Girandoni air rifle

First post here but a long time reader. I have fun stories for another time about how reading Mr. Weber's books helped me graduate with honors (no pun intended) from school - both undergraduate and graduate levels.

On to the point: While the advancement of technology along the traditional lines of propellent arms has been fun to follow, I am curious about the lack of attention paid to using air as a propellant. For example, the Girandoni air rifle was an actual air-powered rifle used by the Austrian army from 1780 to 1815. It was basically a BB gun on steroids - with a FPS of around 1000, a .48 caliber projectile, and had a 20-round gravity-fed "magazine."

Thinking about the hardship that the Church is having around development and deployment of, well basically everything, a realization or development of such a weapon could be a huge gain for them. Given that these types of rifles have no smoke or muzzle flash, the benefits are easy to see - especially for scout groups.

Just a thought.

Hi Seven,

Welcome to the forums, please enjoy your favorite simulated beverage on the simulated forum.

From my study, the Giradoni air rifle has a reputation tainted by more deliberate modern myth making than fact, especially any verifiable or accurate combat reports.

It's a very interesting design, but manufacturing quality wasn't up to the level required, so fewer were actually made than originally ordered while reliability issues meant they were soon withdrawn from unit service to be stored in castle armories as reserve or second line weapons and effectively forgotten until they were finally ordered scrapped 3-4 decades later.

Given 1500 pump strokes were needed to re-pressurize the air flask stock, and the maximum range was around 125 yards when the flask was full, and the special training of the soldiers, its not surprising it was only briefly fielded.

L

Seven wrote:First post here but a long time reader. I have fun stories for another time about how reading Mr. Weber's books helped me graduate with honors (no pun intended) from school - both undergraduate and graduate levels.

On to the point: While the advancement of technology along the traditional lines of propellent arms has been fun to follow, I am curious about the lack of attention paid to using air as a propellant. For example, the Girandoni air rifle was an actual air-powered rifle used by the Austrian army from 1780 to 1815. It was basically a BB gun on steroids - with a FPS of around 1000, a .48 caliber projectile, and had a 20-round gravity-fed "magazine."

Thinking about the hardship that the Church is having around development and deployment of, well basically everything, a realization or development of such a weapon could be a huge gain for them. Given that these types of rifles have no smoke or muzzle flash, the benefits are easy to see - especially for scout groups.

Just a thought.

Just off the top of my head, you need some pretty tight tolerances to make an air rifle practical (you know, to store air at high pressures and keep it from leaking out). By the time such tolerances are available (both in real life and on Safehold), powder based guns are pretty much well entrenched.

Air guns don't really offer any performance advantages over powder based guns and possibly have some significant DISadvantages. At least not in an industrialized war setting.

Lewis and Clark used air rifles because they were operating in unexplored territory for extended amount of times with no secure supply lines back to civilization, so not needing to make powder simplified their logistics considerably (plus there was no gun armed opposition where they were going).

In addition to the drawbacks mentioned above, the effectiveness of the weapon dropped off the more you used it. Every shot reduces the pressure stored in the bottle. After the first several shots, it lost so much of that 1,000 f/s muzzle velocity that you'd be better off using anything else, even a pistol.

Similarly, with the inherent lower muzzle velocity, you're looking at a weapon that's incredibly short ranged compared to the breechloading rifles the Church has right now, let alone the ones Charis has.

Duckk wrote:In addition to the drawbacks mentioned above, the effectiveness of the weapon dropped off the more you used it. Every shot reduces the pressure stored in the bottle. After the first several shots, it lost so much of that 1,000 f/s muzzle velocity that you'd be better off using anything else, even a pistol.

Similarly, with the inherent lower muzzle velocity, you're looking at a weapon that's incredibly short ranged compared to the breechloading rifles the Church has right now, let alone the ones Charis has.

The modern version of the Girandoni is the PCP air rifles (Pre-charged pneumatic) types where the shooter can get 5-10 shots at consistent pressure from a magazine. The pellets / bullets range from 22 to 357 and the reservoir (air chamber) is refillable with a hand pump similar to a bicycle pump. As earlier mentioned, very precision machined and high-tech materials but would not be noticed by the OBS.

Just a question: would it be possible to get something like a modern Gatling gun or Vulcan cannon running off air power. Or do they require a electrical engine to order to run? As that would really give the COGA something to think about I'd imagine?

Michae wrote:Just a question: would it be possible to get something like a modern Gatling gun or Vulcan cannon running off air power. Or do they require a electrical engine to order to run? As that would really give the COGA something to think about I'd imagine?

I doubt that electric power is required, although it is very convenient (and gives the lowest remote response time). Remember the original Gatling guns from the late 1860s though ~1900 were all hand cranked. Basically any motor with enough torque to turn the shaft would work, thus having the trigger work a valve that opens an air or hydraulic line would give a ship or fortress rapid firing guns.

Michae wrote:Just a question: would it be possible to get something like a modern Gatling gun or Vulcan cannon running off air power. Or do they require a electrical engine to order to run? As that would really give the COGA something to think about I'd imagine?

Castenea wrote:I doubt that electric power is required, although it is very convenient (and gives the lowest remote response time). Remember the original Gatling guns from the late 1860s though ~1900 were all hand cranked. Basically any motor with enough torque to turn the shaft would work, thus having the trigger work a valve that opens an air or hydraulic line would give a ship or fortress rapid firing guns.

The problem with Gatling/Hotchkiss revolving cannon -- and really with any crew served heavy "machine gun" -- is that they are Crew Served; only really suitable for defensive positions, like fortresses or ships.

Power driven Gatling or Hotchkiss Revolvers need reliable, high capacity ammunition feeds, and are mostly going to be limited to modest rates of fire -- hundreds of rounds-per-minute rather than thousands -- by the need for a physical firing pin instead of electrical priming, like the 20mm Vulcan or 30mm GAU-8 use.

Charis could build Gatling or Hotchkiss style guns, with or without power drive of some sort, but they only really make sense in a naval context given the ICA's demonstrated policy of maximum mobility for their land forces.

PS: this diversion from air rifles should probably be in another thread, either new or one of the existing threads on machine guns.

True on the hundreds of rounds for a Gatling gun. IIRC a hand cranked Gatling gun with two men feeding in gravity feed magazines of fifty rounds each could maintain a ROF of 5-600 RPM. Which was comparable to normal machine guns like the M1919 GPMG or M-2 HMG.

What exactly would Charis need gatling armed ships for? Shell fire is already perfectly serviceable as anti-personnel ammo and there's no aircraft that need to be shot down. Meanwhile, "hundreds of rounds per minute" is probably inadequate as point defense against katyusha missile storms.