Reading this, and looking at the pictures and discussions about range reminded me of a time years ago (when I was a kid) reading the journal of a WWII combat vessel captain.
He was captain of a large battleship (akin to the Bismarck or Tirpitz) and I guess these ships were mainly used in long range stand off attacks, because he would talk about seeing the muzzle flashes of enemy ships through his telescope, then waiting 30 to 90 seconds to see where the shells would land near/on his ship.
I was always enthralled by the fact that you knew shells were heading your way bringing death and destruction, but you had to wait around a minute to see if they missed you or they impacted your vessel, and in that time, you had to plot an evasive manoeuvre as well as return fire solutions.
The distance and isolation of sea combat somehow makes it more haunting than the land warfare equivalent of an artillery barrage.
When cannons were common on land it was not unussual to see cannonballs bouncing across the field towards you. As they were subsonic, you also could hear them coming.
I am thinking @sandworm is talking about the old round iron cannonballs (akin to those fired from pirate ships etc) rather than the more modern explosive projectiles that are shown in your video post.
That also reminds me of another story I read that was penned by a cavalry officer in the 1800's. He said that the only time you could see a cannonball in flight on the battlefield was when it was pretty much heading straight for you.
He recalls an incident once when he met a fellow horseback officer in the middle of a battlefield during a lull in combat, and while talking, the other officer's horse rested its head against his leg. While chatting, he noticed a black blur approaching in the sky out of the corner of his vision and reactively flinched back, and a cannon ball brushed his collar and smashed into the horse's head that was leaning against his leg, instantly killing the poor creature.
I meant older cannon than that, but notice that even in that video you can hear the projectile long before impact. Id bet you could see the shell in flight if you were standing right in front of it. A half-second is an eternity on a battlefield.
I remember reading about a model boating society that, instead of wargaming, would create scale models of famous warships and fight them - the hulls would be thin wood, and the turrets had motorised mounts and compressed air guns capable of firing a metal pellet through the wooden hulls. The ships would have less internal bulkheads (to account for the damage explosive shells would cause) but would otherwise try to be as true to life as was possible given the limits of technology (I don't think anyone was building gyro-stabilised gun platforms, for example, as it was too hard to minituarize).
There was even a proposal to build larger scale ships that used small-calibre handgun ammunition and sheetmetal hulls, but it was shot down (if you'll forgive my pun) for being wildly unsafe and probably illegal (as I understand civilians are generally discouraged from owning remote-controllable firing mechanisms).
Fun to watch, but it could never be a reasonable simulation. Unless the model ships were hundreds of meters appart, the trajectories would be far too flat. To be close enough to score a hit you wouldnt be able to hole the other ship near the waterline. You would just blast at superstructures without ever sinking.
And there was an easy(ish) way to stabilize the guns. Mercury switches were used to ensure they only fired when the hull was reasonably level.
Unless you've seen one up close it's hard to wrap your head around how big naval guns are.
I work in a converted naval gun factory, built in WWII. They used to take the main guns off battleships and reline them every hundred shots or so, and my building was a huge machine shop set up to replace the linings.
The gantry crane used to take the guns off the railroad cars they were shipped on is still in place. The hook of the crane is a solid piece of steel. It is larger than my Honda.
notice the boats along the port side near the aft gun. And, forward of the aft gun, and between the deck houses, are several grey rectangles. Each one has 4 Tomahawk missiles. Those "coffins" are roughly the size of tractor trailers.
One thing you'll notice: no humans. The shockwave will kill you.
I incorrectly assumed the tomahawks would be on VLS launch platforms but no, they're like surface launched or something. Took a while to look for those "coffins" when I was looking for a square on the deck :P
I remember being at Gen-Con in the 90's and seeing a game of Harpoon[1] going on. It was pretty amazing seeing all of the ships they were using. Maybe not as impressive as some of the Warhammer setups, but still pretty cool. I remember talking to a few of the folks and they believed it was the best game of this type. Larry Bond was also an author of some note.
I never played tabletop Harpoon, but the IBM-PC computer game Harpoon was one of my favourites many decades ago. It was a game that highlighted the devastative power of air superiority over pure naval engagements. A squadron of soviet Blackjack bombers armed with Kitchen missiles could take out an entire carrier group or ground base while staying out of reach of carrier based fighters.
Wish there was a version of this game that runs in a browser or on modern tablets.
CMANO is great if you can get past the spartan graphics and UI (and to be honest the target market for such games probably doesn't care much about the presentation as long as the gameplay is solid). There's something uniquely satisfying about watching military engagements play out as you direct the units.
Don't forget the rather high price for a "video game". I do find it interesting that the group behind it distributes the database of unit information that backs the actual game for "free" (it's just available, with AFAIU, no hoops to jump through)
Interesting how in these early wargames (see also H.G. Wells' "Little Wars" from 1913) firing was simulated by a physical action while in modern games this is generally settled by dice or other random number generator.
He was captain of a large battleship (akin to the Bismarck or Tirpitz) and I guess these ships were mainly used in long range stand off attacks, because he would talk about seeing the muzzle flashes of enemy ships through his telescope, then waiting 30 to 90 seconds to see where the shells would land near/on his ship.
I was always enthralled by the fact that you knew shells were heading your way bringing death and destruction, but you had to wait around a minute to see if they missed you or they impacted your vessel, and in that time, you had to plot an evasive manoeuvre as well as return fire solutions.
The distance and isolation of sea combat somehow makes it more haunting than the land warfare equivalent of an artillery barrage.