How far can you shoot a canon ball?

[Slamfire]

Has everyone forgotten the Paris Guns of WW1?

A real limit to any cannon is pressure and material properties. You have to live within the limitations of your propellant. Gunpowder does not burn like a candle, the slope of the pressure curve is exponential. The duration of that force on the base of the projectile is milliseconds long. And then, you have to keep within the structural limit of the bore. It is very possible to ring the inside of the bore with too high a pressure.

Coastal Artillery, 1890's style





14 inch WW1 Naval rail cannon

 

[Jim Watson]

No, but I don't think the Paris Gun fired a ball.

 

[mcb]

You can make it strong enough to handle much much higher pressures but you still still can't push a projectile faster than the speed of sound in the resulting propellant gases. With gunpowder of any kind that tops out at about 6000 fps. If you want to go faster than that you have to switch to something faster like a light-gas-gun or a electromagnetic railgun.

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

As noted, it depends a lot on the cannon and how it's constructed.

For example, max range for any given shot will be at a 45 degree elevation. However, most canon were not designed with that in mind with respect to the carriage and placement.

The effective range for a typical 24 pounder naval cannon was about 2200 yards at max elevation which was typically about 9 degrees. At 0 elevation, you're talking about 200 yards.

 

[Jim Watson]

For example, max range for any given shot will be at a 45 degree elevation. .

Only in sophomore physics. Or a vacuum, which is the same thing.
Maximum range for a projectile in air is at 30-35 degrees.

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

Only in sophomore physics. Or a vacuum, which is the same thing.
Maximum range for a projectile in air is at 30-35 degrees.

I'll take your word for it.

 

[kBob]

Slamfire,

Thanks for excellent pics of disappearing guns!

Your first pic is great as it shows both a gun exposed and firing, and a gun that has disappeared for loading. those mounts allowed the recoil of the gun to not only cause the gun to go backward, but also down, both raising counter weights and pressing springs that would be use to elevate and run forward the gun for firing after safely reloading behind that substantial wall. Some also used steam or hydrolics to assist in raising the guns

From the sea ward side it would appear that the guns "disappeared" each time they shot.

When I was last at Pensacola there were still rusting carraiges in such gun pits.

Firing Data came from a series of steel towers a good ways away from the guns that provided the height to get "over the horizon" and multiple sightings to provide intersection for precise ranging from the guns, speed, and direction.

Typically when you found these guns, some where near by were big honking Mortars to finish off ships slowed by the guns.

Then Billy Mitchel got all those hundreds of gun bunnies transferred to the Field Artillery...….

-kBob

 

[CANNONMAN]

Lots of great comments. I think the answer lies in the midst of the reply's. BP can only do so much. the shot is a round lead ball the barrel length is of course also fixed. Variables: angle, amount of powder After 6oz of, my very own super really nicely made, BP it did not matter what the angle was. I assume that a longer barrel would add distance. It's smooth bore with no patch. The shot is cast to the barrel diameter and the cooling/shrinking gives a really nice fit. It just seemed like there was a law similar to economics law of diminishing returns. I don't have access to an unlimited field or I'd try some of my other cannons. But fun discussion. Thanks guys. Oh and awesome pics! HiJack my own, can a golf ball mortar shoot a ball 2 miles? Or can you shoot something so light as a golf ball two miles?

 

[desidog]

I have a funny anecdote about the 16" gun on a disappearing carriage system. At Fort Michie, on an island protecting Long Island Sound and the approach to NYC, they fired the newly installed 16" gun... and blew out all the house windows on nearby Long Island with the concussion. After that, when they shot the guns they'd have to issue a notice, and everyone had to open their house's windows beforehand.

 

[GE-Mini-Gun]

Well to get all nerdy…you need to know velocity, angle and weight…if you ignore air resistance frontal area does not matter, however one should not ignore it as it does have a major effect.

 

[GRIZ22]

As noted, it depends a lot on the cannon and how it's constructed.

