Technology

What about creating something similar to bolters from Warhammer 40000. We have every technology, rocket fuel, alloys, knowledge how to do similar weapon. It will be great as Infantry support weapon. In my opinion switching to automatic rifles before stabilized nitroglycerin is very risky thing. Nitroglycerin should give much more powerful ammunition and less self explosive. Is there anybody who could tell us if creating C4 or other today explosive is possible without electricity?

Dilandu wrote:Please. Gatling, Hotchkiss, Agar, Nordenfelt and many others do it without smokeless powder at all.

True, but Maxim, Browning, Vickers, Thompson, et al don't work well with black powder.

It isn't that any Safehold Machine Gun will need smokeless powder, but that smokeless powder will be available whether they need it or not -- so they will need to consider the higher chamber pressures available from smokeless in the design, whether they will work without it or not.

Weird Harold wrote:

Dilandu wrote:Please. Gatling, Hotchkiss, Agar, Nordenfelt and many others do it without smokeless powder at all.

True, but Maxim, Browning, Vickers, Thompson, et al don't work well with black powder.

It isn't that any Safehold Machine Gun will need smokeless powder, but that smokeless powder will be available whether they need it or not -- so they will need to consider the higher chamber pressures available from smokeless in the design, whether they will work without it or not.

If they will think about higher pressure there shouldn't be any creepy explosions at weird moments.

Hi Henry Brown,

Hi guys, just got around to reading this thread.

First there are a lot of threads that have dealt with various aspects of weapons tech for Charis, that be reviewed by some interested posters.

For the record regarding military rockets, the Hale was superior to the Congreve, which is within CoGA capabilities, the Hale was used by the USA in the Mexican war, besides being adopted by several European nations.

Charis should be reaching Katusha capability, using real HE -TNT [the acceleration is a lot less stressful than firing from artillery, ie available earlier] and being used suddenly in large numbers against a big target like say the MHoGatA, could have dramatic results.

L


[quote="Henry Brown"][quote="Draken"]

[Could you tell us more about Congreve rockets?[/quote]

They were a black powder based rocket used with mixed results by the British Army and the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. One of the most noteworthy and famous examples of their use was the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the Royal Navy during the War of 1812. The lyric "the rocket's red glare" in [i]The Star Spangled Banner[/i] is directly inspired by Congreve rockets.[/quote]

Several points about small/crew served weapons.
First concerning the gunpowder/smokeless argument. If you replace potassium nitrate in gunpowder with ammonium nitrate you get what was called "semi-smokeless powder." Ammonium nitrate is also VERY good in mining or civil engineering or as fertilizer. Bad point if you use it in ammo it absorbs water so it HAS to be in a cartridge. Second concerning the type of action in weapons. The H&K MP5 and G3 series weapons use a form of locking delayed blowback, doesn't use gas of any kind just recoil.

Hi Weird Harold,

Given brass cartridges already, recoil and gas operated machine guns are more likely to be fielded than the Gatling though it may useful for experimentation purposes.

It's been pointed out several times the Gatling machine gun is very similar to a combination of a seed planter and a rotary cultivator, both inventions of Gatling's father.

So who knows if some farmer will come up with other useful combinations.

Taigys Mahldyn may recognise either as powerful enough to cycle a reload and firing sequence, given how crude Browning's initial experiment was, i can't help wondering if RFC has put such a scene into his own words.

Since they have ten round magazines already I don't think a 20 round BAR is going to appeal to them that much.

An AK-47 does use things like a chromium barrel that might delay a Safehold descendant besides a much shorter cartridge, otherwise the Thompson's .45 cal seems far more likely.

I suspect a Lewis gun with its 47 and 97 round magazines will seem far more 'practical' for both assault and defense than a Maxim.

Then again, I've loudly proclaimed the ICA doesn't need machine guns to win this war since they have mortars, indeed doubling the number of mortars per battalion or company [textev has used both as parent units] would be the quickest and easiest way to increase its firepower.

Bear in mind they're currently using cartridges of nearly .50 caliber [I've never fired a black powder .50 caliber], replacing them with smokeless powder sometime this summer [given a month or so for sailing times] so getting down to around .30 cal might be something that will take a while, though Howsmyn might suggest experimenting with such calibers to speed things up.

L

Weird Harold wrote:

Dilandu wrote:Please. Gatling, Hotchkiss, Agar, Nordenfelt and many others do it without smokeless powder at all.

True, but Maxim, Browning, Vickers, Thompson, et al don't work well with black powder.

It isn't that any Safehold Machine Gun will need smokeless powder, but that smokeless powder will be available whether they need it or not -- so they will need to consider the higher chamber pressures available from smokeless in the design, whether they will work without it or not.

lyonheart wrote:Given brass cartridges already, recoil and gas operated machine guns are more likely to be fielded than the Gatling though it may useful for experimentation purposes.

