Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXVIII

[Clistenes]

I'm pretty sure that, aside from a small aerodynamic effect, all projectiles lose height at the same rate -- it's only their forward velocity that decreases their vertical fall over horizontal distance traveled.

That one is more or less true. All projectiles released from the same vertical height will take the same amount of time to hit the ground. Mythbusters did an episode on a 9mm bullet that was dropped vs one that was fired. They both take the same time to reach the ground, assuming the fired bullet is completely level to start with. I think the end result of the show was that any differences would be with the margins of error for their setup to actually test things.

And that's why initial velocity of the projectile matters: A longbow heavy arrow has a velocity under 300 fps or 91 m/s, while a blackpowder musket has a muzzle velocity in between 120 m/s (390 fps) to 370 m/s (1200 fps), meaning that, when the the projectile finally hits the ground, the musket ball has traveled a longer distance...

[Lemmy]

I'm pretty sure that, aside from a small aerodynamic effect, all projectiles lose height at the same rate -- it's only their forward velocity that decreases their vertical fall over horizontal distance traveled.

Well... That depends on what you mean by "small aerodynamic effect".

[fusilier]

Concerning long range fighting, I found this on another forum. You have to scroll down a bit to the long quoted section, mostly in German. Anyway, it's Napoleonic era documentation of effective skirmisher fire between 600 and 1000 paces. I'm actually surprised to see it myself.

http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=522617

[Tobtor]

While shooting (lets assume) 1.000 meters (or yards) is all well and fine, and a great advantage, we must also consider the terrain!

In large parts of Europe we have very diverse landscapes (hills, threes, small streams with bushes along the beaches, small forests, not to mention houses farms, villages etc). Thus places where an army have a 1.000 meters visibility is not that common. It would have been much worse in let us say 1500-1700 AD. Today modern fields are much larger than early modern ones.

Even a relatively flat country like Denmark would have few areas like that. Medieval field system even had low dikes/ditches all over the place! There are some moor/heath areas, and here it could be possible. But you really need to search for places where you have a good view of 1.000 meters! Using a view-shed analysis and taking just terrain into account showed that most places I tried a view-shed analysis of less 500 meters.

Looking at random historic maps (18th century) showed that many fields where less than 100 meters across from one dike to the next. The dikes are typically 0,5-1 in height (today), but enough to duck behind if someone is firing at a defensive position - especially as they may be overgrown with small trees etc.

Thus range is a advantages, but you must look at it not from a maximum possible range but at realistic ranges. Lets say one side is camped behind a dike and you are behind the other and need to storm across a field of 100 yards, that means that any range over 100 feet is not really important.

About bows/crossbows and gunpowder weapons: Last year I read an article about a war between Denmark-Sweden (I think it was the one in 1611-13, but it could be one in the late 16th century), where a battle was fought in southern Sweden. They found the battlefield and was surprised at how many cross bolts and arrows they found compared to bullets, especially as large part of the "Danish" army was made up of German mercenaries (thus with modern equipment).

Two points about this:
A. It was fought in January or February and it was likely foggy and/or raining. Thus not ideal for gunpowder
B: Secondly it was fought in a forested area. Thus ranges above 50 meters is not likely. Thus rate of fire is likely to be more important than range.

So if looking to make bows a viable solution use terrain (shot line of view) and weather (wet/damp) as explanations.

[Brother Oni]

Exactly how far would one need to shoot for that particular fact to become pertinent? Are we talking 1000 meters? 2000?

Further to Storm Bringer's comments on the curvature of the Earth, at higher altitudes or shells that travel very long distances/heights, the rotation of the Earth has an effect; this is called the coriolis force. Note that the deflection depends on which direction you're firing in and the hemisphere you're in:

• Firing north is the opposite of firing south
• Firing north in the northern hemisphere is the opposite of firing north in the southern hemisphere
• East/west firing solutions are unaffected by the coriolis force, however the Eotvos effect causes westward shots to hit low and eastward shots to hit high.

The most famous example is the Paris Gun, used by the Germans to shell Paris during WW1 at a distance of 75 miles miles (120km). From the book Modern Exterior Ballistics (McCoy, Robert [1999]), this fired 210 mm 106kg shells and from 49.5 degrees N towards Paris, there's a drop in range of 393 m and a deflection of 1343 m.

