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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: 16" Battleship gun info wanted
Message-ID: <1991Apr6.020906.14151@amd.com>
Date: 5 Apr 91 18:34:39 GMT
References: <1991Apr4.041931.11567@amd.com>
Sender: military@amd.com
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)

>From: emery@aries.mitre.org (David Emery)
>	Does anyone know the muzzle velocity, time of flight, or max
>ordinate for a 16" gun firing at max range?  
>
>	Apparently USN&WR said in an article that a 16" gun firing at
>a range of 25 miles, the projectile would travel 50,000 feet into the
>air.  Some people asserted this was correct, others said it sounded
>much too high (assuming low angle fire).  

A reasonable rule of thumb is that high-velocity artillery is circa 1000m/s
at the muzzle.  The old ballistics rule of thumb is that horizontal range
is double vertical range, max altitude of the max-range trajectory is half
vertical range, and for max range you fire at 45-degree elevation.  (You
do not use "low angle fire" for long range!)  The usefulness of this is
that vertical range is easy to calculate:  v^2 = 2ag, so 1000m/s in a
9.81m/s^2 gravitational field gives a vertical range of a bit over 50km.
So we have a 100km range at 45 degrees, with a trajectory reaching 25km
altitude, circa 75000ft.  This is a wee bit optimistic because it ignores
air resistance, of course, but clearly 50000ft is not implausible.
-- 
"The stories one hears about putting up | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
SunOS 4.1.1 are all true."  -D. Harrison|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry