Modern Marvels-Cannons.

[Double D]

Modern Marvels on History Channel is covering cannons. 

They say Armstrong made cannons by shrinking two tubes together. Then he figured out how to seal the bore for breech loading.  Then he invented he rifled bore.

Fusing was perfected during the AM Civil War.  Fuses were put in shells and ignited.  This ignited the powder charge which launched the shell and burst the shell down range.

During WWI huge powerful cannon and mortars were developed but their massive recoil moved them out of postion and made quick follow on shots less than accurate.  The French solution was the French 75. They did show the French gun firing a salvo and you get a good view of the gunner quadrant in use.

Good basic explanations on the recoil arrester on the 75 and the double recoil system on Atomic Annie.


I don't know how accurate the Armstrong information is, but the fuse info is wrong and I know WWI did not start in 1875...or maybe it did.

Errors like only mke me wonder what else is wrong.  Dr. Atwater and John Beckman are interviewed.  I beleiuve John Beckman use to drop by here in the olden days.

[Double D]

Oh cool, CNC hammer forging modern artillery barrels at Watervliet...and now I know how to say Watervliet!!!

[KABAR2]

Sometimes the translation get muddled in the editing........ There is a scene in one of the history channels shows that has

a German Krupp bag gun  I know the owner,  what was taped and how much was actually used lost a lot in translation.

the people editing use a story board, they are not experts on artillery and they have time constraints to deal with also they need

to dumb it down for general consumption, if the info is too precise and dry they won't hold the couch potato's attention except

when things go Boom!

[Alangaq]

My profession is actually aviation, and I have been at it for nearly 25 years now and consider myself very informed and knowledgeable about most aspects of the industry.  My main hobbies are firearms and ATV’s with the recent addition of cannon fever .   That said, on average any TV shows that addresses something that I am knowledgeable about, seems to be hideously inaccurate, flawed, or downright misleading.  The history channel seems to do better than most, but still, inconsistencies and inaccuracies abound.  And the “news”… well, let’s just say that I haven’t seen anything on the news that has done better than 50% for accuracy…

[RocklockI]

even on R Lee Ermeys 'Locked and loaded' they showed an animation of a military automatic rifle that ejected to left side of the rifle .....dont remember which rifle but it was bad .

there seems to be a lot of misinfomation even on shows that you ..should expect better from .

[KABAR2]

It's not just TV shows ever notice that military collector books by British publishers which are printed in Asia
usually have many typo's and they talk about Americans mangling the English language! 

My favorite one is a caption identifying "An American officer's DIKE from the American Revolution"

it should of course read "PIKE"  and even that ID is wrong as it is a Halberd , it seems there is no need for accuracy in knowledge in either print or media

as long as you can sell it to the general unwashed public.