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  1. - Top - End - #781
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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

    Quote Originally Posted by Saint-Just View Post
    Ok, I really need more info. My current understanding is that not merely they were "aren't that effective when compared to an actual machinegun", they were so much less effective that it required some extraordinary circumstances for the volley fire to be of any use, especially at ranges of more than 1 mile (which was not a big deal for the heavy machine guns once people developed proper procedures). Obviously better than nothing, still not a reasonable use case (especially if you consider that you need to burn many times more ammo to suppress an area with rifles than you'd need for a machine gun).

    Am I wrong and it was a passable substitute? With the benefit of hindsight was it a sensible decision to spend money on extreme-range musketry instead of spending the same amount on even a small amount of additional MGs? Where I can learn more about actual use of volley fir in the war as opposed to theatrical pre-war exercises and doctrines?
    The WWI bolt action rifles were all developed in the late 19th Century. Volley sights were used with effect at the Battle of Omdurman in the Sudan in 1898, which was only 16 years before WWI. The firing started with field guns at 2500 yards, then machine guns and rifles at 1500. No enemy soldier got within 50 yards, and the casualties were horrific. The Zulu were engaged at long range in the 1870s with effect, and there are other similar cases. The Boers in South Africa had engaged the British very effectively at long range with pretty much the same rifles that Germany would go to WWI with.

    Cavalry had made effective charges in the 1890s, so it wasn't outlandish to think they'd still be able to in WWI. In fact, the Australian Light Horse did successfully charge entrenched Turkish troops who were armed with modern rifles,machine guns and artillery at Beersheba in 1917.

    Now, the targets in those colonial battles was a mass of enemy in the open, and at 1500 yards a volley from a company of riflemen should put some rounds into a battalion sized target. Much like a single machine gun firing a burst.

    So, yes, the generals of the early war, who had been company officers during the colonial wars of the 19th century, had seen long range volley fire be very effective. I'm sure that played into the planning.

    The pace of technology increased rapidly around that time. You look at the lifespan of the Brown Bess musket which was in use for over a century from the 1720s to the 1850s, and then the Martini Henry which was only used from 1871, and saw it's replacement adopted in 1888.

    The space between the last of the Colonial wars and the outbreak of WWI is shorter than the gap between the First and Second World Wars. While new weapons were developed and adopted, and tactics and doctrine changed, the lag is understandable.
    Last edited by Mike_G; 2021-11-03 at 08:00 AM.
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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickers_machine_gun

    ...

    The weapon had a reputation for great solidity and reliability. Ian V. Hogg, in Weapons & War Machines, describes an action that took place in August 1916, during which the British 100th Company of the Machine Gun Corps fired their ten Vickers guns to deliver sustained fire for twelve hours. Using 100 barrels, they fired a million rounds without breakdowns.

    ...

    The Vickers was used for indirect fire against enemy positions at ranges up to 4,500 yards (4,115 m) with Mark VIIIz ammunition.[38] This plunging fire was used to great effect against road junctions, trench systems, forming up points, and other locations that might be observed by a forward observer, or zeroed in at one time for future attacks, or guessed at by men using maps and experience.
    Rifles don't come anywhere near that.
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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickers_machine_gun



    Rifles don't come anywhere near that.
    And they don't have to and that isn't the point of volley sights.

    The 1000 to 1500 yard volley sights on rifles were put there for long range fore at area targets or suspected enemy concentrations. They were used very successfully for that in the period when they were designed and issued. An infantry battalion dropping rounds onto a Zulu impi advancing across open country at half a mile is feasible. Against entrenched or dispersed enemy using cover and drab uniforms, not so much

    That's why the overly optimistic sights exist. They seem silly, but nobody expected solider to be making hits on individul enemy at 1000 yards with iron sights
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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

    Most of the Great Powers were in the process of developing replacement rifles when war were declared. Volley sights were not a requirement for the new trials, and it was becoming common to remove them from existing guns during maintenance or refurbishment.


    There was no movement toward an intermediate cartridge - all weapons intended for military use* were full-rifle designs in the 6-8 millimeter range. There is good reason for this, as the conditions of WWI made the range of a full-rifle cartridge very attractive. Guns like the vaunted US shotguns were of strictly limited use no matter how effective they were in the trench itself due to range - they lacked the ability to provide covering fire during trench assaults or to bring the enemy under fire when they were assaulting.

    *Due to massive attrition, all combatants procured huge numbers of arms from neutral powers, including those intended for civilian sale. This included weapons that could arguably be called "intermediate cartridge" setups, but this was a result of desperation, not desire.
    Last edited by Gnoman; 2021-11-04 at 12:42 AM.

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

    Quote Originally Posted by Saint-Just View Post
    Am I wrong and it was a passable substitute? With the benefit of hindsight was it a sensible decision to spend money on extreme-range musketry instead of spending the same amount on even a small amount of additional MGs?
    With the benefit of hindsight, it wasn't. Problem is, MGs were a brand new weapon and no one was quite sure what to do with them and how best to integrate them into the army - do you use them as light artillery? Defensive points for infantry support? DO you integrate then into every squad?

    Well, it was the latter, obviously, but again, hindsight. WHat's worse, that solution is very expensive compared to others, since you'll need a lot of MGs and a lot of ammo, and ammo was often very scarce when compared to modern supply. If you look up how many rounds a standing army soldier had to train with his rifle per year, you get numbers that are usually well under 50. Using MGs would increase training cost by an order of magnitude.

    Quote Originally Posted by Saint-Just View Post
    Where I can learn more about actual use of volley fire in the war as opposed to theatrical pre-war exercises and doctrines?
    Personal accounts. This isn't the middle ages, you can actually find journals and direct eyewitness reports floating around. Find a battle you are interested in, find a biography of someone in it and you're set.

    Quote Originally Posted by Mike_G View Post
    Cavalry had made effective charges in the 1890s, so it wasn't outlandish to think they'd still be able to in WWI.
    [...]
    Now, the targets in those colonial battles was a mass of enemy in the open, and at 1500 yards a volley from a company of riflemen should put some rounds into a battalion sized target. Much like a single machine gun firing a burst.
    And there's the word that's the crux of the issue - colonial. The problem was in the assumption that your enemy will give you those concentrated masses of troops to shoot at outside of colonial engagements against technologically inferior opponents (who were using actual muskets and often had pure melee units).

    Thing is, this wasn't unforseeable if you compared what the doctrines of various major powers looked like, but even that sort of intelligence analysis was kind of a new thing - this is still a time when British newspapers were giving out critical strategic information.

    I think it's fair to criticize the generals for sticking to what they knew too much (especially some, *cough* von Hotzendorf *cough*), but at the same time, it's a bit unreasonable to demand complete foreknowledge. Where top brass erred the most was not listening to their subordinates, many of whom had fairly good ideas about working with these newfangled inventions.

    Quote Originally Posted by Mike_G View Post
    In fact, the Australian Light Horse did successfully charge entrenched Turkish troops who were armed with modern rifles,machine guns and artillery at Beersheba in 1917.
    That had more to do with the... I'll go as far as to say incompetence of their enemy. Why the Turks performed so poorly, I don't know, answering that would require a long research trip. At any rate, this is sort of a trend, direct cavalry charges tend to succeed only when the opposition screws up, or there are other overwhelming circumstances. I mean, we saw cavalry charge work in the 21st century, but that doesn't mean we should revive light horse as a unit.

    Quote Originally Posted by Gnoman View Post
    Most of the Great Powers were in the process of developing replacement rifles when war were declared. Volley sights were not a requirement for the new trials, and it was becoming common to remove them from existing guns during maintenance or refurbishment.
    Volley sights are one thing, but even WW2 Mausers had sights going up to 2 km.

    Quote Originally Posted by Gnoman View Post
    There was no movement toward an intermediate cartridge - all weapons intended for military use* were full-rifle designs in the 6-8 millimeter range. There is good reason for this, as the conditions of WWI made the range of a full-rifle cartridge very attractive. Guns like the vaunted US shotguns were of strictly limited use no matter how effective they were in the trench itself due to range - they lacked the ability to provide covering fire during trench assaults or to bring the enemy under fire when they were assaulting.
    Okay, so I looked it up. The French Lebel wasn't intermediate, but it was unusually small when compared to its contemporaries (8 mm to 10-11 mm). It was also successful enough that it became the new standard, and sort of what we define full-power cartridge by.

    At the same time, there definitely was a movement towards intermediate cartridge. Lever action rifles did prove effective in several battles, and several armies were looking into adopting them in some sort of capacity - again, no one was too sure in what capacity, and integrated MGs weren't yet a thing. Some of the Winchesters especially were adopted pre-war, deliberately for their rapid fire rate, albeit in limited numbers.