The same book also has a table for deflections due to Coriolis effect of a 7.62mm Ball M80 Bullet:

500 yards - .6 inches
1000 yards - 2.8 in
1500 yards - 7.6 in
2000 yards - 15.9 in

Artillery gunners used to have big firing tables that state the necessary adjustments by bearing before being superseded by computers, although I've found some anecdotal stories from people who have attended artillery control training doing the calculations by ruler and lookup tables. One person who used smaller artillery pieces (<23km range) distinctly remembers a special table on top of all the other ones for an adjustment of earth's rotation as a function of angle, latitude and time of flight, although compared to wind influence, the earth rotation correction wasn't big unless he was shooting at >45 degrees elevation.

TL:DR - Long range sniping is difficult, which is why DC's Deadshot is a supervillian.

[Gnoman]

Incidentally, it was this maths that drove the tall "pagoda" tower superstructures of Japanese battleships in the interwar era, as the japs strove to improve their viewpoints and get better, more accurate fire control data. Almost every warship had some form of rangfinder mounted on top of the foremast or forward superstructure.

It would be wiser to use "Japanese" or "IJN". The abbreviated version you used is generally considered a slur.

[Saint-Just]

Question: is there any historical basis for the nagateppo/"eggshell grenades"? I know that a lot of info about ninjas is pure fabrication, but on the other hand Japanese did use full-size offensive grenades relatively early in the gunpowder era. If it is a fabrication what are the most likely sources of this invention (i.e. do we see such things in 18th century Japanese plays? in 19th century Orientalist writings? in the early 20th century Japanese samurai flicks?)

[Pauly]

Question: is there any historical basis for the nagateppo/"eggshell grenades"? I know that a lot of info about ninjas is pure fabrication, but on the other hand Japanese did use full-size offensive grenades relatively early in the gunpowder era. If it is a fabrication what are the most likely sources of this invention (i.e. do we see such things in 18th century Japanese plays? in 19th century Orientalist writings? in the early 20th century Japanese samurai flicks?)

A lot of the ahistorical tropes about ninjas derve from Kabuki theater
- dressing in black, which the stagehands did, so the ninja attack comes as a surprise to the audience,
- straight swords - to differentiate them from Samurai

The eggshell grenade sounds very much like a theater prop to me. Maybe it has an actual historical ancestor, but the common pop culture representation probably derives from theater.

[Beleriphon]

A lot of the ahistorical tropes about ninjas derove from Kabuki theater
- dressing in black, which the stagehands did, so the ninja attack comes as a surprise to the audience,
- straight swords - to differentiate them from Samurai

The eggshell grenade sounds very much like a theater prop to me. Maybe it has an actual historical ancestor, but the common pop culture representation probably derives from theater.

An actual grenade for sure is a prop, an egg shell filled with some kind of loose powder as a soft tissue irritant however could work and seems like the kind of thing a spy would be using.

As for being a real thing? It doesn't look like, even a cursory Google search doesn't find anything. Google Scholar returns no results for nagateppo, or naga-teppo.

In fact, I'm not even sure the word is proper Japanese. It looks like a compound word from naga and teppo, neither of which have anything to do with grenades or eggs.

[fusilier]

Question: is there any historical basis for the nagateppo/"eggshell grenades"? I know that a lot of info about ninjas is pure fabrication, but on the other hand Japanese did use full-size offensive grenades relatively early in the gunpowder era. If it is a fabrication what are the most likely sources of this invention (i.e. do we see such things in 18th century Japanese plays? in 19th century Orientalist writings? in the early 20th century Japanese samurai flicks?)

There is a class of grenades known as "frangible grenades" (unfortunately, the United States produced a grenade called "M1 Frangible Grenade", which might make an internet search somewhat frustrating). I'm not aware of any of these grenades dating to the era that you refer to. The idea being that the grenade would break open when it hit a hard surface then "something" would happen. They could be smoke grenades, fire grenades (think molotov cocktail), sometimes poison gas.

Here's an example of a German one:
http://www.inert-ord.net/ger03a/gerat/index.html

In the 19th century there was something called a "fire grenade", which was actually intended as a kind of fire extinguisher. It was a salt water filled (later CTC filled) frangible grenade that was supposed to be thrown at the base of a fire, theoretically extinguishing it when the grenade shattered.

I know that there were much older versions of frangible grenades, used for trying to set fire to enemy ships in boarding conflicts (greek fire). But I can't find specific information on them.

[Clistenes]

The Spanish Tercios developed a quite fiendish device for nocturnal warfare: they hurled copper spheres filled with burning phosphor to illuminate their enemies and be able to shoot them down... but some of these phosphor spheres had iron case blackpower grenades inside, so their foes were afraid to get close to the copper spheres to put them off, because they could explode at any time...

[Max_Killjoy]

There is a class of grenades known as "frangible grenades" (unfortunately, the United States produced a grenade called "M1 Frangible Grenade", which might make an internet search somewhat frustrating). I'm not aware of any of these grenades dating to the era that you refer to. The idea being that the grenade would break open when it hit a hard surface then "something" would happen. They could be smoke grenades, fire grenades (think molotov cocktail), sometimes poison gas.

Here's an example of a German one:
http://www.inert-ord.net/ger03a/gerat/index.html

In the 19th century there was something called a "fire grenade", which was actually intended as a kind of fire extinguisher. It was a salt water filled (later CTC filled) frangible grenade that was supposed to be thrown at the base of a fire, theoretically extinguishing it when the grenade shattered.

I know that there were much older versions of frangible grenades, used for trying to set fire to enemy ships in boarding conflicts (greek fire). But I can't find specific information on them.

What's funny is that those firefighting grenades were featured on The Explosion Show this week (on the Science Channel, starring Tory Belleci and some web person I'd never heard of)... and they're somewhere between worthless, and actively bad, for use on fires.

[Max_Killjoy]

Something to get us started back up... can't recall if this was posted before...

Tod's Workshop testing longbow against armor -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBxdTkddHaE
Shad's reaction video -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQABDS0NmtM

Also, seriously thinking about basing something for a technophile species/culture on this -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXUOwagfqA0

[Mike_G]

Something to get us started back up... can't recall if this was posted before...

Tod's Workshop testing longbow against armor -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBxdTkddHaE
Shad's reaction video -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQABDS0NmtM

Also, seriously thinking about basing something for a technophile species/culture on this -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXUOwagfqA0

Loved the Tod's Workshop video.

He got the closest to accurate bow and armor and arrows I've seen. A lot of tests have so many layers of abstraction, like shooting arrows from an air canon or dropping them on a weighted press and using just a sheet of metal as "armor" or some crappy reproduction breastplate or a 30 pound recurve bow, but trying to fudge it, like "this bow at 30 yards is equivalent to a warbow at 100 yards"

This test was the closest we're gonna get anytime soon to realistic armor against a realistic bow.

[Max_Killjoy]

Loved the Tod's Workshop video.

He got the closest to accurate bow and armor and arrows I've seen. A lot of tests have so many layers of abstraction, like shooting arrows from an air canon or dropping them on a weighted press and using just a sheet of metal as "armor" or some crappy reproduction breastplate or a 30 pound recurve bow, but trying to fudge it, like "this bow at 30 yards is equivalent to a warbow at 100 yards"

This test was the closest we're gonna get anytime soon to realistic armor against a realistic bow.

Between that and the Smithsonian documentary I saw late last year where authentically re-created tempered steel breastplate was resisting firearms from close-ish range with no ill effects beyond a dent (wish I could find it online to link to)... I'm pretty much of the opinion right now that good quality breastplates pretty much forced an opponent to hit you somewhere else.

[halfeye]

Between that and the Smithsonian documentary I saw late last year where authentically re-created tempered steel breastplate was resisting firearms from close-ish range with no ill effects beyond a dent (wish I could find it online to link to)... I'm pretty much of the opinion right now that good quality breastplates pretty much forced an opponent to hit you somewhere else.

What calibre and of firearm, and pistol or rifle?

Urg what a typo. Obviously should be "What calibre of firearm, and pistol or rifle?"

[Kaptin Keen]

What calibre and of firearm, and pistol or rifle?

