided. Haythornthwaite says that the bow never returned to use because of the difficulty in training competent archers. Hope you guys found this helpful.
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Randall Moffett




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PostPosted: Wed 26 Jul, 2006 3:36 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

From what I can tell italians are the leaders in adopting firearms early on and it is not that quick until the very end. Even in th end of the 15th century many military men try recruiting crossbowmen for their accuracy and range. When describing the best misslemen the crossbowmen is still their example, 'Dominic Maccini (spelling) toward the end of the 15th uses the crossbow as the superior component. In the 1440/1450's you start getting groups of hangunners in the hundreds mostly (or less). In 1449 Milan allows hand guns into the militia. In 1490 Venice adopts firearms as a part of their militia as well (I do no rememer if it states clearly in place of crossbows or alongside). From what I can tell until the 16th century the missilemen of most armies overwhekmingly were bowmen and crossbowmen. Some swiss and german forces were gun heavy,especially in the late 1490's. That said some gunner companies in the second half of the 15th seem to work with gunpowder artillery as well as being handgunners. In the war of the Roses the Earl of Warwick hired 200 (the weather makes it so their weapons don't work and they end up fighting hand to hand), it seems though these men were working with artillery (as well as strange mantlets and other defensive objects). Interesting theme perhaps.

Randall
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