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ead
01-15-2011, 12:16 AM
Brothers in arms,
I struck out trying to find official stats on 12 pdr. accuracy. Can any of you present day 12 pdr. crew members tell me the kind of accuracy that you get, or do ya'll only shoot blanks!

ead
01-15-2011, 11:37 PM
Sorry, I guess either everyone's stumped for an answer, nobody fires anything but blanks or if they do ever fire solid shot they don't care to talk about it! :roll: I'll try one of the other Civil War Sites.

John Holland
01-15-2011, 11:57 PM
ead -

The North-South Skirmish Ass'n. only fires projectiles. No blanks are fired in the N-SSA as we do not re-enact. All of our shooting is competitive live fire. Our National Artillery Matches are all held at 200 yards due to our range limitatons.

Unfortunately, what you have here is a situation where our Artillerymen do not use this forum.

JDH

Jim Brady Knap's Battery
01-16-2011, 12:16 AM
Try this link and watch the 8 min video there are some scenes of artillery targets during the 200 yard match. The ones with the big holes are the 12 pdrs.

http://www.n-ssa.org/join.html

Jim Brady
Knap's Battery

Scott Lynch 1460V
01-18-2011, 09:05 AM
Wel mebbe iffen ya'll spelt it rite then mebbe sum artymens mite reply, it is NAPOLEON! I have crewed on an original Napoleon and can say that it hit more than it missed on the 200 yard bullseye. Having not hit the lottery yet I have to be satisfied with my repop Parrott. And yes Johnny some of us artillerymen do read this forum. There just isn't much to respond to most of the time. Scott

John Holland
01-18-2011, 10:20 AM
To my good friends, Jim & Scott....and that is a sincere comment....thank you for replying to Eric.

Scott....You'll have to be patient with Eric because he lives in a galaxy far, far, away known as the PRC. Or rather the Peoples Republic of California. And, since we are a 501 (c) 3 organization one of our mission statements is to educate the public. Well done!

The "Big Boy Toys" you guys have are way beyond me. Over the years I've been on quite a few gun crews and every one was a thrill. The best I could do was a 1/2 scale bronze Coehorn. The problem is, it suffers from "Goldilocks Syndrome". You know, "This one's too big, this one's too small..." I can't find anything that fits the bore.

John

Phil Spaugy, 3475V
01-18-2011, 11:43 AM
There is no sound quite like the ring of a brass Napoleon gun !!

Here is a link to one of my favorite Civil War books. Even though it has been proven that Augustus Buell did not serve with Battery B and got his info second hand, it is a great account of service with a renown Regular Battery.

http://books.google.com/books?id=2-M8AA ... &q&f=false (http://books.google.com/books?id=2-M8AAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Cannoneer&source=bl&ots=GJ8COOtANU&sig=zYQC1Z7_6em1ZlsBPfdqCH54-WU&hl=en&ei=gQ8sTMreHYWBlAe6odTVCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false)

And another good link to a history of Battery B

http://books.google.com/books?id=qtoSAA ... &q&f=false (http://books.google.com/books?id=qtoSAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=editions:0UcdWNdrtlYhe9Tg1g7RNU#v=onepage&q&f=false)

Phil

matt
01-18-2011, 09:03 PM
If you guys think live firing a model 1857 12 pound gun aka Napoleon is a blast try a 24 pound field howitzer. That is a rush we shot the 24 pounder back at i believe the 100th national when we did the live fire ,did well too our position was 21 and we put a shot right between the 2 and the 1 never mind we were aiming at the bullseye at the time but hey it was a BLAST.
Matt
Winslow's Battery 9775v

John Holland
01-19-2011, 01:07 AM
We've got a guy on our team who owns his own mortar battery...OK....we all agree he's out of control. One of them is a 24. We tried it several times competitively, and all I can say is it looked like a wild woman flinging apples at a squirrel. I didn't know you could rack up a score that looked like a zip code!