    If WW1 happened a decade or two later, we probably would have seen military adoption of an intermediate cartridge, since several companies were working on them behind the scenes. But WW1 happened when it did, and after it was over, military spending decreased by a huge amount since everyone was too busy rebuilding their economy, and weapons became less profitable on account of surplus of military guns.
    That which does not kill you made a tactical error.

  6. - Top - End - #786
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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

    Quote Originally Posted by Martin Greywolf View Post
    That had more to do with the... I'll go as far as to say incompetence of their enemy. Why the Turks performed so poorly, I don't know, answering that would require a long research trip. At any rate, this is sort of a trend, direct cavalry charges tend to succeed only when the opposition screws up, or there are other overwhelming circumstances. I mean, we saw cavalry charge work in the 21st century, but that doesn't mean we should revive light horse as a unit.


    .
    I highly recommend Volume VII ‘The Australian Imperial Force in Sinai and Palestine’ by Henry Gullet of the official history of the Australian Armed Forces in WW1.

    The short version of what happened is that the Australian Light Horse deployed at long range and the Turks set their sights for 1,000 meters because they expected the Australians to dismount and move forward in skirmish order.
    However in smaller skirmishes the Australians had the experience that in rapid mounted advances the enemy often forgot to adjust their sights. Consequently the most dangerous part of a rapid mounted advance was roughly 800m to 1200m from the enemy and that once you got under 800m the majority of shots went over the troopers.
    The Australians expected that the same would happen in a full scale charge.

    The difference between Palestine and France was that in France engagement ranges were often 400m or less, so the cavalry didn’t get the opportunity to ‘go under’ the sights the way ten Australians did in Palestine.

    The Turkish army was generally considered to be very competent at an individual soldier level, with the problems occurring at higher command levels and administration.

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

    Quote Originally Posted by Martin Greywolf View Post
    Okay, so I looked it up. The French Lebel wasn't intermediate, but it was unusually small when compared to its contemporaries (8 mm to 10-11 mm). It was also successful enough that it became the new standard, and sort of what we define full-power cartridge by.

    At the same time, there definitely was a movement towards intermediate cartridge. Lever action rifles did prove effective in several battles, and several armies were looking into adopting them in some sort of capacity - again, no one was too sure in what capacity, and integrated MGs weren't yet a thing. Some of the Winchesters especially were adopted pre-war, deliberately for their rapid fire rate, albeit in limited numbers.

    If WW1 happened a decade or two later, we probably would have seen military adoption of an intermediate cartridge, since several companies were working on them behind the scenes. But WW1 happened when it did, and after it was over, military spending decreased by a huge amount since everyone was too busy rebuilding their economy, and weapons became less profitable on account of surplus of military guns.
    You're off by around 30 years. The closest thing to an intermediate cartridge in the 1900s-1910s was things like the .351 Winchester Self-Loading cartridge - civilian rounds for hunting. Stuff like 6.5mm Arisaka is on the low end of a full-rifle loading, but is still a full-rifle caliber that is significantly stouter than 7.62x39 or 8mm Kurz. The big experiments with intermediate cartridges came on the eve of World War II, with things like .30 Carbine (a scaled-up pistol round intended to give vehicle crews and such a more potent self-defense weapon, not a replacement for standard rifles) and the .276 Pedersen round that the Garand was initially chambered in. Despite the similar designation, the .276 Enfield from the WWI period was a hotter and longer ranged replacement for .303 British.


    EDIT (because Post is not Preview):

    The Lebel was smaller than the previous generation of rounds because it was the first smokeless powder cartridge. This meant that it could hurl the bullet much faster (the expansion rate of black powder is fairly slow, which is why really big bullets were a standard - you can't throw the round any faster no matter how much powder you cram in, so you make it heavier) if you make it small bore, creating a much flatter trajectory with a longer effective range. That generation of cartridge was more powerful than the big-bore rounds it replaced.

    There was limited experimentation with lever action rifles, but that mostly just helped prove to the armies of Europe that single-shot rifles weren't good enough, and you should really put a magazine on your bolt actions. After a few early experiments, the only real military use of leverguns was desperation measures during the Great War.
    Last edited by Gnoman; 2021-11-04 at 10:30 AM.

