Shot weight = (gun bore in inches)^3 / 8For an 11in gun, that gives a shot weight of 166-3/8 lbs. For comparison, a smoothbore 32pdr would have a bore of about 6.35 inches. While my system is inexact, it gives a rough idea of the relationship between bore size and cannon ball weight. For stone shot, the divisor is 22. The shot weight of an a nominally 8 inch stone gun shot would be 24 lbs, but this this actually requires a slightly larger bore of 8.08 inches. This is not a large difference, but enough to matter. You might ask why my interest? For one, I have an Old Dominion University College of Sciences calendar in my cube, and the picture for June was of a professor standing next to a Dalhgren gun that they had raised from the wreck of the Monitor.
This is a forum for discussion of topics relating to the Dreadnought era, prior to the ascendency of naval aviation. We will be discussing history, ship design, and naval wargaming.
Friday, July 13, 2007
So, how heavy would a cannon ball for an 11in Dahlgren be?
Probably, no one but me worries about such things, but I wondered how heavy the cannon ball was for an 11in smoothbore Dahlgren gun, such as used by the USS Monitor in 1862. I have an empirical formula for cannon balls from the "Age of Sail". This is the formula:
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