For example, max range for any given shot will be at a 45 degree elevation. However, most canon were not designed with that in mind with respect to the carriage and placement.

The effective range for a typical 24 pounder naval cannon was about 2200 yards at max elevation which was typically about 9 degrees. At 0 elevation, you're talking about 200 yards.

I don't know much about naval guns but I know something about howitzers. 45 degrees will give you max range in theory but real life is different. A 105mm howitzer gives a max range at an elevation of 720 mils with a max charge (charge 7). That's roughly 40.5 degrees.

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

I don't know much about naval guns but I know something about howitzers. 45 degrees will give you max range in theory but real life is different. A 105mm howitzer gives a max range at an elevation of 720 mils with a max charge (charge 7). That's roughly 40.5 degrees.

I'll believe you.

@Jim Watson posted something similar.

There being no practical difference between naval guns and howitzers, I'm betting the elevation vs max range is the same.

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

HiJack my own, can a golf ball mortar shoot a ball 2 miles? Or can you shoot something so light as a golf ball two miles?

Given the mass vs cross sectional area of a golf ball, I'm gonna say you'd have a rather difficult, if not impossible, time of reaching a 2 mile range.

BUT...it sounds like a fun project to undertake, just for the fun of it!

 

[Jim Watson]

There was the guy with a beer can mortar. Fill cans with concrete and lob them down the South 40. One day he shot one with a void in the concrete. The can expanded Minieball wise, sealed the bore and went a lot farther. The neighbor was not pleased that his cattle were being shelled.

 

[kBob]

well a golf ball does not behave as a sphere should.....the dimples cause it to have less drag than a smooth sphere. Unfortunately the effect does not seem to scale up very well.

at any rate the same formula that work on spheres of all sizes and density sort of fall apart with a golf ball.

By the way the max angle for range varies with the shape of the projectile and its weight for that shape inside the atmosphere.

one of the things that makes long range artillery fire interesting is the changes in air resistance as the projectile travels up and down.

dispite all the tables and weather reports and other data....sometimes the impact is not where you would expected it to occur. The guy doing the computing has to be able to SWAG (Scientific Wild Ass Guess) a bit based on his experience for any hope of first round on target with out some guided or smart munition, thus the ART in Artillery.

-kBob

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

The limitations with cannon (usage here meaning muzzle loading, smooth bore, black powder cannon, not in any way "modern" artiliary or guns) were fascinating...and the modern misconceptions as to the tactics involved in their usage likewise fascinating.

Naval warfare seldom was about "blowing the enemy ship(s) out of the water", so much as literally beating them into submission. Once this was acheived, it was game over.

Since it was a good, long while before explosive shells, and safely reliable ones at that, were to enter the battle arena, tactics mainly centered around incapacitating the enemy's ability to maneuver...meaning to attack the masts, sails, and rigging. It also meant anybody topside was fair game, as well.

In a running battle, the lead ship would attempt to outrun the pursuer...and the pursuing ship would use bow guns to attempt to slow the fleeing ship by trying to damage the ship's ability to sail and maneuver. NOT an easy task, and certainly NOT an easy task with the guns they typically had mounted in positions to do this.

The hulls of a man o' war were akin to the modern battleships we knew of in WWII, as well. Somewhere I've a book on such ships, and no kidding...some of them had three foot thick Oak hulls. Trying to incapacitate such a ship through side hull damage was nigh impossible, unless you were pretty close. But the stern of such ships had nowhere near as thick a hull...and a maneuver called "Crossing the T", if successfully performed, was exceedingly deadly...because it involved firing volley after volley from the attacking ship's guns into the stern of the ship they were passing behind.

Ever heard the term "shiver me timbers"? The term "shiver" describes what happens when a cannon ball slams its way through a wooden beam or mast...basically, the wood "shivers", or explodes into deadly wooden shrapnel. Those cannon balls would rip their way from stern to bow, filling whole compartments with wooden shrapnel and butchering everybody along the way.

We may THINK the old cannons were rather limited in their capabilities...and they were, by modern standards...but those men of iron on the wooden ships knew how to extract every bit of deadly purpose out of them.

