The FReeper Foxhole Remembers The Siege of Fort Texas(May 3-9, 1846) - Nov 9th, 2003

cr.nps.gov ^ | Sharyn Kane & Richard Keeton

[snippy_about_it]

I was so fired up I forgot to say, Thank you Phil.

[Darksheare]

Sorry about getting back to this late.
*ugh*
Ended up raking leaves from noon to 3 PM yesterday.
After that, it was luggage marking duty so the owner will be able to ID their luggage in the airport.
I painted a blue rose and a red rose on the one side, and lettered their name in silver on the other.


Having been in artillery, I still have a hard time imagining something fired from a cannon flying slow enough to side step.
And yes, it'd be nice if that was the case for our guys all the time!
It just is mind numbing for me to try to imagine this.
The speed of the howitzer shell flying out the muzzle brake on my old howitzer was measured in meters per second, but to be able to side step a cannonball, it would have to be travelling somewhere in the 400 feet per second or so range like a giant bb gun pellet.

[snippy_about_it]

No problem, you're never late for a Foxhole thread, we've been known to go back for months to pings.

Do you suppose that the cannon ball that could be side stepped was one that was near its end, you know, it had flown as far as it could and ready to plop? At some point does it slow down? My ignorance is showing. LOL.

[Darksheare]

Possible as well.
Depends on where the guys doing the sidestepping were in relation to the firing piece, and said piece's range.

Cannonballs were notoroious for poor flight characteristics.
Being round and largely smooth, they slowed down rapidly in the air due to their own wake turbulence.
(Kinda like creating it's own riptide behind itself.)

the invention of the canister shot and the conical shell made it possible to reach further ranges and better accuracy.
And higher shell speeds, for farther along it's arc.

At the end of it's flight, the cannonball would definately be close to hitting the ground and becoming ground clutter.
And more than likely would be rapidly slowing.
What was described was one of the most one-sided artilery duals in history.
Obsolete cannon versus canister shot... egads.

[snippy_about_it]

Thanks Darksheare.

[colorado tanker]

I list November 9 as a historic holiday on my calendar: Berlin Wall Day. The Cold War had been part of life for as long as I could remember. I was so proud and so thrilled to see than evil wall knocked down by free citizens. People laughed at Reagan for having that vision, just as they are laughing at President Bush today.

[SAMWolf]

Thanks for the info on the Colt pistol and the Cannon. Arty sure has jumped in development.

[colorado tanker]

Grant reflected the views of many northerners, especially northern Whigs. Many in the north thought the south brought on the Mexican War to gain more land south of the Missouri Compromise line for potential slave states.

[SAMWolf]

To be honest I never thought I'd see the day that the Berlin Wall came down and Germany was re-united.

[colorado tanker]

An interesting fact about Field Marshal Montgomery was his view that the West would never succeed in reuniting Germany. He advocated throwing in the towel on the Cold War and recognizing Soviet hegemony over eastern Europe as permanent.

[SAMWolf]

Well, I never had a high opinion of Field Marshal Montgomery to begin with. He was way over-rated IMHO.

[colorado tanker]

Yeah, Monty was overrated. By the time he finally attacked at Alamein, Monty had such superiority in troops and equipment even McClellan could have one the battle.

Another interesting fact I learned about Monty at the Imperial War Museum is that after the 1948 Israeli war of independence broke out but before the British completed their evacuation, Monty urged the General Staff to order a British attack on the Jewish troops holding Haifa because he was offended the Jews would occupy a port reserved by the U.N. to the Arabs. I saw no evidence he was troubled by the Arab invasion of Jewish territory, however. Monty seems to have had the anti-Semitism typical of the British upper class.

[Darksheare]

Welcome.
There's more to it, and better info than I have, but it's alot more involved as a descrip.