108
votes
Did it take 3 minutes to reload a musket when the second amendment to the US constitution was ratified?
No. The rate of fire of competent musketeers was considerably greater than one round every three minutes when the Second Amendment was adopted at the end of the eighteenth century.
In his book The ...
- 77.7k
90
votes
Accepted
How did archers judge distance before range finders?
I'm a horse archer; we use instinctive archery – there are no range finders, just a bow, a string an arrow and an archer. After a few thousand shots at various ranges, your body just knows how to aim ...
MCW♦
- 35.3k
71
votes
Why couldn't soldiers sight their own weapons without officers' orders?
It was a remnant of the class distinction in British life between aristocratic officers and common soldiers and enlisted men. In British units the men were instructed, forcefully, to simply obey ...
- 72.9k
55
votes
Did it take 3 minutes to reload a musket when the second amendment to the US constitution was ratified?
Did it in fact take something like three minutes to reload muskets when the Second Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified? Is a "three minute musket" representative of the best military ...
- 15.2k
44
votes
How did archers judge distance before range finders?
They mostly didn't care.
In combat, the purpose of an archer was not to land aimed shots on specific targets. It was to put large amounts of pointy wood-and-steel in the air, in the general ...
- 2,547
39
votes
What caused this cratering pattern at Hiroshima?
This photo is again used in recent CNN.com article "The bombing of Hiroshima" posted in Apr 26 2020: CNN
But this is not the one of Hiroshima after the A-Bomb.
This photo was taken from ...
- 391
39
votes
What were sandbags used for in medieval duels?
The sandbag is from a quintain, a "jousting dummy" if you will:
On Offham green there stands a Quintain, a thing now rarely to be met with, being a machine much used in former times by youth, as ...
- 72.9k
35
votes
Accepted
Why couldn't soldiers sight their own weapons without officers' orders?
The question asks why British officers would micromanage enlisted troops by doing things like dictating the range to sight their rifles. This type of "micromanaging" is a foundation of the military ...
- 532
34
votes
Accepted
Why were slings phased out of medieval armies in favor of bows?
Phased out? Says who?
Slings were used in European armies until the 16th century...the
Castilian king had 30,000 infantry slingers in 1386...The sling was last used in Europe for military purposes at ...
- 16.8k
33
votes
Accepted
Has a battering ram been used to breach a gate?
There appear to be very few recorded, specific examples of the successful use of battering rams on gates in either ancient or medieval times, at least compared to successful assaults on walls. ...
- 109k
31
votes
Accepted
Why did it take so long for the Germans to develop the first tank model in World War I?
While the Germans knew in principle that tanks could be built, they still needed to design a tank, develop a prototype, work out the problems, put it into mass production, develop tactics, and train ...
- 9,152
31
votes
Accepted
Did Age of Sail fighting vessels have any anti-spall technology?
The introduction of hammocks in place of cabins for the bulk of the crew both reduced the amount of wood (and thus splinters) and led to the use of rolled up hammocks as protection against splinters. ...
- 109k
31
votes
When would one carry a sword on a shoulder with grip upwards?
This is anecdotal, but enough people seemed to like my comment and OP had further questions, so I'm posting it anyway.
I did some re-enactment in my time. My weapon of choice was a longsword. (Well, a ...
- 15.2k
29
votes
Accepted
Who was the last European king to actively engage in combat?
Perhaps Charles XII in 1713.
The king himself killed at least one Ottoman soldier with his sword in
hand-to-hand combat when he and Roos came under attack by 3 Ottomans.
During parts of the ...
- 2,710
29
votes
Accepted
Why did so few militaries use semi automatic rifles as their standard issue infantry weapon?
The USA started development earlier
Generals fight the last war. In the muddy trenches of WWI, the major semi-automatic rifle designs such as the Mondragón Modelo 1908 and the FAM 1917 rifle that you ...
