About 20 years ago my friend and I would go down to the Northern California coast to his uncle’s ranch and hunt wild pigs. These trips always entailed large quantities of a guns and ammunition and of course cannons and mortars.
One trip down my friend’s uncle called us over to an overgrown logging landing where he had pulled a 1964 Ford Falcon out of the bush. He wanted us to shoot it with the cannon.
The cannon is a replica of a boat howitzer recovered from the U.S. Cairo. It has a one inch bore,
Back in those days I didn’t have a copy of Switlik’s book and simply followed the Guidelines publish in The Muzzle Loading Artilleryman for determining loads; 2 oz. per inch of bore. Overlooked was that this was a maximum load using Cannon Grade and not things you could buy in the gunshop like FFG. Also not considered was my projectile was a HB wadcutter weighing 8 oz and made of lead.
Here’s that slug next to a 577/450 Martini and a 17 HMR case.
The car was pulled out of the brush with a cat and placed at one end of the landing in front of the cut bank. The cannon was loaded up and fired. Back then I tied the cannon down with a set of block and tackle to keep it from flying over backwards.
Here’s the shot! You can see how much the gun recoiled, by looking at where the gun is in relationship to the plume from the vent. Since changing to 1 inch round ball I don’t have this problem. The ball only weighs 3 ozs. and I only use 185 grs. Of CG. Sure glad I used 4140 for the gun barrel.
You can see the one inch hole in the door. While we are all standing around admiring the big hole in the door we heard a sound. We looked up and behind the car a tree crashed to the ground. These pictures are old 35 mm chemical photos so you can’t see the details as clearly as you would in a digital photo. With the better detail you would see through the hole, the trees behind the car in front of the cut bank. Also what you would see is the stump of the 3 or 4 inch Alder tree that the slug passed through. The hole was big enough to topple the 25 foot tree.
Of course we had to take a shot at the engine block. The frame stopped the slug before it hit the block and we were out of ammo. Boy I wish he had called use to shoot the car sooner!!!
This is the same trip that I broke the frame on my tin can mortar, but that is another story for another day.