JDH

R. McAuley 3014V
01-19-2011, 12:41 PM
Yeah, 24 and 64 pounders are certainly whoppers for burning powder, but they don’t compare to Mons Meg, the cannon on display at Edinburgh Castle in Scotland. The bememoth 15-foot long 20-inch bore “Mons” derives its name from where it was made in Belgium in 1457, weighing in at 15,366 pounds (some 6 tons) with a powder charge of 100 pounds it was capable of flinging gunstones weighing 330 pounds nearly two miles, and 300 pound iron balls one mile distant. Mons Meg was last fired on October 14, 1681 to celebrate the birthday for the Duke of Albany and York, after King James VII of Scotland and II of England when the barrel burst. A twin gun burst in 1460 in a salute fired during the siege of Roxburgh Castle, when a section of the breech tore through the thigh of King James II (1437-1460), a wound from which he bled to death.

http://www.maybole.org/history/castles/roxburgh.htm

John Holland
01-19-2011, 01:03 PM
Richard -

Those examples represent early failures in the problems with casting large cannons. Over 400 years later it was still an issue to be condended with, as evidenced by the experiments Rodman performed with casting his big guns. The problem was disproportionate cooling of the casting, which would cause cracks with the exterior cooling faster than the interior. Quite often the big guns would suffer catastrophic failure after only a relatively few rounds were fired. With this problem in mind, that of catastrophic failure, many times gun captains were reluctant to use maximum charges. This was evidenced by the actions of the U.S.S. Monitor when it wouldn't fire maximun charges at the C.S.S. Virginia. It was proved in later testing by the Federal Government that if it had fired maximum charges, and the guns held together, the shot would have pierced the armor plating of the C.S.S. Virginia and put a very quick end to the engagement.

JDH

R. McAuley 3014V
01-19-2011, 05:58 PM
John,

The early "bombards" (some of which were even breechloaders) were not castings but were wrought iron welded bars and rings. The inner bore of "Mons Meg" comprise a series of keystone shaped wrought iron bars which were welded longitudinally and held in place by a casing consisting of welded wrought iron rings, while the rear taper of the gun (what later became the spherical projection in cast cannon) was again similar solid iron bars wrapped by concentrically smaller rings to which an solid end cap was applied. I've seen the gun up close, as well as a group of breechloading cannon at Dumbarton in which the breech was an iron block inserted at the rear once the bore was loaded with ball and powder. These were very effective at rendering stone castles obsolete.

None of these guns were built in Scotland. The bombards, their gunstones and the artificers and gun crew who serviced them were all Belgians hired by the Crown. The great-grandfather of the Scottish mathematician John Napier, eighth laird of Merchiston (1550-1617) who discovered logarithms was who oversaw the fabrication of the stone and iron balls for Mons Meg and her sisters for King James II. Attached is a link to a book entitled "Bombards: Mons Meg and her sisters," you can zoom in to the book front and can see the rings and part of the bore, and below that another illustration (each showing the bursted part). As noted in the latter article, the great bombards were mounted in a cradle when fired as opposed to the wheeled carriage that is most often associated with them in later years. The carriage was used only to transport them, and I read one account in which "Mons Meg" had only been transported about 24 miles when the carriage shattered and they have to stop and wait until a new carriage could be built and brought to the gun, before they could proceed to their destination. Threave Castle in Dumfriesshire (built in the 1370s) is one of the earliest castles rendered obsolete as a fortress by these early bombards, and still bears great rents and scars from its besiege by Mons Meg when the great bombard was first employed.

http://www.royalarmouriesshop.org/books ... sters.html (http://www.royalarmouriesshop.org/books/bombards-mons-meg-and-her-sisters.html)

http://books.google.com/books?id=_EgEAA ... eg&f=false (http://books.google.com/books?id=_EgEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA190&lpg=PA190&dq=construction+of+mons+meg&source=bl&ots=e0-l4IuQNN&sig=bENXyIRszLiAQESDRyxIs40EzBM&hl=en&ei=TWg3TaznF4aisAOMxdDMAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CDUQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=construction%20of%20mons%20meg&f=false)

NickSS
04-25-2011, 07:21 PM
My info is not on a 12 pounder but it is on a 6 pounder revolutionary war cannon that I and two friends owned many years ago. It was a cast iron barrel cast around a steel tube that was slightly under 3 inches in diameter. We shot mostly weighted alpo dog food cans filled with cement and bird shot so that they would fly like a shuttle cock most of the time. On a good day we could put five cans through an 18 inch bullseye at 125 yards. We also had access to a gravel pit that was being made into a man made lake. It was about 1200 yards long and 600 yards wide. We shot our cannon using FS blasting powder and cast lead cannon balls that were a snug fit in the bore. Once we figgured out trajectory we had no problems hitting 55 gallon drums at 600 yards. We also shot at a stack of five drums stacked two over three at 1000 yards. We missed either over or under three times and got a direct hit on the fourth shot. We fired three more rounds and got two hits and one that hit low and took off the top of a pine tree behind the target.