- 16.8k
25
votes
Accepted
What kind of knife could this be?
Got it, is a Spanish M1969 Bayonet, check it here: https://www.preferredarms.com/weapons/daggers.php
- 1,880
25
votes
Did Aboriginal Australians know slings?
The ranged weaponry niche occupied by bows and slings in most other parts of the world was in Australia occupied by boomerangs and woomera (spear-thrower).
These wouldn't have had the long range of a ...
- 126k
24
votes
Accepted
Why has the khopesh never been used since ancient Egypt?
The khopesh was a solution to the limitations of bronze as a sword material.
Bronze swords can't be too long because they break. Bronze is more brittle and less flexible than iron. For this reason, ...
- 1,880
24
votes
Accepted
Why would a rifleman have his bayonet fixed to the rifle in a non-combat situation?
Doctrine, regulation, and technical necessity.
We observe that the Russians were the last to issue M1891 Mosin-Nagant rifles with a socket bayonet, when all other militaries had already switched to ...
- 81.3k
23
votes
Accepted
Why did the Metall und Lackierwarenfabrik company get asked to bid on the creation of the MG42?
After the MG 34 was introduced in 1935, the Wehrmacht almost immediately wanted improvements. The MG 34 was milled from specially alloyed steel which is slow and expensive. Stamped parts could make a ...
- 56.3k
22
votes
Accepted
Did firearm projectiles start being rifled before barrels?
The rifled barrel was first, by centuries
For the majority of the rifle's history it was much easier to make an artisanal rifled barrel once, than artisanal rifled bullets for every shot you wanted to ...
- 16.8k
21
votes
Did any age of sail ship have a "back-bone cannon"?
Yes, these existed and were generally known as gunboats. Sizes varied, but typically they were a galley, schooner, or sloop of less than 75 feet in length, single-decked, with a single large cannon (...
- 2,027
19
votes
Why didn't the steppe bow spread further?
The questions (answered separately below):
So why wasn't the rest of the world, the world off the steppe, using it? I mean, maybe it didn't reach the classical world until the Huns brought it there, ...
- 6,339
19
votes
Accepted
What weapon systems have come and gone very quickly?
Is the halftrack AFV generic enough? A brief upsurge before and during the second World War, but improvements in fully wheeled and fully tracked vehicles rendered it obsolete.
The dive bomber also ...
- 17.9k
18
votes
Accepted
Were railway guns ever critical in any battle during WWI and WWII?
The only time they were used - although on a different front - they did more or less what they were intended to do.
The German leadership was well aware about the logistical nightmare these guns ...
- 296
17
votes
Accepted
Mass distribution of the Macedonian Sarissa pike
I'm only aware of one surviving iron coupling-sleeve that joined the two halves of the sarissa spear-shaft. The discovery was reported in the 1970 paper Sarissa by Manolis Andronicos in the journal ...
- 77.7k
17
votes
Accepted
Help identifying an old bayonet
A little googling and matching the makers marks indicates that this is a Japanese bayonet, known as a Type 30
Some 8.4 million were produced, and it remained in front-line use from
the Russo-Japanese ...
- 41.8k
16
votes
WW1 shell case markings
It's a shell for the standard British Ordnance QF 18-pounder field gun.
Shell markings will normally include the following:
Calibre and numeral.
Manufacturers “ initial ” or “ Trade Mark.”
Date of ...
- 77.7k
16
votes
Can someone help me identify this sword?
This is very likely another fascine knife (compare pictures on Faschinenmesser):
The fascine knife was a side arm / tool issued to 17th to 19th century light infantry and artillery. It served both ...
- 81.3k
16
votes
Did it take 3 minutes to reload a musket when the second amendment to the US constitution was ratified?
At the time, most military muskets were smoothbores. Hunters and a few specialist military units used rifled muskets, or rifles.
Musketeers did not fire aimed shots. Hitting a man-sized target at 100 ...
- 17.9k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible