HEY!
You guys have been cheating...you're just pulling stuff from a previous thread on TFL.
C'mon!
...but the arguments of, you know, actual battleship captains and gunnery officers is even more convincing yet. --
Well, now that
I have had the chance to review the TFL thread, I'd say that there was no clear consensus.
At any rate, there's no arguing with the numbers or the physics; Take my man/canoe/pond/carbine example and let's be a little more precise by scaling down the weight and reaction to FPE (ME) in our battleship example.
If the assumption is 58,000 tons at a displacement weight of 2,240 lbs./ton, we're looking at an FPE:weight ratio of a little more than 6:1.
Let's change the weight of the canoe and passenger to the weight of a rowboat [deeper draft] and three people instead of one. How 'bout a total weight of 1,000 pounds?
Using our ratio, let's have a Barrett 82A1 .50BMG semi-auto mounted to the center seat of said rowboat. We'll remove the muzzle brake and adjust the load/velocity of the Barrett to yield a ME of 6,000 ft.lbs. or so. With me?
Now, have one of the three on-board row the boat across the pond [or, what the heck, fire up a 5-horsepower Evinrude] until a decent velocity is attained and have someone else trigger the Barrett, pointed starboard at 90º to the rowboat's heading, at an elevation of...oh, 30º or thereabouts.
Is there any movement to port? Will the occupants notice that the Barrett has been fired?