Bouncing off water?

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In the era of tall ships the Royal Navy gunners would skip a cannonball across the water to strike the hull of the opponent. It's one reason why the RN was so successful. Other navies like the French considered prize money and wanted to dismast a ship to capture it (and get prize money for the crew). Masts are smaller targets that are harder to hit. The RN felt defeating the enemy was more important than prize money (though if they came by that that was very good).
 
Temperature = velocity = energy.

That's why Energy = mass times velocity squared.

You see that in bullet energy calculations in foot-pounds* and in E= mc^2 in megatons of TNT.

(Oh, and for you tenderfeet from back east, "BLM" = "Bureau of Land Management," the Federal agency regulating federal lands out here in G-d's country..)

Terry, 230RN

* Extra Credit for the midterm:

Bullet energy in foot-pounds = weight in grains X velocity in feet per second squared, all divided by 450,240.

That denominator (450,240) includes all the conversion factors for results in foot pounds from grains weight and velocity in feet/sec and varies slightly by sources since it includes a term for gravity which varies with wherever it all was measured.

See Hatcher, page 588, the chapter on "Exterior Ballistics."
I was giving the combat speed version myself but that is definitely better, lol.
 
In another life I was out at night patrolling for pigs that were tearing up our irrigation systems. I had a DDR AKM loaded with a few tracers. On the way home I passed a pond and watched some of the tracers skip across and bounce up into the hills on the other side. In the army I was posted to a base right on the beach a bit north of Gaza. At that time I was a Mag58 gunner, and if the sea was calm we could see tracers skipping and bouncing a good way out.
Lots of fun at the time.
IDF?
 
In the era of tall ships the Royal Navy gunners would skip a cannonball across the water to strike the hull of the opponent. It's one reason why the RN was so successful. Other navies like the French considered prize money and wanted to dismast a ship to capture it (and get prize money for the crew). Masts are smaller targets that are harder to hit. The RN felt defeating the enemy was more important than prize money (though if they came by that that was very good).
Now that's interesting. Did they not use "chain shot" two cannonballs chained together, to cut the mast?
 
EXCELLENT videos, thank you all.

I was told about the bullet spinning on ice by an old gun friend back in the sixties. He used to ice fish and for some reason tried to start a hole with his handgun (forgot caliber). For years I doubted (thought it was BS) his account and just accepted it as a tall tale. It wasn't until many videos and other accounts of the phenomenon started to appear fifty or so years later on the internet that I revised my opinion of his description.

So after many decades, I apologize. Sorry, Bob.

The only time I was ever wrong about something.

Drat.

Terry, 230RN
 
Lots of Japanese ships were sunk by Allied bombers skip bombing.



I remember reading accounts where the skipped bomb hit the bomber!

I guess the dam busters have been forgotten. The British figured out a massive bomb with a forward spin could be dropped on lakes in front of German dams. For the raid to be perfect, the spinning bomb has to hit the dam, stop, and drop to the bottom and blow up.

The raid was carried out at night, which made altitude estimation impossible. One of the pilots figured out that at night a flood light on each wing would be visible on the water. From there it was simple trigonometry to get the angles correct so that the flood light spots would be together when the planes were at the correct altitude.

This is wartime footage as the RAF was figuring out just the perfect heights and speeds. About half of the men who went on the raid died and this video shows these guys proving the concept.

 
Great video, thanks !

Interesting that the video pointed out the flash of light when the inert bomb hit the wall.

As I said above, "Temperature = velocity = energy."

Minor: the video said it was a reverse spin. IIRC, Jablonski, in "Airwar" also mentioned a reverse spin. But minor.

Terry, 230RN
 
Now that's interesting. Did they not use "chain shot" two cannonballs chained together, to cut the mast?

Yes, and Canaster like shotguns. Chain shot had other uses, just tearing up sails and rigging was another biggie. What so many don't remember is the ships in these days had to carry everything, as in EVERYTHING they needed to get from point A to point B. Fresh water, ammo for a wide range of guns from canon down to side arms, rope, sail repair, wood repair, all the tools.....just think of repairing storm damage let alone battle damage in the open sea. Any kind of damage was a big deal. Some of the not so old hollyweard movies touch on this a bit. Some of the smaller guns..."smaller"...is still pretty darn big, like on the quarter deck or forecastle, usually to sweep the enemy decks with "buckshot" or repel borders. I can't swear to it but I think they had larger guns in fighting tops, kinda like a crows nest but that is a different part. The fighting top is where the marines would be to fire down onto the decks of the other ship. Marines are in other places as well not just there. IMHO marines on current ships are a bit of a left over from these days, boarding and repel are not really common these days unless you are a merchant ship in specific waters.

