Holy crap!! I just watched a show on cannons on the history channel. They had a shoot off with civil war era rifled cannons among others, the winner of the cannon shoot off put 15 cannon rounds into a 4x8 sheet of plywood, the funny thing was about 12 of the rounds where into a 15x15" square. Range was 1000yds gosh he could use that thing as a sniper rifle. I think I would have trouble doing that with a hunting rifle.

I saw the same segment a while back, VERY impressive!!!

Watching it now.....They are now having a competition against a modern artillery piece at 1000 yards.

The old piece hit 4 of 5. The modern artillery piece 0 of 5. If was of French manufacture so......

French made, Nat't Guard shooters, not very impressive IMO. No offense to any of the Canucks out there, can't say our guys would do any better.

I missed the program but: Given the short barrel and the long range how did they sight the cannon?. How did they return it to battery between shots?.
Thanks!

I thought I heard them call the 1800s-era cannons 'replicas', which probably means the design is 1800s and the manufacturing technique is somewhat more recent. Not that the 1800s technique was bad, some of their machining was quite good. The Parrot Rifle was among the better rigs, also...

Somrtimes the most simplest is the best way to go. I think sometimes we need to stop and take a look at the old times and thier ways. With rifles we have a million calibers to choose from now and still sometimes a $1000.00 rifle won't shoot well at 100 yards let alone 1000 yards. I am shooting 1/2" groups with what most reject and laugh at, but my 1940 Jap rifle is doing the Job.

Watched that last night. I'm a bit of a Civil War buff myself and seeing the show reminded me of things I've read.

The 3" Ordnance Rifle (very similar to the 10 pound Parrot Rifle on the show) was probably the best of the "Field Artillery" pieces. There were several types of sighting devices, some of them quite sophisticated and very accurate.

There was a story of General Sherman, I think, at the seige of Atlanta. He was walking on a narrow road with a man walking directly behind him.

The General looked up on a hillside ahead about 1/2 to 3/4 miles away where some Confederate artillery were operating. He saw a puff of smoke from a cannon going off and jumped to the side of the road at the same time telling the man behind him to move. The other man said "What?" and the cannon shell took his head off.

A little more info here:
http://www.museumandcollector.com/grayling.html



-Bob F.

Hello Guys

I was once in the Artillery (Drop-shorts as the Grunts called us) on the gun-lines, and FO (forward observation) parties. This was the NZ army during the early 80's and we were equiped with M105 Howitzers of American design and manufacture.

I was enormously impressed with the accuracy and repeatability of these weapons, and once calculated that we built our fire-plans on about 5 MOA, however the guns and guys could be relied on down to a lot less than that.

Firing anti-tank was bloody impressive, a 43 lb shell at 2800 fps, with a tracer in the base. This used "charge 7", which was never used for normal fire as it wore the guns out too quick.

Everyone had to be able to crew the guns in anti-tank mode, so we all got a go. Even better, once we had achieved the required hits at "official targets", we could fire at targets of our own choice. Our range was littered with big rocks, of about piano size down and some crews could hit these rocks consistantly at 2000 metres. Ofcourse the rock was then a bit smaller !!

Cheers