21406

image

21407

I see vinraith already did the chef’s kiss, so I won’t tag along. I will throw in that the main danger of very old ordnance beyond just not working is the chemistry going off and they become high speed explosives rather than low speed. Good way to turn a usable gun into a grenade.

21408

Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t artillery shells in WWII, made with castable TNT? Would the nitroglycerine separate over time? Or is that only dynamite?

21409

I don’t know that, and I may be completely off base, but in the small arms world you tend to avoid shooting old ammo because things happen over time. The shell is usually good, the projectile (assuming it’s kinetic and not explosive) the same, the primer as long as it goes bang (being a small high velocity explosive by design) no big deal. But if the main powder charge cooks fast, the pressures quickly go out the window. Any modern gun is designed for a specific pressure target with some fudge built in, but funky powder can go either way. Again small arms, but you can buy a perfectly appropriate powder for, say, a rifle round and if you substitute it for another perfectly suitable powder but don’t adjust the amounts, boom.

Accuracy wise, you want to impart the right amount of pressure over the right amount of time to give the projectile the maximum amount of velocity before it reaches the end of the barrel. If the pressure is still faster than the round by a bunch, then it will blow it around at the muzzle when it has lost it’s guiding forces, i.e. the tight and rifled environment of the barrel. Also, you waste powder, which is why jackholes like to take pictures of snub .357s at night, to see all the wasted powder bloom out the barrel. Absolutely the wrong thing to do when things matter such as in war, when you kinda need to hit the target. Burning stuff still comes out the barrel sometimes but the projectile should be ahead of that.

21410

Makes perfect sense, thanks.

21411

In artillery ammo, the projectile (the business end) is separate from the propellant. Everything gets assembled and fuzed right before firing. Part of adjusting range is changing the amount of charges or bags of propellant used.

21412

So, for weapons with bagged charges say, the points of failure are the projectile, which may or may explode, or explode as desired, and the propellant, which may or may not, um, propel properly or may just go boom? Twice as many things to go wrong in this case!

21413

Fear not. That’s the easy stuff.

21414

But there’s a threshold for that, and I don’t know what it is, but I’m familiar with what you’re talking about regarding Navy guns, the big ridiculous things where they have a conveyor shoving in bags of propellent. I don’t know where the cutoff is, but certainly up to 50mm or so I’ve seen souvenir casings. Are all US field artillery pieces also component based?

Particularly, where I’m missing the boat is that the Abrams has a 120mm cannon which is fed by cartridges, I probably wrongly assumed that field artillery was also cartridge based.

Edit: Right you are, answered my own question. Start at 3:30 or so to watch the loading, they do indeed have separate warheads and propellents. Not saying Russia’s old-ass propellent isn’t an issue . . .

21415

I believe so, but I was a mortar maggot not a gun bunny, so I’m not completely sure.

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/155-prop.htm

21416

We crossed posts, you’re absolutely right, as above.

21417

Mortars are fascinating because they are pretty low tech as far as mobility and optics, but they are also incredibly accurate due to the guys running them. Was that training more or less Calculus For People Who Actually Need It?

Context: I want to be perfectly clear I’m asking this as genuinely interested, I had the thought that “low tech” could be seen as an insult (it was a level set prior to the compliment). It certainly wasn’t.

Edit: I’m particularly engaged because there was an old asshole named Elmer Keith who was a gun writer, and he spun many stories about hitting birds out of the air at 500 yards with a short barrel revolver. And you know, I actually don’t doubt him, because he tempered it “Folks would be surprised at how the impossible becomes probable, if you just try enough.” That’s a terrible paraphrase, don’t look it up, but he backed it up with his observations about how incredibly accurate mortars are despite having short barrels relative to their ordinance.

21418

Watching that reminds me of car racing circuit pit crews changing tires.

21419

Ukraine knocked out the main bridge going into Melitopol:

Meanwhile the “satanic Yankees” are apparently using magnets to divert Russian missiles trying to knock out UA logistical routes :)

More info here:

21420

Photographic Proof

fuckin-magnets-how-do-they-work-me-irl-2952337

21421

Satanic Super Magnet would be a great band name.

21422

This is actually one of the reasons/justifications for why the US doesn’t agree to stop using them. Instead, the US has committed to making sure that it’s cluster munitions all detonate.

21423

Russian channels are claiming a breakthrough in Bakhmut. I guess we will know for sure soon enough.

21424

Which side?

21425

Beat me to it.