Think, for example, about dropping 24 pound, red hot cannon balls onto the rigging/decks of ships.

Or chain or bar shot.

ANYWAY...battle between military units typically went to submission/surrender. There was a whole honor issue involved in this, which is pretty fascinating in itself.

 

[RedlegRick]

I'll believe you.

@Jim Watson posted something similar.

There being no practical difference between naval guns and howitzers, I'm betting the elevation vs max range is the same.

While as a proud Army gunbunny I'd like to agree with you, there's a lot of difference between a 155 and a 5" naval rifle. The guns you swabbies have often have double or triple the range of ours, owing both to being tied onto a greater mass, heavier construction and powder charge. My first section chief actually had done a couple hitches in a turret aboard a destroyer in Vietnam before landing in our reserve unit.
Wish I could remember his comparisons he made one time between what our 114s were capable of and what naval rifles could do. Same idea, different approach, basically.

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

While as a proud Army gunbunny I'd like to agree with you, there's a lot of difference between a 155 and a 5" naval rifle. The guns you swabbies have often have double or triple the range of ours, owing both to being tied onto a greater mass, heavier construction and powder charge. My first section chief actually had done a couple hitches in a turret aboard a destroyer in Vietnam before landing in our reserve unit.
Wish I could remember his comparisons he made one time between what our 114s were capable of and what naval rifles could do. Same idea, different approach, basically.

Doing a little bit of google-fu, there are some variables in this, some of which include shell shape, mass, rifled/unrifled, velocities, etc. All of which will result in specific max range vs. elevation characteristics for a given unit.

More than I want to wrap my head around...at least, tonight!

 

[mcb]

This is not that complicated of an issue. Its something a sophomore engineering student should be able to solve fairly accurately. The data we need is straight forward: Assuming we are still talking about a rigid cannon ball the only data we need on the projectile is mass and diameter. The only other things needed are muzzle velocity and launch angle. Since we are only concerned with how far the cannon ball goes this sort of become a 2D rather than a 3D problem.

Plug that into F=ma (Newton's second law of motion) and solve the resulting differential equation. Again very easy to do numerically with modern computers.

The only forces acting on the cannon ball (once it leaves the muzzle) are gravity and drag. Gravity (Fg) is easy. Drag (Fd) is not as easy but for a sphere there are a plethora of drag models for spheres.

Fg + Fd = ma. The Acceleration (a) is a vector with three or if we simplify two dimensions.

Try this following link for an intuitive little simulation that might give some more insight. It's a 2D simplified ballistic model. It allows you to input the initial velocity and angle and projectile properties like mass, area (rather than diameter) and drag coefficient into the simulation and will show you the result trajectory for the projectile for both the drag and no-drag conditions. The author breaks the projectiles Area (A) and Drag Coefficient (C) into it two components V (vertical) and H (horizontal). To simulate a cannon ball just make sure both the Av & Ah are set to the same value and same for the Cv and Ch values The Area (Av & Ah) is easy calculated off the diameter of the cannon ball. For a drag coefficient (Cv & Ch) I would use a value around 0.5 since the simulation will only go to 100 m/s*

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/on4xzwtdwz

*technically the drag coefficient for a sphere changes with velocity but a static number will be close enough to get an intuitive feel at these velocities. There are definitely some secondary effects we could add to increase the fidelity of the estimate. Things like projectile spin, wind, more detailed atmospheric data, etc, but that should get you close enough to make the target nervous.

ETA: you can override the slider and enter a velocity greater than 100 m/s and the simulation seems to accept it well. Mach 1 is ~ 340m/s.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

It wasn't much punkin with ball but with bag shot it would have been hell to face in an infantry assault.