And what type of ammo. According to my sources - which, let's be honest, is mostly RPG rulebooks - you get way better penetration from jacketed ammo than mere lumps of lead.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

What calibre and of firearm, and pistol or rifle?

Closer to "pistol or musket?", I assume.
How breastplate does vs guns is at its most relevant between roughly 1500 and 1700. Large infantry muskets would seem like the most interesting one to test to me, but lighter musket style weapons (for both skirmishers and cavalry, and even mixed in to the main foot formations) and cavalry pistols/dragoons are common on the battlefield as well.

So yeah, I'm going to be keeping an eye out for Smithsonian documentaries now.

[Saint-Just]

And what type of ammo. According to my sources - which, let's be honest, is mostly RPG rulebooks - you get way better penetration from jacketed ammo than mere lumps of lead.

May I inquire which system actually assigns greater penetration to jacketed bullets vs non-jacketed from the same gun? My understanding is that at least in pistol\revolver rounds you wouldn't expect to see significant increase in penetration between modern-style jacketed soft lead and cowboy-style hard cast lead.

Now, expanding (hollow-point, or soft-point) ammo would of course have less penetration than jacketed bullets - but unjacketed cast bullets do not behave as hollow-points. And going in the other direction hard steel cap or core would increase penetration - - but that's not jacketing either.

[Kaptin Keen]

May I inquire which system actually assigns greater penetration to jacketed bullets vs non-jacketed from the same gun? My understanding is that at least in pistol\revolver rounds you wouldn't expect to see significant increase in penetration between modern-style jacketed soft lead and cowboy-style hard cast lead.

Now, expanding (hollow-point, or soft-point) ammo would of course have less penetration than jacketed bullets - but unjacketed cast bullets do not behave as hollow-points. And going in the other direction hard steel cap or core would increase penetration - - but that's not jacketing either.

Are you trying to argue the finer points of ammo terminology with someone who clearly stated his frame of reference as 'RPG rulebooks'?

Because if so, let's rock. I'm just not sure what you could hope to achieve here??

[Lilapop]

The entire point of copper jacketed bullets is being harder than lead, to avoid the projectile getting abraded by a rifled steel barrel (because lead is indeed soft enough to leave residue clogging up the rifling grooves). A simultaneous, if probably unrelated, development are "pointy" bullets, which may not get a significant increase in penetration against flesh or body armor from their form alone, but are fired at higher velocities and have less airfriction at the same time, leading to substantially higher impact velocities and therefore better penetration.

Not sure where hunting soft points fit into this... they might be supposed to penetrate better than a mushrooming hollowpoint, but less well than (and thereby transmit more energy into the target creature than) an FMJ by at least flattening the tip.

[Max_Killjoy]

What calibre and of firearm, and pistol or rifle?

That's one of the reasons I want to find the video, so I can nail down exactly what they were using and at what distance.

It was longer barreled, and vaguely 50' away, but probably not a 1700s musket. They were definitely using a lead ball, not steel or iron. The ball struck lower right IIRC, and glanced off, leaving a shallow round indentation.

It was within the last year and it had zero sensationalism so it couldn't have been most of the "science" or "documentary" channels at this point (it's amazing how far down hill the iterations of Discovery Science have gone in the hunt for cheap programming and higher ratings).

E: Finally found it, not Smithsonian... PBS Nova. All instances of the video I can find are behind regional blocks or paywalls. But the preview/intro does briefly show the firearm used and the distance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9cWlsbX894 They also discussed the big difference between cheap untempered plate and high-quality tempered steel plate in resisting the heaviest hits.

[halfeye]

That's one of the reasons I want to find the video, so I can nail down exactly what they were using and at what distance.

It was longer barreled, and vaguely 50' away, but probably not a 1700s musket. They were definitely using a lead ball, not steel or iron. The ball struck lower right IIRC, and glanced off, leaving a shallow round indentation.

It was within the last year and it had zero sensationalism so it couldn't have been most of the "science" or "documentary" channels at this point (it's amazing how far down hill the iterations of Discovery Science have gone in the hunt for cheap programming and higher ratings).

E: Finally found it, not Smithsonian... PBS Nova. All instances of the video I can find are behind regional blocks or paywalls. But the preview/intro does briefly show the firearm used and the distance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9cWlsbX894 They also discussed the big difference between cheap untempered plate and high-quality tempered steel plate in resisting the heaviest hits.

I back out of Youtube every time they do their "accept our cookies" thing, so I haven't seen the video.

I am very dubious about personal armour stopping rifle bullets, the 0.303 round would allegedly go through 9 inches of brick wall, and to be proof against small arms tanks needed 12mm of armour plate.

I would be more or less unsurprised by a 0.22 pistol round bouncing off thick armour, an 0.44 magnum or an 0.45 as used in the "wild west" however has a lot more energy due to the approximately eight times higher mass.

[AMX]

I back out of Youtube every time they do their "accept our cookies" thing, so I haven't seen the video.

I am very dubious about personal armour stopping rifle bullets, the 0.303 round would allegedly go through 9 inches of brick wall, and to be proof against small arms tanks needed 12mm of armour plate.

I would be more or less unsurprised by a 0.22 pistol round bouncing off thick armour, an 0.44 magnum or an 0.45 as used in the "wild west" however has a lot more energy due to the approximately eight times higher mass.

You're thinking much too modern - this is about blackpowder muzzleloaders, and not the newest ones.

[Max_Killjoy]

I back out of Youtube every time they do their "accept our cookies" thing, so I haven't seen the video.

I am very dubious about personal armour stopping rifle bullets, the 0.303 round would allegedly go through 9 inches of brick wall, and to be proof against small arms tanks needed 12mm of armour plate.

I would be more or less unsurprised by a 0.22 pistol round bouncing off thick armour, an 0.44 magnum or an 0.45 as used in the "wild west" however has a lot more energy due to the approximately eight times higher mass.

I don't disagree, but what does that have to do with the question at hand?

[AdAstra]

I back out of Youtube every time they do their "accept our cookies" thing, so I haven't seen the video.

I am very dubious about personal armour stopping rifle bullets, the 0.303 round would allegedly go through 9 inches of brick wall, and to be proof against small arms tanks needed 12mm of armour plate.

I would be more or less unsurprised by a 0.22 pistol round bouncing off thick armour, an 0.44 magnum or an 0.45 as used in the "wild west" however has a lot more energy due to the approximately eight times higher mass.

The .303 is far too modern for this to be a fair comparison, especially since those numbers are probably for cordite (equivalent to smokeless powder) propellant. The 12mm of steel required from tanks was influenced by the existence of steel-cored armor-piercing rounds and machine guns (even if the armor resists the bullet, if it gets too beat up there's the chance that another one too close will punch through, and there might be a lot of bullets thrown at you). Armor penetration figures also typically assume no slope, which most breastplates incorporated.

Would a breastplate provide guaranteed protection from repeated dead-on hits by the largest and fastest available projectiles at extremely close range? Probably not, but a good chance at stopping just a single bullet is far better than no chance. Real-world conditions (i.e. volleys of fire at normal combat distances from firearms that were far from perfect) mean there are very few perfect shots, getting repeated hits on the same target is far from a guarantee, and armor does not have to protect against every conceivable threat to be effective.

[Gnoman]

Historically, the cuirass worn by cuirassers was expected to stop a pistol ball at close range, and a musket ball at long, with the musket punching through at close range. The gun shown in that PBS intro appeared to be either an arequebus or a later-era light musket, not a proper heavy anti-armor weapon, and the amount of smoke suggests that it might have been underloaded.

[Clistenes]

Historically, the cuirass worn by cuirassers was expected to stop a pistol ball at close range, and a musket ball at long, with the musket punching through at close range. The gun shown in that PBS intro appeared to be either an arequebus or a later-era light musket, not a proper heavy anti-armor weapon, and the amount of smoke suggests that it might have been underloaded.

Cuirasses were expected to stop pistol and arquebuss balls, not musket balls.

[Vinyadan]

Related to armour vs guns, albeit from a much later era: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armour_of_the_Kelly_gang

[Gnoman]

Cuirasses were expected to stop pistol and arquebuss balls, not musket balls.

They were intended to keep out muskets at long range, but not short. This, of course, refers to the heavy musket of an earlier era, not necessarily the later and lighter. "brown bess" style in use after armor declined furthere.