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

    "Intermediate cartridge" is defined by more than just the diameter of the bullet. While 8mm Lebel has a physically smaller bullet than the 11mm Gras it was based on, it's only 1 millimeter shorter in overall length. Intermediate cartridges are physically smaller in overall size even if their caliber is similar to the larger rifle cartridge they're replacing, which is what allows them to have significantly reduced recoil and a lighter weight and smaller size that allow for more ammunition to be carried.

    8mm Lebel was a hasty design made pretty much by just necking down 11mm Gras to a smaller bullet. The two have very similar muzzle energy, with the Lebel getting it from the velocity rather than the physical mass of the bullet. This, along with the later spitzer (pointed) bullet shape, gives it a much longer and flatter trajectory that maintains energy at range. It's more powerful than 11mm Gras at 100 yards.

    This is also why it turned out to be a very poor cartridge within a few years: the massive taper and thick rim were only really workable with the tubular magazine (the Lebel itself was a hasty redesign of the Kropatschek system, which used a Winchester-style tubular magazine). Machine guns have to pull them out of a belt backwards before they can be chambered and the incredible curvature of a box magazine severely limits capacity and reliability, which is why the Chauchat has a full half-circle mag that can only fit a max of 20 rounds and in practice usually can't even be fully loaded. This slapdash design was because France wanted to capitalize on their invention of smokeless powder before any other nations found out it existed; while they got the first smokeless rifle into service, it was quickly superseded by the end of the decade by other designs and France's attempts at creating a replacement never went anywhere.

    And then war were declared.

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

    To further explain the development of the intermediate cartridge, I'll bring up the one weapon that actually was close to an "assault rifle": the Fedorov Avtomat.



    As you can see, it's hardly a small rifle. But it's chambered for 6.5x50mm Arisaka. This is right on the bottom edge of what constitutes a "full power" rifle round; it's still a good 50% longer than a 7.62x39mm or 7.92x33mm Kurz cartridge, the same overall length as any of its contemporaries, but it has a much smaller and lighter bullet. This allows it to maintain a high velocity and correspondingly good energy at long range while having less recoil than a larger bullet. Russia was looking at adopting an automatic rifle and Fedorov had developed his own 6.5mm rimless cartridge (as I said with the Lebel, rims hang up and cause feeding issues) that would have lighter recoil than their standard 7.62x54mm round. Because they didn't have the budget to produce a whole new cartridge, but they had bought a ton of Arisakas previously when building up their military, they changed the rifle to 6.5mm Arisaka.

    What's the difference here? This wasn't an assault rifle. It was a crew-served weapon, with a gunner and a loader/magazine carrier. Despite having invented a potent (on paper) automatic infantry rifle, the doctrine of the time was still focused on long-range suppressing fire. The Fedorov was considered more of a light machine gun, just one that was more portable and accurate.

    It was not to be, unfortunately. In addition to the general resource problems Imperial Russia had that precluded mass adoption of this new weapon, it was extremely complex and expensive to manufacture and poor manufacturing tolerances meant that each rifle was essentially hand-fitted to the point where magazines made for another gun might not fit (they continued to have this problem all the way through World War II with the PPSh-41). The Russian Revolution in 1917 finally put a stop to the adoption of the rifle and about 3200 ended up actually being built.

    Likewise, all of the rifles firing "intermediate" cartridges, or pistol cartridges like Winchester lever-actions in .44-40, were emergency purchases due to desperation for any kind of weapon. The same phenomenon is why there were so many random designs for .32 ACP handguns in the war, especially the Ruby style based on Browning's design: attrition was so massive for the time that they had to take anything they could get. There's no evidence I know of that anything like the Winchester 1907 in infantry usage was considered doctrinally different than their bolt-action rifles or served so well as to inspire later developments; France already had their own semi-auto rifle project predating 1914 and the RSC 1917 would see frontline service. Othais from C&Rsenal also has not been able to find true evidence of the French converting their Winchesters to full auto despite the common knowledge of that statement, and he believes it to be an untrue "fact" that's simply repeated constantly.

    If you want to look at actual doctrinal changes in weaponry during the war, the submachine gun is your answer. Trenches are extremely difficult to fight inside of, especially with such long bolt-action rifles, which led to heavy usage of handguns, grenades, and melee weapons (including improvised ones) for taking them. There was also a desire to give rear echelon troops like artillery crew a more effective weapon than a handgun but smaller and less dedicated to long range than a rifle (the same thinking would later create the M1 Carbine, which basically fires a magnum handgun round to muzzle energies almost on par with assault rifles). Early attempts were giving pistols stocks and extended magazines, as well as converting them to full auto. This proved impractical, as machine pistols always do. The MP 18 was the first dedicated weapon to put a pistol caliber in a full auto carbine configuration.

