Posted on 05/13/2018 6:39:34 PM PDT by Lazamataz
Got to Be Jelly...!
Whatever flavor...
I like!
Academy Sports has a Magnum Research pistol in a .45-70 for $1,079.
Too much gun for me. Personally, I wouldn't probably go above a .41 magnum. The gun will do its job if the shooter does his. A .500 S&W doesn't do any good if the shooter flinches and pulls the shot. It will make a big hole in whatever the bullet finally hits but it might not be the target.
Now THAT’s more like it !
Big Bertha was actually a different gun. That was the monster howitzer used to pound the fortress of Liege in 1914.
I don’t think that Paris Gun was ever found. They dismantled it.
Per Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun
“...The gun was taken back to Germany in August 1918 as Allied advances threatened its security. No guns were ever captured by the Allies. It is believed that near the end of the war they were completely destroyed by the Germans. One spare mounting was captured by American troops in Bruyères-sur-Fère, near Château-Thierry, but the gun was never found; the construction plans seem to have been destroyed as well.[10]..”
“... .950 JDJ...”
Good lord....
Thanks.
I’ve always had an interest in German railway guns. Massive beasts...
It was more a terror weapon than anything else. Sort of like “look, we can hit you from WAAAAAY over here, and you can’t do a damn thing about it.”
There was guy named Gerald Bull back in the 80s, if I recall correctly, he was contracted by Saddam Hussein to build a “super cannon” for them. He got... interrupted permanently ... before he could finish it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull
I'm open to that... but some Wall Guns and Punt Guns with shoulder stocks are functioally indistinguishable from each other except a wall gun may have a thicker bore wall to accept a solid ball load. Both are very long guns and the long percussion or flintlocks and generally both required two men to load them. Both were smooth bore, both were extremely long and heavy.
Both of them rely on the fact unlike smokeless powder, the more black powder added the longer it will burn, adding pressure and therefore velocity and range to the projectile(s), hence the advantage of the much longer barrels. The wall gun, when loaded with ball, would hit a sheet of paper size target at up to 1000 yards, even without rifling.
The wall guns were more quickly portable than small cannon and in addition to sniper use, could also be loaded with larger shot to repel attackers. Using them with smaller shot was an easy step. The first wall guns even predated the flintlock ignition systems and were fired with matchlock or later wheel lock systems. The first hand held portable guns were wall guns.
The more modern versions were breech loaders and were single user. . . as were those used by punt market hunters.
Wall guns pre-dated punt guns and it is likely the punt guns were originally modified souvenir wall guns brought back by soldiers from India and China, not originally purpose built for market water fowl hunting. Market duck hunters also used the small signal cannons from ships, anything that could fire large amounts of shot on "sitting ducks" that could kill a large number of them with a single shot. I've even read descriptions of market hunters using Winchester 10 Gauge signal cannons, designed only for blanks, being repurposed to shoot actual shot shells, set up around areas where the hunters knew ducks (or pigeons/doves) would congregate and fired simultaneously when the flock was flushed.
I sold a couple of genuine wall guns on consignment from my gun shop back in the early 70s and they were distinctly marked. One had hallmarks for the East India Company. The other was an obvious cruder native made copy. Both of them matched the guns in the first photo. The East India Company one had military proof marks. I wish I had a photo of it to show you.
Punt guns did not need to have a shoulder stock. . . I've seen some that were obviously designed to be mounted in the punt. The ones I saw had a knob or a flat boardlike stock designed for some kind of receiver mount, not one made like a shotgun or rifle shoulder stock. Many were semi-permanently mounted in the punt. Those that did have shoulder stocks were certainly not fired from the shoulder in a small punt. This supports the claim they were originally re-purposed wall guns which did have shoulder stocks.
