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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.'"
Speaking of a Brit I am always humbled at my nations level of mastery of naval tactics, from the early 'near supersonic' artillery mentioned in this article, to the modern... "Just ram the fuckers with a submarine" approach that we employ today... *wipes tear*
Two cannons were shown on the programme being lifted from the sea bed to join a 3rd that had been lifted earlier.
They wanted 3 cannons to make sure that a matching pair was not a fluke. A matching triple is much less likly. It was also interesting to to note that all the cannon balls lifted were of the same size.
It's both fascinating and sad how technology and warfare has been intertwined from the very dawn of man. A lot of "geeks" from way back, Greek philosophers, Leonardo da Vinci, etc. were sponsored by the rich and powerful of their respectable eras in exchange for using their minds to create better warfare technology.
For good or for evil, it seems that's the way it has always been, and likely always will be. We possibly wouldn't be having this discussion if it weren't for DARPA...
.: Max Romantschuk
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 difference is that while EVERYONE had guns that could fire something inaccurately over a long distance these guns had a few rather special features.
Firstly they are all the same, no variability which means that the shot can be made more precisely and firing can be made more accurate
Secondly their recoil was able to throw the gun back into the ship consistently (read straight) due to the level of accuracy, this meant that the guns could be reloaded quicker
These combinations also meant that the guns could be used effectively in a broadside with standardised shot rather than having shot "tuned" to each individual gun.
So while the Dutch may have invented the stock exchange and orange carrots the guns used here by the Brits (strictly actually the English at this stage) were the first "modern" cannons if such a term can be used.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
The author of the article concludes it by saying English gun founders were 50 years ahead of their time, which would seem to indicate a gun capable of firing a mile was unheard of. From my brief perusal on Wikipedia guns mounted on galleons tended to have a range of 1/5-1/4 of a mile. For the person that posted above regarding a kilometer ranged Dutch gun, remember a mile would be an additional 60% or so.
The dutch had a problem: they sea exits were very shallow, which put serious limit on the size of ships they could build and run domestically. They even invented cumbersome floating drydocks to help "fly" large east indiamen over reefs, but eventually trade and commerce went to the brits and the french, just like the german Hansa alliance lost most of their lucrative trade about 150 years beforehand.
Otherwise, english victory over the Spanish Amrmada was due to two factors mostly: wind conditions made it impossible to land the big spanish ships on british mainland and the english made iron cannonballs were of much higher quality owing to the slow cooling process applied after casting.
The spanish just threw their freshly minted cannonballs into a bucket of water, which made the metal brittle, so it shattered when hitting the outside of a sailing ship's thick timber, making little damage inside, if any. The english buried their hot cannonballs into charcoal, taking days to cool to ambient temperature, so the resultsing piece of iron was almost as soft as a piece of lead, staying in one piece while it went throught the timber of spanish ships, sometimes even coming out on the opposite side of the impact! (Whatever was in-between got almost totally destroyed).
On the other hand, one should not overestimate the role of artillery in late XVIth century sea combat. Accuracy was nil and reload times / repeat fire rates were nowhere near the Nelsonian standards. The Lepanto sea battle only a decade before, fought between venetians + spanish crusaders and the ottoman turks, was mostly sword and knife gore.
Let's say bad winds and substandard or outright bad seamanship was 75% of the 1588 spanish defeat, their commander actually never been to the sea before, he was simply a close relative of the king, that's why they appointed him to the post. (The russians made the very same mistake in 1905, earning the catastrophic Tsushima defeat.)
Actually, the funny thing is: only because our history textbooks are still fascinated with conquerors, ignore civillian progress almost entirely, and kings which built up the economy instead of going to war are presented as weak kings. So yeah, you only get to hear about the stuff used in war.
But if you look as far back as the dawn of civilization, the advances which made those armies and empires possible in the first place were almost invariably civillian technology. E.g., you wouldn't have had those empires rising and falling in Mesopotamia without irrigation and timekeeping and a bunch of other things. I'm hard pressed to see how irrigation might have been developed for warfare.
Or if you look at ancient Egypt, their greatest advances were made before the Hyskos invasion, while Egypt was still shielded by the desert from any noteworthy warfare. Their only concerns were minor border fights against raiders and nubian tribes, and they didn't waste much of their GDP on the army or even on fortifying their cities. In fact, none of their cities had a wall at all. And yet in this age they developed construction, medicine, etc, to an extent far beyond their warring neighbours.
Romans, if you look at them, were actually a remarkably peaceful civilization. With some few exceptions, like the last war against Carthage, Rome almost never started a war of aggression. They just defended what was theirs and honoured their alliances to the letter. But when attacked, they hit back _hard_. Among other things because they hadn't ruined their economy and manpower with pointless wars before that. The vast majority of their conquests were actually done in counter-attacks.
But anyway, while everyone drools about the Roman legions, few people give thought to the economy that could afford them in the first place. There were advances in engineering, administration, construction, etc. There was stuff like the aqueducts that allowed Rome to have that monstruous manpower to throw at an enemy. Most of that stuff was civillian tech. Nobody built an aqueduct as an offensive thing.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The British had for almost a 500 years a fairly simple approach to warfare. It's called "shoot the enemy a lot". I'd bet that it comes from their own ancient fascination with the long bow, where, really, you had to just put as many arrows in the air as possible to win and they did win that way at Agincourt.
From that they always worked on the rate and power of their fire, whereas other nations had a more mixed set of priorities. It wasn't just about getting more hits - they also recognized the intimidating effect having a lot of stuff coming your way meant.
But even after their machine gun, you saw British military theorists like Lidell Hart advocating for what the Germans would adapt into their own blitzkreig, and the USA into its Shock and Awe. And, even their commandos and SAS, upon which all the special forces of the world are based, are also really about, "shoot the enemy a lot"...
Bottom line is, if you mess with the British, they are going to shoot you a lot. So its really easier just have them as an ally and keep them working on their bad food and good music and television.
This is my sig.
The gaul wars were a mixed bag and Caesar was going to be investigated by the Senate for it, when he decided to attack Rome instead.
But even there, it all started when the Helvetii attacked some gallic tribes which were allies and clients of Rome. The next two major interventions there followed the same pattern: someone attacks the allies of Rome, Rome smacks back hard.
It has nothing to do with crying "the Gaul have weapons of mass destruction", and everything to do with your allies being actually attacked first. Big difference.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
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.
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
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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