Superguns Helped Defeat the Spanish Armada 501
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.'"
Re:There were 3 cannons to replicate (Score:5, Informative)
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).
Re:I don't see anything special (Score:5, Informative)
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 breastplate test (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Expert naval tactics (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Expert naval tactics (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Expert naval tactics (Score:1, Informative)
You should go to Egypt :)
Re:Actually, standard practice (Score:4, Informative)
I never heard of ramming being used by Nelson. Also, given the layout of ships at the time it would have been all but impossible to ram and shoot an enemy vessel.
Re:Expert naval tactics (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Expert naval tactics (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Expert naval tactics (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Expert naval tactics (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Expert naval tactics (Score:4, Informative)
That was one clever manoeuvre from the Navy, combined with better trained cannon staff, to the point the Armada had to turn around for repairs, resupply and rethink their strategy. This was their doom, for this is when the storms smashed most ships onto the island's coast (they turned south too early).
As it happened, it was still the weather which destroyed the Armada, and not the Navy (directly).
Re:Actually... (Score:2, Informative)
If you get a chance go see the roman ruins underneath placa del rei in Barcelona. you get a good feeling of how well developed the infrastructure in a roman town was. The ruins are from a smallish roman town, but it has a dyeing shop, a garum(fermented fish sauce) factory, and a wine factory spanning three separate buildings. One for pressing, one for fermentation, and one for storage/spicing, as far as I remember. They were connected underground via clay pipes for the wine. Combined with the aqueducts, closed sewers and public baths would give a society with less disease and more people free to take up other roles than mere subsistence farming/food gathering.
Not only did the romans have the economy to support a huge army. Life also looked a lot sweeter as a roman, in my opinion. It reminds me of the scene from life of brian:
"But apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education,wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"
Re:There were 3 cannons to replicate (Score:3, Informative)
Mod the parent up, he's right. Pistols are sub-sonic, and fire bullets that are mostly made of lead. They have a ton of stopping power, but almost no penetration. Also, the bullets, even milspec, are rounded at the front. It's designed to mushroom like that.
Compare it against, say, a round fired from an M16 or its counterparts in other countries, where the round is jacketed, pointy, and supersonic.
Of course, it wouldn't have looked as impressive, seeing as the modern military rifle ammunition is designed to penetrate armour.
Re:The breastplate test (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I don't see anything special (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Hence the Dreadnaught (Score:4, Informative)
which obsoleted all warships before it when it appeared in 1906. If anything this older ship they should follows the same idea, lots of powerful guns all the same size. What is known as a uniform main battery. The article on wikipedia is pretty good when it comes to why such a feature is important.
What it comes down to is range. Having the bulk of your guns available at range is what used to win naval battles. The same could be said this day and age about your missiles. Who can shoot the furthest should win.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Dreadnought_(1906) [wikipedia.org]
Re:Expert naval tactics (Score:3, Informative)
You should try driving in South Florida. That's where all you northerners send your old, bad drivers to die (sometimes in the process of driving). It ain't pretty...
Re:I don't see anything special (Score:4, Informative)
People in occupied France often served the Nazis with food and wine that wasn't quite up to their usual standards. The idea behind this was that nobody would want to stay in a country where every sauce was a little lumpy, every vegetable was limp through overcooking, and every glass of wine was a tad on the sour side, so the Germans would rapidly tire of France and leave of their own accord.
The flaw in this otherwise cunning plan was of course the fact that the German idea of good food and wine is based on quantity rather than quality, so they weren't at all put off by pate served at slightly the wrong temperature if there was lots of it and they didn't get diarrhoea or indigestion from eating it.
Did they need it, though? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Actually, standard practice (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Expert naval tactics (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Actually, standard practice (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Actually, NOT standard practice for sailing ships (Score:3, Informative)
You are wrong. The only "ramming" occurring in sailing ships was to come close for boarding. Oared galleys rammed but also tried just sweeping close by to break oars, the early ironclad steamships rammed wooden sailing ships, but sailing ships did not. They had no ramming forefoot to do any damage.
Re:Expert naval tactics (Score:3, Informative)
I suspect this is common to the middle east. When I was little, my father worked for Aramco and we lived in Saudi Arabia. Locals obeyed the traffic laws if they felt like it - but most of the time, they appear to have taken the attitude of "inshallah" (if god wills it, they will arrive safely. If he doesn't will it, there is nothing to be done about it anyway). When there was a wreck (which was often), they were usually pretty bad. The government would leave the wrecked cars out for everyone to see, I suppose trying to get them to understand what could happen to them or their property.
Re:Actually, standard practice (Score:5, Informative)
This book [amazon.ca] 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.
Re:Expert naval tactics (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know if this is a fabrication or just the product of a deranged mind, but it's variance with reality is disturbing. MA drivers are uniformly, regardless of region, the most dangerous, inconsiderate, vile, rude drivers in America. One will never see with such regularity drivers speeding in excess, tailgating and cutting others off.
MA has hands down the highest concentration of jackass drivers in America.
Right in spirit, wrong in facts (Score:5, Informative)
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 /.
Re:Not surprising... (Score:3, Informative)
Yup. It certainly wasn't brilliant military strategy or tactics that won American independence.
The Americans basically fought well enough to make the war very painful to the British. While they won almost every battle they couldn't really afford the losses - especially since imperialism was just starting to drop in popularity back home.
In the end it was the French who really won the war for the US by overcoming the British control of the sea. Up until that point the British could land forces any place desired and pick them up if for some reason they ran into trouble. When Cornwalis got caught in Yorktown without access to the navy the war was won.
This seems to be the norm for wars of independence. Usually the will of the rebellious province to be free is greater than the will of the controlling state to stifle all resistance. After enough bloodshed the empire will release its territory.
Re:Hence the Dreadnaught (Score:4, Informative)
While I agree with your reference to the Dreadnought (beautifully told in Robert K. Massie's book [amazon.com]) I think the power of that concept could be beter explained as:
1) Few, large guns onboard. All the same caliber, all of the longest range you can build.
2) Light armor -- you will keep your ship always beyond the range of opponents.
3) Highest mobility -- you need to outrun all other battleships in order to *stay* in the range where only you can hit.
Building large warships was always a trade-off between armor, guns, and speed. The trade-off was both economic (use the years' steel production for a large number of light-armor, high speed ships, or small numbers of heavy-armor, slower ships?) and physical (pile too much armor and guns, and the ship will become a fixed platform).
The dreadnought design was the "sweet spot" in that mix for a relatively short period of time: roughly between 1900 and 1920, the WWI era. Then came submarines, torpedos, air-carriers, and things stopped being as simples as "having the bulk of your guns available at range".
Re:Expert naval tactics (Score:3, Informative)
Wow, unless they really are the same aircraft that has got to be scary as hell for the pilots on landing. When the US Navy and US Air Force use similar aircraft at the same time the USN version's landing gear are usually beefed up a good bit to deal with the distinct possibility of the ship pitching up right as the aircraft was landing. That and the fact that USN aircraft don't really land, they just get above the deck and stop flying.
Re:Actually, standard practice (Score:3, Informative)
The idea of bring your broadside into the bow/stern of the enemy is called "Crossing the T", and is/was the standard tactic from, as you say, Nelson's era up until the end of "Gun ships" - aka the classic multiple cannon (actually rifles) of ships into the 1960s
Re:Expert naval tactics (Score:3, Informative)
When I was in Riyadh years ago, one part that made me laugh were the traffic lights. They were only green in one direction at a time. So, for example, the light for going north would be green, but the lights for going south, east, and west would be red. Then the light for going south would be green but the lights for going north, east, and west would be red. Then the light for east would be green, etc.
Of course, you would see people drive up the right hand side and then attempt to turn left at the light, so I think they did it just to make some of the crazy behavior a little safer.