Gatlings and other similar designs don't jam when a round misfires because the use an external power source for the reloading cycle. They also have higher sustained rates of fire because the multiple barrels allow some cooling between rounds and spread the heating over multiple barrels.

lyonheart wrote:An AK-47 does use things like a chromium barrel that might delay a Safehold descendant besides a much shorter cartridge, otherwise the Thompson's .45 cal seems far more likely.

Chrome-plating of the bore is nice, but not a real necessity for the AK design to function.

Also, according to RFC, a submachine gun or assault rifle with limited range won't serve Charis' needs. Therefore it is a good thing that AK derivatives can be chambered for just about any rifle round.

The BAR in WWII used a 20 round box magazine, but there was no technical reason (that I know of) that it couldn't use a 100 round drum magazine similar to that available for the Thompson. (aside from the weight of 100 30-06 rounds, that is.)

Weird Harold wrote:[

lyonheart wrote:An AK-47 does use things like a chromium barrel that might delay a Safehold descendant besides a much shorter cartridge, otherwise the Thompson's .45 cal seems far more likely.

Chrome-plating of the bore is nice, but not a real necessity for the AK design to function.

Not chrome plating the bore and chamber was the reason the first generation M16's were such a lousy battle rifle. When Colt finally shipped the chrome plated barrels (and field cleaning kits) in 1967 the performance under battle conditions in Vietnam improved from lethal for the user to lethal for the target. (The US Army spent a lot of effort denying the problem). The AK47's manufactured in 1953 are still in service in Afghanistan... The firing conditions of an automatic rifle put a lot of stress on the barrel due to friction that is not present in the slower cycle rate of a bolt action rifle (since you are not trying to extract a cartridge with a bullet still in the barrel - a function of gas operated weapons).

Hi Dilandu,

I wouldn't call the V-1 very effective, since its purpose was destruction and it didn't accomplish much of that because it was so inaccurate, and hard to launch etc, while the defenses were generally already built and in place, so adding their total construction costs to the actual operational costs like shells etc expended is a bit too much.

Because the Luftwaffe was practically non existent in western Europe by the summer of 1944 the western allies could afford to concentrate their AA defenses in ways they never would have if the Nazi's had still had a viable air-force, which they didn't because they were incompetent; ie among other things ignoring developing a large training base so that by 1943 losses matched new fighter pilots [only 3000 for the year!] while bomber crew losses exceeded new bomber air crew so it was already too late and the vaunted new 'London blitz' of January 1944 was pathetically pitiful; some British towns didn't knowing they were targeted until after the war, the same was true of the V-1 attacks.

Yes, they were cheap [slave labor significantly reduces your labor costs] but around half crashed before being noticed by the defenses, and by the time of the defense of the port of Antwerp [Montgomery somehow forgot to clear the approaches when he took the city in September] the number of shells needed by the AAA had dropped to under a hundred per kill, while penetrations dropped to around 2%; which shouldn't be surprising since their constant course, speed and altitude were the AAA's dream target.

Regarding the air launched version, of the 1176 V-1's launched ~40% failed in sight of the aircrew, while destroying 77 of the 100+ Heinkel-111 H-22 conversions that launched them, not a success or very effective in my book.

A rational enemy would have stopped since the port's operation was never threatened [ditto for London's] but Hitler and the SS weren't rational, but the flak troops might have explained the V-1's weaknesses if they'd been asked to analyze the concept and its costs, though they didn't know about the USA's proximity fuse and 3 cm gun control radars.

Of course it appealed to Hitler, who simplistically daydreamed of tens of thousands all flying toward London simultaneously when 118 were the most even launched in a single 24 hour day, with many of those crashing before being engaged by the defenses.

But wars are not won by a dictator's daydreams, no matter how dangerous he is, and the resources wasted on the so called 'vengeance weapons' would have been far better used perfecting an effective SAM like the "Wasserfall", which was within Germany's ability had not Hitler been so fixated on revenge.

Needless to say this is all very far from the nominal thread topic.

L

Dilandu wrote:

SWM wrote:The problem is that it isn't very effective against military targets. It simply wasn't accurate enough. It's only use was to terrorize the civilian population, because no one knew where it would hit (including the people launching it).

Actually, it highly effective. It forced enemy to recall a lot of peoples, AA guns, radars, interceptors and other resources from the frontline to protect his territory.

As cost-effective weapon, V-1 was actually effective. The UK spend a lot more money on anti-air defense against them, then Germany spend on missiles.

AirTech The main problem with the M16 first generation wasn't so much the chamber/barrel, it was the rounds themselves. Eugene Stoner designed the weapon to fire a small grain, fast burning powder. The DOD substituted a large grain, slow burning powder that they had warehouses full of. With the replacement powder it was still burning when it reached the gas port, hence the action jamming. A second but still dangerous fault was the orginial three prong flash suppressor which tended to bend and become non-usable.
Lyonheart Both the Lewis and the Maxim have their good points. The Lewis was air-cooled but the Maxim could and was sized up to fire 37mm cannon shells (the 2pdr pom pom)