Again though, there is a difference when you launch 48 musket balls in a cone from a cannon, at 100 yards, vs four dozen musket barrels from two ranks of two-dozen men each standing at open order, firing at 100 yards. Wound 2 of the cannon crew and the gun is in trouble. Wound 3 and the gun is probably out of action. IF the cannon fires and the crew is then hit with the volley, the gun is unloaded. With those missing three crewmen they likely aren't going to get the cannon reloaded before the infantry crosses that 100 yard gap. IF you double the casualties for the musket company at 100 yards ... that's six lads down....42 still effective. So canister and grape were ship to ship loads most often, and were land fighting loads when the infantry did not have a way of taking out the crew from a distance, and there was a chance the infantry might get close without the cannon shooting at them sooner. Which is why cannon had to be protected from overt attention from the infantry or worse, cavalry.

LD

 

[CapnMac]

There being no practical difference between naval guns and howitzers

Actually quite a few, then and now. Naval rifles are just that, high pressure, high velocity, long-bore weapons. Now, many naval rifles have extreme ranges of elevation (Mk 42 would elevate to 80º; the current Mk 45 elevates to 65º) but, that is to engage aircraft targets at relatively short slant distances. Max range is around 35-40º (and varies versus roll angles, by way of gyros and computers).

In the BP era, few weapons were rifled, but there were specialty ships mounting howitzer-like mortars. These were genrally fixed at 45º elevation, and typically had bores over 12". The vessels were named after the projectile thrown: Bombs (Royal Navy did prefer "Bomb Ketch" after the layout of the rig. RN used "massed" (e.g. 5 or 6) Bomb Ketches at Copenhagen, the Nile, and rather famously, at Fort McHenry. The forestays on the Bomb Ketches were made up with iron or steel chains, rather than rope cordage, as the excess powder following the bomb tended to damage the tarred rgging of natural fibre rope.

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

Actually quite a few, then and now. Naval rifles are just that, high pressure, high velocity, long-bore weapons. Now, many naval rifles have extreme ranges of elevation (Mk 42 would elevate to 80º; the current Mk 45 elevates to 65º) but, that is to engage aircraft targets at relatively short slant distances. Max range is around 35-40º (and varies versus roll angles, by way of gyros and computers).

Naval guns also had extreme elevations in order to put ordinance on target at the most effective angles.

Consider the age of battleships: the paradigm then was, essentially, a hugely armored ship hugely armed with guns, with the ability to literally exchange broadsides with each other. They were meant to go toe-to-toe with enemy battleships.

Consider, if you will, the concept of such battleships actually duking it out with each other...Bismark class battleship against South Dakota class battleship, for example. High elevations on their main guns would have enabled these ships to land ordinance at angles which the enemy armor was at its weakest. Obviously, range of the main gun armament would be very important, but armor design could help offset that against an enemy ship with a longer range.

 

[Riomouse911]

I recall my buddy machining a golf ball mortar out of a block of tool steel in a CNC machining class in college. We loaded it up with a shot glass full of BP, cut some cannon fuse and away it went.

Once we learned to make a wad out of tinfoil to cup the golf ball and fit the bore tighter did that thing really show it's legs. One day we went to the beach out on the South Jetty of Humboldt Bay, lined it up to fire relatively flat out over the open ocean and fired golf balls clean out of sight. We never could tell where the balls splashed down, even with binoculars.

Later on we fired solid-core Top Flite golf balls clean through #5lb cans of old chili, a ratty stop sign and various and sundry pieces of plywood.

Stay safe!

 

[CapnMac]

Battleship armament elevation changed considerably between 1910 and 1920. Limiting elevation had two benefits--one was reducing the vulnerable opening in the gunhouse armor. It also helped limit gun range to closer to what could be observed visually in largely coal-fired ships of the time.
After the war, the widespread conversion to oil as a fuel increased visual range, as did mounting spotter aircraft. This can be seen in comparing the New York class ships with the Nevada class ones. And especially in comparision to the Pennsylvania Class. All six of those are armed with 14"45 main guns and 5"51 secondaries in casemates.

 

[4v50 Gary]

8" Parrott Gun was able to shell Charleston from Morris Island from 8,000 yards distance. That's over four miles' distance. Look up The Swamp Angel.