Vasa (swedish ship) cannon (replica?) test firing

[MichaelPetersen]

kinda ol vids (but i havent seen them here)
they're short, so just to get you interested

History of Vasa

Test project description

gun firing part 1

gun firing part 2

 

[William Lincoln]

You might add "Click on links below" to the post.
Old guys like me need to be helped to figure stuff out.
I finally did. Very cool cannon-and ship history. thanks.

 

[Nazgul58]

kinda ol vids (but i havent seen them here)
they're short, so just to get you interested

History of Vasa

Test project description

gun firing part 1

gun firing part 2

I was in Sweden to visit my brother who lives there, in 1989. Went to the VASA Museum, very impressive.

Don

 

[kh54]

Now that is cool! I would have hated to be anywhere near the spray of splinters those naval cannon inflicted on enemy ships.

 

[Nazgul58]

In Erie Pennsylvania is the Brig Niagara, Oliver hazard Perry's ship, and museum. I grew up not far from there and my dad would take us to see her occasionally . Over the years they tried to restore it but kept running out of money. They finally got it done and sail it every summer. There is an awesome museum there.

In the museum there is a display of a section of the ships hull they built and fired period canons at. The damage is interesting and documented in a film. Injuries were mostly from splinters. They point out that actual battle damage is rare to find. It is either repaired, the ship is sunk, or scuttled. If it can't be repaired it is dismantled or burnt to recover the metal fittings for reuse.

I saw the HMS Victory in Portsmouth, England in the late70's. The capstan had triangular boxes that fit into the holes for the handles. In the boxes was a candle, sewing twine and a needle. It was to bindup/seal any wounds from the splinters so you could get back into the fight.

The day at the Victory ended with a good story. We Marines went to eat with the Royal Marines for dinner and drinks. It was a long night..........

Don

 

[Captndan]

Very cool vids. I wonder why so much smoke.

 

[TFoley]

Very cool vids. I wonder why so much smoke.

Watch the videos and read the comments from one of the Vasa cannon team -

Original service charge was 1/3 of ball weight, or 8 pounds (about 3.32 kg), but modern powder has more push, so to achieve historical muzzle velocities (high subsonic to transonic) we had to back off of that, to 2.65 kg (the charge used in this video, which gave a muzzle velocity of 360 m/sec). We also tested a charge of 2.20 kg, to simulate longer range impacts, and even a couple rounds at 1.1 kg.

 

[cyten]

Very cool! When I went for the first time in 2008, I was blown away at all matchlocks they managed to recover