I called those pictured in the original post Jingal wall guns because they had shoulder stocks. It is possible they were used, or even possibly originally made, as Punt guns as well but for the reasons above, Yo-Yo, I stand by my original assessment they are more properly defined as wall guns. . . although looking in more detail at the second photo, the barrel appears to be a tad flared (wall guns would not have a flared barrel), so it may be a true punt gun and probably made as such, even though it appears to have a shoulder stock—that may have just been a traditional look retained though inertial design.
By-the-way, we fired the East India one before we sold it (the other was not in shootable condition). We had to make our own cap to fire it because we could not find a large enough one to fit the nipple commercially available (I estimated it would likely have been a #6 size which no one was making then). The gun was so heavy, about 50 - 60 pounds, that even with a really large load of shot, with 2F black powder, the recoil was more like a fast, heavy push. IIRC, our gunsmith measured the bore to be about 2 bore, ~1.3" in diameter.
We didn't get that much money for either of the wall guns. IIRC, I think the East India Company one was sold for about $500 and the native made one went for about $275. They were a hard item to sell and display. There were very few collectors as they take up too much room. I'd think one would have to store and display it in the garage, as moving it through the house through hallways and into a room would be difficult at best. I knew only one collector who had more than one.
Now, they are going for around $5000 to $7000. . . but most of the buyers are in Europe. Some very rare American Wall Guns go for far more, especially in Flintlock. George Washington had a very few wall guns in the Continental Army which he used quite effectively for sniping.
They are now quite rare in the US, whether wall guns or punt guns. Most of the wall guns were contemporaneously cut down to a shorter, more easily handled length, and the British Military wall guns with "Tower locks" whether in flint or converted to percussion were almost all destroyed in the 1841 armory fire in the Tower of London. The East India Company wall guns exported to India, the native copies, Chinese Jingals, plus various versions that may have been converted to punt guns are much more common.
Have you ever heard vocal impressionist Wes Harrison's "The Great Duck Hunt"? Hilarious!
One of the things which seem almost impossible is how they made such massive guns. It boggles the mind.
Also such guns as the 18 inch ones on Yamato and Musashi. Also battleships with 16 inch thick armor plate and even thicker. How in the world did they do that?
I read fairly recently that there is not a single foundry in the world today capable of making battleship armor.
With black powder, unlike faster burning smokeless, the more you add, the longer it burns, adding pressure, velocity and range. You get an advantage with longer barrels which gives the larger load of black powder time to burn. There will still be a point of diminishing returns, but where that is I don't know.
When I managed the Old Sacramento Amory, we had a Sacramento County Sheriff's Deputy who moonlighted with us as a packing clerk who probably weighed in at 140 pounds dripping wet and was skinning as a rail. His conceal carry was a S&W model 29, .44 magnum 8 ⅜" barreled revolver in a shoulder holster ... and you could not tell he had it on him!
“. . .was skinning as a rail. . .” (Damn auto correct) “. . .was skinny as a rail. . .”
Fantastic information! Thank you very much.
And Wes Harrison is a hoot.
“...how they made such massive guns. ...”
Herr Krupp was a metalurgic genius.
My old man was WWII Airborne, and he met up with some of Mr. Krupp’s genius up close and personal, twice...
The Japs went hog wild with foundries and metal industry too, and Yamato and her sister Musashi were the result. However, as Billy Mitchell proved - and the Japs themselves again at Pearl Harbor - you can have the biggest ships in the world, but when you own the sky, it’s a matter of time.
The Japs sent Yamato out to attack the Okinawa landings and support ships, but they sent her out with no air screen, and our dive bombers and torpedo bombers from multiple carrier groups blew her out of the water. Basically, she was sent on a suicide mission to cause havoc with the invasion fleet, beach herself, and use those massive 18 inch guns to decimate the transports.
Musashi was also sunk by air power.
Carriers, not battleships, ruled the sea.
Here’s a great write up on both.
http://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/wwii/death-of-the-battleship-sinking-the-yamato-and-musashi/
The story of Germany’s Bismarck, Graf Spee, Scharnhorst, Tirpitz, Prinz Eugen... all amazing stories as well.
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