Landships II

Many thanks. The table shows how sinister us Imperials & the French were compared to every one else. The 1 sinister US entry being actually commisioned by us Imperials, so only a single sinister Norwegian entry as an outlier. 

Have always wondered about the chioce of sinister or dexter for the twist?

Regards,

Brennan 

Hi Steve,

things didn't went that smoothly always I guess, isn't the Breaker Morant/Bushveld Carabineers-story another example? Not that I want to stirr up feelings between British and Australians, being an outsider...well thinking about that...Boers were also called Dutchmen by leading British officers, not that strange.
And everyone seems to have had a share in 'non military' killings...the victimised Boers too (Modderfontein, massacring native people).
A reason for German sympathy in the Netherlands, certainly in 1914 was the British 'invasion' in South Africa, considered as an injustice of the first degree. Though sympathic feelings turned more pro Allies after the news of the atrocities in Namur, Liege trickled in.
But Paul 'Oom' Kruger was considered here as a hero, I think many Dutch felt frustrated their  government (and navy!)  hadn't the power to intervene.

regards, Kieffer

"A picture is worth a thousand words," never more so than in the world of cartridges. Unfortunately I can't post them here (they are part of Anthony G Williams' excellent article from "HISTORIC MACHINE GUN CARTRIDGES" published in the February 2009 edition of Small Arms Review magazine and copyright protected) - but I can refer to a web-published version at http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/Historic MGs.htm. There are found pictures and tables of fairly-well all of the cartridges referred to in the "Rifles3.pdf" table presented earlier (except for the .30 US M1 carbine round) and there are a few additional ones that aren't in that table.

Those few more are (except for the 8x52R Siamese Mauser) specialised LMG/GPMG/MMG rounds which, although of "rifle calibre" never saw wide service in infantry rifles. Except for the Dutch cartridge those are post WW1. They are the 7.92x57R Dutch, 7.92x61 Norwegian, 8x63 Swedish and 8x59 Breda (Italy).

Note - the 30-06 is also referred to as the 7.62x63 and the 7.92x57 is the same as the 8x57JS in Rifles3.pdf.

-- Edited by Rectalgia on Tuesday 8th of June 2010 07:58:18 AM

A marginal note to:

Rectalgia wrote:

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...Anthony G Williams' excellent article from "HISTORIC MACHINE GUN CARTRIDGES" published in the February 2009 edition of Small Arms Review magazine ...

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Talking of machine guns, the question of quantitative comparisons was addressed much later in history - I note the concept of "muzzle horsepower" which came into use in WW2, largely through the analyses of London Times Air Correspondent (Sir) Peter Masefield, with particular reference to aircraft use in which application the relative performance of various rifle-calibre and heavy MG calibres and cannon armaments were of critical importance. "Power" takes into account the volume of fire as well as the energy (individual mass and velocity of projectiles) of the weapons system - and its scaling (as either horsepower or kilowatts) is quite convenient for instant appreciation.

The 'per-gun' kinetic power is simply found by multiplying the muzzle energy in foot pounds (per Williams' HISTORIC MACHINE GUN CARTRIDGES) by the cyclical firing rate divided by 60 (that is, change to rounds per second) and dividing the answer by 550 to bring to horsepower. It is even more straightforward in metric, if the ME is given in joules (1 j/s = 1 watt).

Hard these days to credit just how influential that young (British) man was in the field of US fighter aircraft armaments and for how long - probably more responsible than anyone else for the USA sticking with their .50 cal MGs long after everyone else switched to cannon and, perhaps, their many and ultimately abandoned searches for a superior .60 cal. HMG round. Well, not entirely wasted - the Soviet 14.5mm was/is a successful essay into that territory though not used in the end for primary aircraft armament.

This is not primarily about WW1 but it applies equally to the WW1 automatic weapons (we do love our comparisons) although it was probably less critical for most purposes in WW1 - they were all well up to the primary purpose of killing the enemy in large swathes.

-- Edited by Rectalgia on Monday 1st of November 2010 08:10:56 AM

Military rifles, from the cartridge point of view, are all about trade-offs in factors such as penetration, "wound channels", weight and volume of ammunition (and use of materials), recoil velocity, muzzle flash and muzzle blast, chamber pressure, barrel and chamber throat wear and exterior (projectile) ballistics.  At the end of it all, the infantryman has to be able to hit that at which he aims.  Bullet drop and wind-drift (the two are looslely linked) are the fundamental obstacles to marksmanship.  Standards of accuracy vary but aimed rifle shots in battle conditions would (I think) rarely be consistently effective at much more than 300 yards (or metres) - about 4 minutes of angle (MOA) - close to 4 inches (100 mm) grouping ability at 100 yds, in WW1/2.