    But in the end, none of these changes actually mattered. War was not decided by the specific details of the small arms. Any attempt to change to a semi-auto carbine would just result in more expensive weapons being lost in artillery barrages, or company-scale rifle fire blasting your trench raiders from a distance. The answer ended up being to mobilize as many men and arms as possible and use more successful tactics.

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

    The Inrange TV channel on youtube did a series on why intermediate caliber lever action guns weren’t adopted by militaries, despite them being very popular with non-military combatants, in the post Civil War west. Arguably the 44-40 lever guns could be considered the assault rifle equivalent of their time.

    The series runs to 10 episodes of roughly 20-30 minutes each so there is a huge amount of info.
    Even if you are to magic away the financial and logistical issues as well as the conservative military desire for full power rifles there are a number of issues that prevent their military adoption. The most significant of which were:
    1) the difficulty of operating a lever gun whilst firing prone.
    2) for sustained fire a trap door Springfield, or similar, offers the same rate of fire. Once the initial magazine is fired a lever gun has no advantage over a single shot gun.
    3) you cannot ameliorate (2) by carrying extra magazines because the size and shape of the tubular magazine is too fragile for military use.
    4) single shot guns were much more robust and reliable.

    It would take the invention of the box magazine to resolve issues (2) to (4) by which time magazine bolt action rifles were available, and bolt actions trump lever actions because of (1).
    Last edited by Pauly; 2021-11-04 at 03:38 PM.

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

    Quote Originally Posted by chitoryu12 View Post
    It was not to be, unfortunately. In addition to the general resource problems Imperial Russia had that precluded mass adoption of this new weapon, it was extremely complex and expensive to manufacture and poor manufacturing tolerances meant that each rifle was essentially hand-fitted to the point where magazines made for another gun might not fit (they continued to have this problem all the way through World War II with the PPSh-41). The Russian Revolution in 1917 finally put a stop to the adoption of the rifle and about 3200 ended up actually being built.
    I agree with your assessment of Avtomat as a weapon system, but want to add a correction about its' production history:

    Russian Revolution delayed its' adoption, not precluded it. The plan was to produce 5000 guns to run the troop trials in 1917; that didn't happen; less than 200 were produced. However during 1920-1924 Soviets resumed its' production, produced more than 3000 and run the troop trials, before concluding in 1928 that they did not need that thing after all and warehousing what was left. Finally during the Winter war they were so strapped for automatic weapons that they re-issued the Avtomats and pretty much either lost or worn out all that remained.
    Last edited by Saint-Just; 2021-11-04 at 04:59 PM.

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

    Was the Fang-tian ji chinese halberd (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour..._QHW2d7dnU6CoN) an effective weapon?

    I have read that it was actually worse than a simple Qing-long ji (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...RxWOCHjljDJMz6) due to more weight for no real advantages, on top of being a more expensive weapon, hence it was mostly a ceremonial weapon...
    Last edited by Clistenes; 2021-11-05 at 04:39 AM.

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

    Quote Originally Posted by Clistenes View Post
    Was the Fang-tian ji chinese halberd (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour..._QHW2d7dnU6CoN) an effective weapon?

    I have read that it was actually worse than a simple Qing-long ji (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...RxWOCHjljDJMz6) due to more weight for no real advantages, on top of being a more expensive weapon, hence it was mostly a ceremonial weapon...
    Pretty much straight bunk, all the way.

    Let's examine the first point, price difference. There is no standardized pattern to which pre-industrial manufacture weapons are made. Differences in blade shape, thickness and so on vary how much material you need for them. As for how fiddly they are to make, for your specific examples, quing would probably be more expensive because of the wavy blade. Also more of a PITA to sharpen.

    In the grand scheme of things, the price point difference between the two weapons is so small you'd not really consider it. If you're outfitting an army and are that concerned about cost, you'll give them spears, or simple ji.

    Spoiler: Like this, but even less fancy
    Show


    Spoiler: Or scale it down even more
    Show

    These munitions-grade weapons survive only rarely, and usually in bad condition, that's why you don't see a lot of them


    Maybe you could say that fang is, in the broadest of strokes, slightly more expensive statistically, but the specifics will change.