I thought I was fairly up to speed on "the age of sail" but I don't remember reading "skipping canon balls" off the ocean. Not saying it did not happen, I just never read about it. And I would think it would be a pretty rough feat. If you have been to sea, like in the navy or even on a cruise ship you know the water is almost never glass smooth. With the swells I would think it would make it very difficult to predict just where that shot is going to go. Unless you are real close to friendly port or base I don't think I would use valuable and hard to resupply shot on trying to "skip canon balls" off the water. And remember we are talking round balls and smooth bore, have you ever tried to skip a round rock? And with reload times measured in the minutes, I think hitting that ship (no easy task with both of you going up and down in the ocean. Gun crews had a "leader", generally one crew per gun. I am drifting a bit so will leave it there.

I hope the poster that brought this up comes back and sites a source, I would really like to dig into this a bit more.
 
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Another projectile that was used to damage a ship's rigging was bar shot, which was usually two cannonballs or half cannonballs connected by a section of bar.
They looked much like dumbbells.
These were much easier to make than chain shot, as they could be cast in one piece.
As you would expect, though, they wouldn't skip off of the water's surface very well... .
 
Another projectile that was used to damage a ship's rigging was bar shot, which was usually two cannonballs or half cannonballs connected by a section of bar.
They looked much like dumbbells.
These were much easier to make than chain shot, as they could be cast in one piece.
As you would expect, though, they wouldn't skip off of the water's surface very well... .
I wonder if the original free weights were just those things repurposed lol. That sounds like it would be easier to fool with than the chain shot although I doubt either one went all that straight
 
Most naval engagements of that time were held at 'pistol-shot' range or less, well under 100 yards.
They still missed a lot.
It didn't seem to matter if their shot went straight... .

Battle damage to the fore topsail of HMS Victory after the Battle of Trafalgar. According to the web, the fore topsail is the second up from the bottom. Can’t say if any the shots that hit were either aimed or bounced. Can say, there was a lot of stuff flying around.

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Raman spectroscopy in the forensic conservation of a unique marine artefact: the HMS Victory Trafalgar sail

Raman_19_3-Fig_2.jpg


HMS Victory’s Battle of Trafalgar sail is carefully unfurled at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard

The-sail-from-HMS-Victory-when-rediscovered.jpg
 
I heard a story once, someone on a boat shooting at the water and had a zing ricochet right back at them...captured on camera they said.
 
I heard a story once, someone on a boat shooting at the water and had a zing ricochet right back at them...captured on camera they said.
A old neighbor at a lake side camp we had when I was a kid told us never to shoot at the water. He was with someone( I don't remember who) when he was a kid and they were shooting at waves coming into shore. Bullet came back and killed the person he was with.
 
While bullets will ricochet off water when they hit at a very shallow angle, they will not bounce directly back to the shooter. That would require them to hit the water at pretty much a 90 degree angle and they won't bounce with that kind of an angle of incidence.

Perhaps there was an object in the water and it bounced off the object and came straight back.
 
the idea that shooting shooting a body of water is dangerous (especially with a .22lr) because rounds can allegedly bounce off the surface of the water

Yep, real enough that the neighbor came down to the cove and yelled at my buddy and me when we were 12 for shooting at floating debris facing his property since the bullets were skipping off the water towards his house.
 
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I will link up one video, not quite sure why these are not more popular but they just arn't.

There is a Swedish warship Vasa. She sank in the 1600's. Several years ago the brought her up and made a museum out of her. The cool thing is lots of her equipment survived very well. Too hard back then to get the stuff back out of the water, but today it was doable. They saved one of her larger canon and did some testing with it. It is a little like the Mary Rose, it has all kinds of goodies in it.

One of the larger canon they brought up they cleaned up checked and fired it with period loads and shot. And they shot it into mockups of typical ships of the era. It really is interesting. The first one is a short 30 sec video of the gun shooting at the side of one of the mockups, and high speed video of the damage, very interesting. The second (IIRC) is by Drac, and he does a fairly deep dive on the ship and bringing it up as well as some more gun tests. Last video is another short one at Bofors. Guess it is gun related, so hopefully it will stay so you folk can enjoy it.

I have a feeling you will enjoy it if you have not seen it.





 
Okay, I LOVE age of sail warfare history, but it is off topic for THR. If you like naval history, and dry British humor, check out Drachanifel on YouTube. He does WW2 and older naval history with excellent series on Guadalcanal and Jutland. He covers the adoption of canon and their usage, including shot types, during the age of sail quite well
 
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