I had occasion to draw up a chart of bullet drop from the "line of departure" (barrel) at 300 yards recently, showing the effect of the variables of muzzle velocity and ballistic coefficient.  There are many "ballistic coefficients", an indicator of the drag through air restance overcome by the bullet in its progress (a function of projectile form and sectional density).  I used the one used by Sierra Bullets in their exterior ballistic tables 1971-74 which is essentially the same as that used by Colonel Ingalls, US Army, pre WW1 and in turn utilised the work of Colonel Mayevski, Imperial Russian Army, on "drag zones". Sierra Bullets use far more sophisticated mehods and different coefficients these days but (without actually checking) I would be astounded if the results in this limited case would be much different to that pictured below.

Most military pointed projectiles would have had coefficients around the 0.4 mark, "boat tail" types perhaps shading into the 0.5 and slightly above region, the long, heavy round-nose types (6.5 mm Carcano etc.) around 0.2 or even lower.  The 0.1 (and lower range) is approaching the "house brick" end, the 0.7 (and above) is tending towards the "tungsten needle" end (coefficients can be greater than 1 for special projectiles).

The main appreciation I draw from the picture is of the diminishing returns on both extreme velocities and extreme ballistic coefficients.  Not obvious is the penalty in terms of longer barrels or more powder to increase velocity and (generally) faster rifling pitch leading to lower velocity and more wear to increase ballistic coefficient.  Drop from the line of departure is not the same as the drop perceived by the shooter - the shooter experiences the drop (or rise) from the line of sight which is above the departure/barrel line as mentioned in relation to the rifles table presented earlier.  But the two are related.

All in all I think it all helps to understand the evolution of military cartridges in the era of "smokeless" or "nitro" propellants.  Well, it helps me.

I've done a "curve fit" for the lines, shown by the equation and constants in the table.  This is essentially a "nonsense correlation" (no basis in theory) but reliable to the accuracy figure shown (or better) for interpolation of drop figures within the stated range (but no guarantees for extrapolations).  The whole of the source data is based on Sierra's own 1970s extrapolations but their "curve fitting" was far more solidly based - and subjected to real-life reality checks, with extrapolation a less risky proposition (and besides the only methodolgy then available to them).

Depends on the BC (ballistic coefficient) TCT - the lower that number is, the lower the retained velocity, therefore retained energy. Of course heavier bullets will have more energy at the same velocity than lighter ones. In the data (extreme case) there were 300 grain bullets with the same or nearly the same BC as 40 grain bullets, therefore their trajectories and retained velocities are identical or fairly nearly.

That's more or less one way to define BC - matching trajectory means matching BC. A .458" 300 grain flat-nose bullet fired at the same velocity from a .45-70 will have practically the same drop at any range as a .223" 40 grain spire-point fired from a 22 Hornet. Their BCs are .160 and .163 respectively. Their drop from the line of departure with muzzle velocity 2400 fps is practically identical - as is their retained velocity:

Projectile/Range	50 yds	100 yds	150 yds	200 yds	250 yds	300 yds
300 gn .458" Flat -nose B.C. 0.160	0.78"	3.47"	8.55"	16.73"	28.91"	46.20"
Retained Velocity (fps)	2143	1902	1680	1479	1306	1167
40 gn .223" Spire -point B.C. 0.163	0.78"	3.45"	8.51"	16.61"	28.64"	45.66"
Retained Velocity (fps)	2147	1911	1691	1493	1321	1181

They have very different sectional densities and very different form factors. BC is related to sectional density divided by form factor and the differences in the two sets of figures fairly-well cancel each other out in this example.

Although the projectiles spend fairly-well the same time in flight (a major factor in wind-drift) the little 40-grainer will be blown about more than the 300 grainer.

Muzzle energies are 3836 ft-lb for the 300 grain and 512 ft-lb for the 40 grain. Retained energies at 300 yds are 908 ft-lb and 124 ft-lb respectively. They each shed about 76% of their initial energy fighting the air-drag in getting to 300 yards. With higher BCs that rate of loss is reduced - and the trajectory is "flatter".

[Edit] Corrected .223 RVs - must have been drunk when I entered those before.

-- Edited by Rectalgia on Tuesday 19th of June 2012 11:04:46 AM

TinCanTadpole wrote:

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Hmmm. Is it just me, or does the idea of a bullet dropping about four feet after 300 yards make it sound as if armies should ditch rifles and go back to bows and arrows? I suppose the alarming figures would seem fine if one drew up a scale diagram of trajectory, it's just that it sounds like a big drop when read.

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The adjustment for line of sight makes a surprisingly big difference in minimising the perceived drop, even so the matter of judging range is critical. It is much better from the late 19th century compared to the old muzzle-loading days of truly "rainbow trajectories" when one commander (Colonel Hanger) reckoned of the Brown Bess that no-one was ever hit by an aimed shot at 200 yards ("... might as well fire at the moon ..."), even if a Soldier's musket was "... not exceedingly ill-bored, as many are.".

Long bows would certainly have been superior in accuracy in those days but required a lifetime of training, starting from boyhood. Popular wisdom of old held it to be too late to reach the standard if training was left until adulthood. Try a bow-pull of 200 pounds to get the idea.

Troops of all eras tend to shoot high in compensation - one commander (Colonel Belson) in the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic wars famously advised his men to "be sure to fire at their legs and spoil their dancing." This is anyway the optimal tactic in chaotic battle conditions (mindful too of your earlier comment about German MG fire).

TinCanTadpole wrote:

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I had a look back at the comparison table you posted much earlier in the thread, and noted that the Lee-Enfield was not a great performer in terms of trajectory - 3.5 inches rise at mid-range? The faster .30-06 rises only 2 inches according to the table; clearly the Americans found themselves a good combo.

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The "thirty-aught-six" was undeniably ballistically superior to the "three-oh" but as one frustrated US soldier remarked to a Senate Select Committee, the .303 was still remarkably good at killing the enemy. The context was political opposition to the AEF in WW1 using British Lewis guns and in which that superiority of the .30-06 was extolled by a patriotic Senator. That is mentioned in more detail elsewhere (somewhere), in one of the Lewis gun topics I think.

A couple of points, the .303 not only had less powder capacity but also the standard Mk VII round was conservatively loaded - it had to serve in all climates and use in hot conditions increases chamber pressure. Also, the rear-locking Lee-Enfield rifle action was not designed for the pressures that the front-locking Mauser-types (including the .30-06 Springfields and P17s) could routinely handle. Even so, SMLE-armed British and Commonwealth troops were known to use "machine-gun" ammunition in their rifles (contrary to orders) in the belief it had a ballistic edge. Post-war (the 1938 Mk VIIIz), it certainly would have had, not sure about the WWI stuff though. It was certainly manufactured to closer tolerances to reduce stoppages in automatic weapons. There was a Mk VIIz (z = nitrocellulose powder) introduced in 1916 (List of Changes 19256 3 May 1916) but I have no actual data on performance.

Another point is, the .30-06 was a comparatively long cartridge with a 63 mm case (compared to 56 mm for the .303 and 57 mm for the German 8x57 JS - the .30-06 and the 8x57JS are identical in the size of their bases, incidentally, there's not a lot of variation in military rimless cartridge base-sizes). The longer the case, the more opportunity for jamming in automatic weapons and the more opportunity for "short-charging" in bolt-action rifles. Strange to say, it is not uncommon for soldiers under stress to fail to extract a spent round but to continually, ineffectually, re-chamber and "fire" it. I'm sure the Americans coped with this slight disadvantage admirably but the higher-capacity case did come with that small cost.

TinCanTadpole wrote:

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Incidentally, I also noticed that the German Mauser G98 was listed as 8mm calibre; somewhere on the forum someone has said something about nominal diameters and actual ones, but shouldn't that 8mm read 7.92mm?

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Designations vary - "8 mm Mauser", "8x57JS", "7.92 mm Mauser", even "7.9x57 mm" (Cartridges of the World, Barnes). It is all the same round, firing a .323"/8.2 mm projectile through something like a .315"/8 mm (land-to-land) tube. A slightly messy round in terms of it was originally the 8x57J, firing a .318"/8 mm projectile, presumably through a .310"/7.98 mm tube. Barrel tolerances and wear being what they are there's not much in it BUT it is generally deemed inadvisable/foolhardy to fire the later 8x57JS round in the older 8x57J rifle with the nominally tighter bore. Projectile tolerances are usually quite fine - about the only thing I can't see in all that mix is 7.92 mm but there must be an explanation somewhere, it is certainly one of the "standard" designations.

TinCanTadpole wrote:

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Edit - Steve, I've just noticed one of your older posts showing a photo of an M1 carbine .30 round: what surprises is the pointed bullet, as I'm sure the photo in an old Ian V Hogg book I haveshows a blunt bullet - perhaps a little elongated - for the carbine. Is there a mistake somewhere, or did they change the shape at some point?

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Well spotted, I think the picture shows a civilian version, long after the original military ammunition is past its shelf life (of about 30-40 years). As far as I know, there was just the one standard military "ball" round, the M1 with an 111 grain projectile but there were two bullet types within that one designation (gilding metal jacket and gilding metal clad steel jacket). I have only ever seen the round-nose bullet shape. There was (believe it or not) the M27 tracer round but I don't know what that looked like (except it reportedly had an orange tip)

Steve.

-- Edited by Rectalgia on Wednesday 20th of June 2012 06:38:43 AM