    Now, on to no advantage. That is very obviously false - if nothing else, fang has two blades on it, giving you the ability to flip it over if one edge gets dulled or damaged. That same fact can be useful for easier hooking of opponents or their weapons, as well as for blocking downward strikes with head of the weapon and false edge cuts. There is at least one way to follow up a standard strike from above with a staff weapon with a flase edge cut from above.

    The question is, is that enough of an advantage? And, well, in unarmored fight, the answer is no, because spear's much greater speed and nimbleness beats any ji. In an armored fight, the additional hooking ability is just about worth it in terms of added weight.

    Spoiler: Besides, it's not unique to China, 15th c Italy
    Show


    Spoiler: Paris, 1550, you can see outer edges have a bevel
    Show



    And all of that kind of doesn't matter. Because you need to do a lot of unkindness to a weapon before it becomes ineffective. Even if you took all the weight from a fang and slapped it on top of a quing as a decoration or something, you'd still have what is a pretty dangerous halberd, just with a heftier swing and less nimble. The real reasons you see more of the fangs in ceremonial roles is, I suspect, just the reverse:

    You had two weapons, both of them effective, both with pros and cons. When people in charge were deciding which one to make into a ceremonial piece, they went with the one that was symmetrical.
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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

    Quote Originally Posted by Clistenes View Post
    Was the Fang-tian ji chinese halberd (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour..._QHW2d7dnU6CoN) an effective weapon?
    From your link:

    Spear Description

    This polearm is a spear made of metal with a stainless steel head.
    Stainless steel was invented in the west in the 1840s:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stainless_steel#History

    In the 1840s, both Sheffield steelmakers and Krupp were producing chromium steel
    So no, this as described is entirely a fantasy weapon.
    The end of what Son? The story? There is no end. There's just the point where the storytellers stop talking.

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    Stainless steel was invented in the west in the 1840s:

    So no, this as described is entirely a fantasy weapon.
    I think people routinely link to replicas when discussing historical usage; people do make things out of stainless steel which are reasonably faithful to originals at least in form.

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    From your link:



    Stainless steel was invented in the west in the 1840s:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stainless_steel#History



    So no, this as described is entirely a fantasy weapon.
    The Fangtian and the Qinglong are NOT fantasy weapons, they are very much historical weapons.

    I just linked images just in case somebody didn't remember what kind of weapon they are (having hard to remember chinese names), and one of the links shows a modern replica.
    Last edited by Clistenes; 2021-11-05 at 03:57 PM.

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

    Quote Originally Posted by KineticDiplomat View Post
    Re: sighting.

    This is one of those areas where conditions matter so drastically as to make the technical means less relevant. I'm personally a merely adequate rifleman, and given a Mauser 98k (refurbed), can and have hit E-types at 800m, and seen people use similar rifles to hit at 1000m. But...a stationary target at a known range, with me comfortable on a mat with a sling and a rifle zeroed in that day, well rested, fed, and stress free, knowing I have all the time in the world to make a shot and that no conditions will change, is not exactly a practical test for actually shooting people.
    From Ardant du Picq:

    "Nothing is more difficult than to estimate range; in nothing is the eye more easily deceived. Practice and the use of instruments cannot make a man infallible. At Sebastopol, for two months, a distance of one thousand to twelve hundred meters could not be determined by the rifle, due to inability to see the shots. For three months it was impossible to measure by ranging shots, although all ranges were followed through, the distance to a certain battery which was only five hundred meters away, but higher and separated from us by a ravine. One day, after three months, two shots at five hundred meters were observed in the target. This distance was estimated by everybody as over one thousand meters; it was only five hundred. The village taken and the point of observation changed, the truth became evident."

    Quote Originally Posted by Clistenes View Post
    The Fangtian and the Qinglong are NOT fantasy weapons, they are very much historical weapons.


    From an illustration of the siege of Boulogne made in the mid 1500s.

    I dunno too much about east asian polearms though.
    Last edited by rrgg; 2021-11-13 at 08:57 PM.

