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Superguns Helped Defeat the Spanish Armada
Hugh Pickens writes "With the discovery last year of the first wreck of an Elizabethan fighting ship off Alderney in the Channel Islands, thought to date from around 1592, marine archaeologists are revising their ideas on how the English defeated the Spanish Armada. Replicas of two cannon recovered from the Alderney wreck were recreated in a modern foundry, and tests carried out showed that the Elizabethans were throwing shot at almost the speed of sound. Elizabeth's 'supergun,' although relatively small, could hit a target a mile away. At a ship-to-ship fighting distance of about 100 yards, the ball would have sufficient punch to penetrate the oak planks of a galleon, travel across the deck, and emerge out the other side. Tests on cannon recovered from the Alderney wreck also suggest that the ship carried guns of uniform size, firing standard ammunition. 'Elizabeth's navy created the first ever set of uniform cannon, capable of firing the same size shot in a deadly barrage,' says marine archaeologist Mensun Bound from Oxford University, adding that that navy had worked out that a lot of small guns, all the same, all firing at once, were more effective than a few big guns. '[Elizabeth's] navy made a giant leap forward in the way men fought at sea, years ahead of England's enemies, and which was still being used to devastating effect by Nelson 200 years later.'"
It was because the ship only carried one size of shot that he theorized the canon were identical in the first place. On any other wreck he would have expected to find lots of different sized shot.
The musket they found on the ship, when replicated, also punched through a sheet of steel the thickness of a contemporary breast plate, which a modern 9mm handgun couldn't get through (the round just mushroomed over and dented the plate).
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
Since you can't be arsed to read the article, let me quote the pertinent part for you.
The point isn't the size or type of cannon. It's the notion of using a bunch of identical ones as opposed to a variety.
The pistol they used in the test at the Royal Armoury was not particularly modern -- it was a GI-standard Colt 1911A1 firing milspec .45ACP ball ammo.
Ever seen the traffic in India, pal?
You know that "decimated" means that a tenth was taken... so it was more than decimated...
Another advantage of cooling off iron in charcoal is that the exterior absorbs carbon. You know what iron + carbon is? Steel. It's called case-hardening.
Well, certainly everything is possible, and it did happen at least once off the top of my head. But I think that _most_ of the time they didn't actually need to fake anything, and it would have been hard to fake it anyway.
For example the Daci had raided into Roman lands across the Danube since the times of Caesar (i.e., for more than 150 years) by the time Trajan had enough and finally conquered them. It's easy to fake one attack, but it's hard to fake 150 years of your settlers being attacked and your settlements sacked.
For example at the other end, did they really need to fake, say, the attacks of the Picti in Britannia? Britain ended up needing 3 legions and IIRC a whopping 20% of the auxilia in the Empire just to keep the picts from raiding south. Not only were these a financial burden, but it was a source of civil wars too, as whoever commanded 3 legions and that many auxiliary regiments soon got the idea that he can march with them upon Rome.
I.e., if that was done to fake a need to push the border farther north of Hadrian's wall, it would have been the most piss-poor and expensive fake in history. The area between Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall just wasn't worth the cost of such a "faking". So, no, I don't believe that was faked.
For example, going back in time a bit, to the time of the Gallic Wars, the Helvetii had attacked the Romans and their allies before. (And indeed used that pre-existing history as a bargaining chip to try to get Caesar to back off.) Do we need some elaborate conspiracy theory there? I'll apply Occam's Razor and say there probably was a genuine attack there.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It's more than that. The British had developed gun making tech to the point that their guns had more uniform bores and had tighter tolerances twist bore and shot, so they could fire more shot with less powder and less danger of blowing up; their guns were lighter for their caliber than the French and Spanish, hence ships carried larger guns. These were carronades, short barreled, and shot best from close distances. I believe one British ship, firing down the stern of a French ship as each gun came to bear, killed or wounded one third of the French crew in just the one pass, at either the Battle of the Nile or Trafalgar.
The British also trained far more than The British and Spanish and could reload about 3:2 times as fast. The shorter length helped reload inside as noted.
Infuriate left and right
This book describes Nelson's tactics in full gory detail. No ramming. His aim was to bring the broadside of his ships-of-the-line against the bow or stern of the enemy ships. It exposed them to fire as they approached, but put them in a short-range position where all of his guns on one side (52 cannons?) could be brought to bear, with the enemy unable to fight back effectively. The book I mentioned relishes in describing the tactic of "raking", where cannon balls from broadsides are sent from one end of the enemy ship out the other end, destroying everything in it's path: splintering wood and shattering humans. The decks of the French and Spanish ships were flooded with blood, with some crews almost completely wiped out. The shots that were "making two holes" were actually problematic at times, specifically when an enemy ship had a British ship along both sides - at that point the British gunners would have to reduce the amount of gunpowder lest their shots passed right through the enemy ship and into a friend.
You are right in spirit and intention, but wrong in details.
* Pistols are sub-sonic .45 ACP rounds are subsonic.
--- In fact, most of modern military handgun rounds are supersonic. Some of the
* fire bullets that are mostly made of lead
--- In fact, today revolvers remain the only handguns with lead rounds made for them, and even those are not in the majority. Most have at least partial copper/brass jacket. Rounds made for military are almost exclusively fully jacketed (FMJ). If you meant that the cores are made of lead, then it is no different for long guns. Few cores are made of steel. Steel cores contribute to premature barrel wear.
* They have a ton of stopping power
--- In fact, they don't. They are notoriously poor stoppers. That is why police carry shotguns in the trunks of their cars in the US. One blast of 00 buckshot is devastatingly more incapacitating compared to almost any commonly used handgun round. The only way you can reliably stop an attacker with a handgun round short of hitting the central nervous system is to cause sufficient disruption in blood circulation to the brain. Due to their small diameter, it is not easy to achieve with one shot with a handgun.
* almost no penetration
--- Depends on what you are penetrating. For a human being, a FMJ 9mm has a tendency to overpenetrate. Not only can that result in injuries to bystanders, but it lowers the effectiveness of the round on the attacker. Hence the development of the hollow point rounds.
* the bullets, even milspec, are rounded at the front. It's designed to mushroom like that
--- It is primarily, not even, in the milspec. Rounded FMJ rounds penetrate more reliably than mushrooming (hollow point) rounds. This requirement for a rounded FMJ stems from the Hague Convention and the fact that reliable penetration is more important to the military who often face purpose-built or improvised obstructions in the path of their projectiles.
Other than that, I agree with you.
BTW, it's a pity DL lists do not work in /.
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