u/TacitusKadari

I got very confused recently looking up 19th century artillery.

For the big guns of Napoleon's time, I understand the classification. These were smoothbore muzzle loaders, firing primarily round balls that would bounce on hard ground like a pebble on the water and crush everything on their way. No complex shapes, just balls of lead with a specific weight and the bore would always be a little wider than the projectile, so you could still load it once black powder fouling had built up. The free encyclopedia told me that the French 12-Pounder Canon obusier de 12 had a caliber of 121mm, the American version of the same gun a caliber of 117mm and the American 6-Pounder M1841 a caliber of 93mm.

But then we get into rifled artillery with conical projectiles. The Prussian 4-Pfünder Feldkanone C/64 (4-Pounder Krupp gun for the horse artillery) supposedly had a caliber of 78.5mm (and was also referred to as the 8cm Stahlkanone C/64 for some reason), while the American 10-Pounder Parrott rifle either had a caliber of 2,9 inches (74mm) or 3 inches (76,2mm), which I assume refers to projectile and bore respectively.

I get why rifled guns using conical projectiles would have a smaller caliber for their weight than smoothbore pieces firing round shot. But how is it possible the 10-Pounder Parrott and 4-Pounder Krupp C/64 had almost the same caliber with such a radically different projectile weight?

How do you translate projectile weight designations for these rifled guns to caliber anyways?

As I understand it, the point blank range in practice is how far a soldier can shoot a rifle before needing to adjust the sights.

Since we don't always have good data on these cartridges, I'll take what I can get. Be that 11mm Gras, Mauser or Werndl. They all seem pretty similar.

If you know the point blank range of the 9.5x60mmR cartridge that the first ottoman mauser was chambered in or the Swedish 10.15x61mmR, I'm interested too.

Damm you Switzerland and your neutrality, I want to know how these guns performed under combat conditions!

I was genuinely surprised when I heard that the M1851 Feldstutzer and even the later M1863 Infanteriegewehr - Switzerland's standard infantry muzzle loader - both shared a 10.5mm caliber. That is remarkably small when compared to the earlier 19mm muskets and contemporary .58 caliber muzzle loading rifles used in the American Civil War at the same time and I am curious whether there are any records of these weapons being used in combat and how they performed when compared to their larger caliber counterparts.

It is mentioned in the video that the M1863 Infanteriegewehr had a similar rate of fire and a higher muzzle velocity than its contemporaries, so it should have quite good in theory.

I've heard it a couple of times that the reason so many light infantry and tank guns of WW1 and WW2 were 37mm was because of earlier treaties from the 19th century. Supposedly, you weren't allowed to put explosive charges into any projectile smaller than 37mm back then.

If that really was the case, why did they pick 37mm specifically?

And does this mean they already had effective 20mm HE shells (maybe for wall guns or stuff like that) in the 19th century and agreed not to use them?

Recently, I asked about the difference between the US army during the Mexican-American War vs the American Civil War and the most staggering thing that was pointed out to me is the sheer size difference.

>The US Army in the Mexican American War numbered less than 80,000 men. At its peak the Union army in the ACW numbered close to 700,000 men, with 2.2 million under arms in total during the conflict.

u/Anxious_Big_8933

That explains why European military observers were so unimpressed with what they saw in the conflict. Of course you can't train everyone properly if your army needs to grow tenfold right now. And when we're comparing them to Britain, France and Prussia - all major powers with some of the most capable militaries of their time - of course the Americans on both sides of the civil war fall short.

But France had been the dominant continental power of Europe for centuries and Prussia is famous for punching well above its weight, so I'm not sure whether those are good comparisons.

So how did the armies of the ACW compare to other, more "average" European armies at the time? Like Austria, Russia, Sweden-Norway, Denmark, Bavaria, the Italian states, the Ottoman Empire, I'll take anyone we have data on.

When armies armed with Enfield-Snider or Chassepot rifles went up against each other, what ranges did their infantry actually fight at?

I know from the era of smokeless powder that infantry combat took place at much shorter ranges than theoretically possible, because the average human being just can't spot an enemy at ranges beyond 300 meters or so, if he makes any effort at all to hide. With earlier armies wearing more colorful uniforms, but using black powder weapons, I suspect that you wouldn't be able to see very much after a few volleys.

Besides, these black powder rifles fired relatively large and slow projectiles with poor ballistics, so you could only hit a target at long ranges, if you estimated the range correctly. I suppose only some elite units had the skills to do that.

With regards to weaponry and technology, I assume both armies during the Mexican-American War still used mostly the same types of weapons that would have been in use at the time of Napoleon. Smoothbore muzzle loading muskets, cannons and pistols. Though I don't know to what extent caplocks had replaced flintlocks at the time.

But for everything else - training, doctrin, logistics - how did the American armies of these wars - including the rebels - differ?

I've heard that the USA was very ill prepared for what the civil war turned out to be, so both sides had to scramble to raise armies, which resulted in minimal training for the average infantryman. But for the Mexican-American War, I'd assume that the US military was a but more professional.

As far as I am aware, Sonar was first used at scale in WW2 to protect allied shipping from German submarines. Which is a task most often associated with destroyers, though corvettes also played a very big role.

But since most WW2 corvettes seem to have been built on the hulls of whaling and fishing vessels, I seriously doubt any of them had a sonar. So I would guess the destroyers were fitted with sonar?

So were these destroyers already built with Sonar in the interwar period or retrofitted during the war? The latter sounds like a really big hassle during wartime when you need your ships out at sea and space in drydock to build new ones.

And while we're at it, how do you detect a submerged u-boat without sonar anyways?

I've heard this claim several times about the development of the Panzer III and Panzer IV. Supposedly, the Panzer III with its 37mm gun was supposed to be used against enemy tanks and the Panzer IV with its original short 75mm was supposed to be used against enemy pillboxes or other entrenched positions.

20mm and 37mm guns in WW2 seem to be widely regarded as not very effective against infantry, because of their small HE shells. However, the fact that most tanks early in the war were still armed with these kinds of weapons and that tanks more often than not fought infantry rather than other vehicles throughout the entire war seems to suggest that their effectiveness against infantry was deemed at least sufficient.

Is there any data, any accounts about this? Did the Panzer 38(t) and early Panzer IIIs primarily use their MGs against infantry or did they make use of their 37mm HE shells too?

I've seen this a lot when looking at firearms development during the 19th century. The older spike bayonets used throughout the 18th century mostly fell out of fashion and were replaced by bayonets that could also be used as knives or short swords.

I only know of two exceptions: France, which kept a spike bayonet for the Lebel and the Russian Empire, which had a bayonet that was made to be light, so you could keep it mounted at all times without too much difficulty.

As far as I understand it, this shift mostly came from the fact that the bayonet was primarily a psychological weapon and rarely actually used in melee. So turning it into a multi purpose tool makes sense.

But I do wonder whether there are any accounts of spike bayonets actually coming up against sword bayonets in combat and whether either one offered any kind of advantage over the other.

I've seen some pictures of Soviet paratroopers with headgear that looks very similar to the iconic caps worn by Russian vehicle crews and I've heard that several nations in WW2 - like Germany and Britain - had to design special helmets for their paratroopers, because the standard designs caused problems when jumping.

Now I'm wondering: On the jump, paratroopers would only need to protect their heads from blunt impacts, because if you have to worry about shrapnel during a drop, something has already gone wrong.

So is it actually doctrin for some paratroopers to wear special helmets only for the jump and only put on their combat helmets later? Or is this specifically a Soviet thing?

I know warship classifications are notoriously messy, but from my limited knowledge of WW2 naval war, light cruisers seem to be very similar to destroyers in how they were used.

Fast, lightly armored and not particularly large ships with guns that are best used against other lightly armored vessels or aircraft and some torpedoes. They serve as scouts, AA platforms and screen larger ships from other small, fast ships with torpedoes.

The only differences I can make out are:

1. Destroyers have anti submarine weapons and I have not yet heard about a WW2 light cruiser with anti submarine weapons.
2. Light cruisers are bigger and have guns as large as 6 inches, while destroyers are usually 4 or 5 inches. Though I have heard of some German destroyers that supposedly had 15cm guns.

So what was the difference in how they were actually used? I assume light cruisers had a longer operating range, because of their larger size. But tiny Flower class corvettes were able to follow convoys across the North Atlantic, so I'm not sure how limited a proper destroyer would have been.

It's sort of an en-bloc clip that looks like a stripper clip. You insert it the same way you'd insert a mannlicher style en-bloc clip, but then it falls out when you chamber the first round and it doesn't have any feed lips. Those are integral to the gun, just like with a Mauser rifle.

Ian said in his video that the US Navy when they adopted the Lee-Navy thought this system would combine the best of both worlds. Easy to load like an en-clop, but not as susceptible to damage.

However, the fact that these clips look so much like stripper clips kind of makes me wonder if they *could* theoretically have been used like that. Like imagine the US Army had actually adopted the 6x60mm cartridge for their Krag-Jörgensen rifles and then used them as stripper clips, similar to this one.