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

    How much height would a catapult and or a trebuchet need to launch a projectile at a target. How arched were the shots? 1/10 of the distance ? 1/5? 1/2 ?
    Also what would be the minimum distance to shoot ?
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    Quote Originally Posted by Myth27 View Post
    How much height would a catapult and or a trebuchet need to launch a projectile at a target. How arched were the shots? 1/10 of the distance ? 1/5? 1/2 ?
    Also what would be the minimum distance to shoot ?
    https://www.real-world-physics-probl...t-physics.html ?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAX72Xgf1U
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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

    Huh, I was about to gripe about using barely high school physics again, but the guy in that link actually uses the Siano paper on trebuchets. Kudos for that.

    Quote Originally Posted by Myth27 View Post
    How much height would a catapult and or a trebuchet need to launch a projectile at a target.
    [...]
    Also what would be the minimum distance to shoot?
    That's not how these weapons - let's collectively refer to them as catapults - work.

    A catapult has what we call the release angle, i.e. an angle at which the projectile looses the contact with the weapon. If you want maximum range and you are using ballistic equation, that angle should be 45 deg, if you are accounting for air resistance, the angle is ~35 deg, if the projectile is spinning, it may go as low as ~20 deg. More importantly for us, that angle is controlled by adjusting something on the catapult itself - the sling length, adding to the padding that stops the arm, etc.

    That means you don't ned any height at all, it's perfectly possible to bury your catapult completely in the ground and have it shoot out of said hole.

    The minimum range is similarly adjustable, and in both directions. You can either angle the release downwards to spike the projectile into the ground directly, or upwards so that it goes on a little trip into the sky and falls a few meter in front of you. Both of these can also happen accidentally, and let me tell you, it's a bit of a rush, even if your projectile is a basketball and you are wearing a helmet.

    The reason this wasn't done was that, well, these are siege weapons for use against building, they aren't meant for shooting at moving things. Because of that, all you want is the maximum range possible, so the besiegers won't bother with decreasing the range too much. The besieged will want some control, because they want to hit the siege engines with their siege engines, but because the besieging engines are far away, they won't really bother with close range capabilities either.

    Quote Originally Posted by Myth27 View Post
    How arched were the shots? 1/10 of the distance ? 1/5? 1/2 ?
    With pure ballistic equation, at 45 degrees for maximum range, height of shot is half of range. Once you want to account for air resistance, it goes a bit lower that that, although how lower depends on the projectile's air resistance and speed, and also on its spin once you start accounting for that. That is all in the ideal scenario, tha actual arc can be both higher and smaller, both at the cost of range.
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    The effective minimum range is “out of bowshot”. Which depends on the type of bow being used, the relative height of the bow vis a vis the trebuchet/catapult, the skill of the archer and the arrows being used.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Martin Greywolf View Post
    A catapult has what we call the release angle, i.e. an angle at which the projectile looses the contact with the weapon. If you want maximum range and you are using ballistic equation, that angle should be 45 deg, if you are accounting for air resistance, the angle is ~35 deg, if the projectile is spinning, it may go as low as ~20 deg. More importantly for us, that angle is controlled by adjusting something on the catapult itself - the sling length, adding to the padding that stops the arm, etc.
    This 35 degree angle may be correct for guns particularly where the muzzle velocity is considerably supersonic, however for arrows and other deeply subsonic projectiles I believe that 45 degrees is close to the angle that achieves maximum range.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Martin Greywolf View Post
    With pure ballistic equation, at 45 degrees for maximum range, height of shot is half of range.
    I was tempted to just say "height of the arc will be roughly half the range to the target on a max-range shot", but... I couldn't leave it at that either.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pauly View Post
    The effective minimum range is “out of bowshot”. Which depends on the type of bow being used, the relative height of the bow vis a vis the trebuchet/catapult, the skill of the archer and the arrows being used.
    I don't know where you heard this, but it's wrong. Max range of most catapults is about on par with bows, going from 0.5 to about twice that of a military bowshot. The difference is that the heavy warbow arrow weight tops off at maybe a hundred grams, while trebuchet can do a ton and a half.

    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    This 35 degree angle may be correct for guns particularly where the muzzle velocity is considerably supersonic, however for arrows and other deeply subsonic projectiles I believe that 45 degrees is close to the angle that achieves maximum range.
    The 35 degree figure is for the spherical projectiles, or rather, golf balls, tested experimentally. The reason behind this is... well, kinda simple.

    Air drag slows your projectile more if the flight time is longer, so reducing flight time reduces air drag and increases total range. There is a sweet spot for "45 deg optimal ballistic range" and "spike the thing straight to the ground to reduce flight time", obviously, and since less flight time is achieved only if you go under 45 deg, thats where your best angle is.

    Now, air drag has a hell of an equation: F = 1/2 * rho * v^2 * C * A, and the lower this resulting force F is, the closer your optimal angle is to 45 deg. You can lower A, area of cross-section (sling bullets do this by being egg shaped rather than round), you can lower the drag coefficient C (again, sling bullets, as well as arrows), you can lower medium density rho by going uphill or waiting for good weather (there's a reason why the record for bow shot range was made by Ottoman bow in fairly high hills), but lowering speed is exponentially effective for reducing air drag.

    Unfortunately, reducing speed is also very effective for reducing your maximum range.

    tl;dr For ball, use 35 deg, for sling bullet, use 25 deg, for streamlined shapes, use 40-45 deg, regardless of how fast they are going.
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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

    So, I'm writing a setting where characters have access to a magic that allows them to somewhat manipulate the physical properties of their bodies, and magical armor that's created to be an extension of their body. They can change the strength of the strength, flexibility, and friction of the material to a certain degree, and freely change it.

    So first question, would making your armor/flesh more flexible without giving up any material strength be a good thing for absorbing damage? That should increase the toughness of the material, right?

    Second question, if you could manipulate friction on your armor, would decreasing it be the right play? I imagine it would make it harder for anything but a direct hit to do any damage, and I don't think a decrease in material friction would make it noticeably easier for a spear/sword trying to get through the armor, right?

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

    Quote Originally Posted by Frozenstep View Post
    So, I'm writing a setting where characters have access to a magic that allows them to somewhat manipulate the physical properties of their bodies, and magical armor that's created to be an extension of their body. They can change the strength of the strength, flexibility, and friction of the material to a certain degree, and freely change it.

    So first question, would making your armor/flesh more flexible without giving up any material strength be a good thing for absorbing damage? That should increase the toughness of the material, right?

    Second question, if you could manipulate friction on your armor, would decreasing it be the right play? I imagine it would make it harder for anything but a direct hit to do any damage, and I don't think a decrease in material friction would make it noticeably easier for a spear/sword trying to get through the armor, right?
    So, there's a lot that goes into this.

    More flexible armor would transfer more force from the blow to the body beneath than rigid armor. So that's worse. But it would allow better coverage of joints and more mobility in the armor. Making flesh and bone more flexible might help it absorb damage in a "bend, don't break" fashion. So I guess it depends?

    Now, reducing friction would probably be a good thing in general, as blows would slide off and transfer less of their force/impact/momentum (I'm not a physics major, so I'm not sure which is the most correct term) to the target. This is the reason for sloped armor. Make hits glance off rather than be stopped and transfer all that oomph to the target.
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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

    Quote Originally Posted by Mike_G View Post
    So, there's a lot that goes into this.

    More flexible armor would transfer more force from the blow to the body beneath than rigid armor. So that's worse. But it would allow better coverage of joints and more mobility in the armor. Making flesh and bone more flexible might help it absorb damage in a "bend, don't break" fashion. So I guess it depends?

    Now, reducing friction would probably be a good thing in general, as blows would slide off and transfer less of their force/impact/momentum (I'm not a physics major, so I'm not sure which is the most correct term) to the target. This is the reason for sloped armor. Make hits glance off rather than be stopped and transfer all that oomph to the target.
    Thanks for the answer! I was imagining more flexibility would lead armor to work more like a car's crumple zone, but thinking on it again, you definitely wouldn't want to make it easier for metal armor to cave in. Not sure about the padding beneath it though?

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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

    If you have multiple layers of armour, I suspect a more flexible layer somewhere would be helpful to absorb shock. I'm not convinced it would be a game-changer.

    Maybe you could mix up a non-newtonian fluid with water and cornstarch, change it's properties so it doesn't ooze out or evaporate and then incorporate it into a gambeson, that might be a highly effective shock absorber.

    The obvious priority is to take rigid metal armour and make it stronger, harder and probably lighter. You want a certain minimum weight I think for helmets because below a certain mass it might be too easy for your opponents to knock them into your skull.
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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

    Plate armor almost requires a flexible padded layer underneath.
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    Default Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

    Even today, I believe pretty much all helmets have some padding or a suspension system, so that the helmet is actually slightly distanced from your head and the force it would transmit when hit is dampened.
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