Shooting Ranges

[jonphilp]

Hi,

I believe that the specialist slingers such as the Rhodians and Balearic islanders (and Romans) used to produce special lead shot for the slings not just using natural ammunition that they found on the ground and it is this ammunition that produced the greatest ranges. From Smithsonian History of warfare (Ancient Greeks) "With lifelong training, seasoned slingers might cast lead bullets over 350 yards, shattering the bones of any exposed limbs and faces of heavy infantry and forcing archers to retreat out of range" It also mentions in the text that slingers "deployed in front of and behind infantry depending on the particular stage of fighting" I am not certain if they are indicating that slingers could keep up a barrage from behind a battleline in the same way certain bow can support shoot in the impact phase of FOG.

This is an interesting discussion.

[ethan]

I highly recommend the book "From Sumer to Rome" which looks at the modern recreations of ancient weaponry. The main thing I recall is that most of the weapons are much less lethal than we might think, especially if you assume people had any level of armor.

IIRC they have a discussion of slings which amounted to "slings would be pretty lethal against unarmoured targets, but even minimal head armor and a shield would make them a nuisance at most."

I am sure there are other more recent discussions but this one is nicely packaged up. Probably best to find a local academic library I think the book itself is pretty pricey...

[philqw78]

slingers might cast lead bullets over 350 yards, .

And the effective combat range of a modern assault rifle is 300 meters. Wow.

[rbodleyscott]

slingers might cast lead bullets over 350 yards, .

And the effective combat range of a modern assault rifle is 300 meters. Wow.

Clearly the British army would be more effective if they changed to slings. No more ammunition worries.

[SirGarnet]

Clearly the British army would be more effective if they changed to slings. No more ammunition worries.

Well, lead is environmentally hazardous, and almost everything else is a carbon or other no-no, so I expect the Eurimperial government would require that British ammunition be made in a way that permanently reduces carbon from the atmosphere, perhaps by compressing it into small, very hard, durable carbon pellets with a very long shelf life that would be suitable for combat purposes (if not of high enough quality or the right colour to be marketed for jewelry). Sounds like a win-win for everyone.

[jonphilp]

I can only quote what is in the book!. As the effective range of the SA80 rifle is claimed to be between 400-650m with telescopic sights perhaps the ancient Greeks etc had better eye sight than we do today!

[philqw78]

I can only quote what is in the book!. As the effective range of the SA80 rifle is claimed to be between 400-650m with telescopic sights perhaps the ancient Greeks etc had better eye sight than we do today!

The effective combat range of the L85A2 rifle is 300m as an individual weapon and 600m as a section. The main problem in combat is seeing someone to shoot at.

[rbodleyscott]

Clearly the British army would be more effective if they changed to slings. No more ammunition worries.

Well, lead is environmentally hazardous, and almost everything else is a carbon or other no-no, so I expect the Eurimperial government would require that British ammunition be made in a way that permanently reduces carbon from the atmosphere, perhaps by compressing it into small, very hard, durable carbon pellets with a very long shelf life that would be suitable for combat purposes (if not of high enough quality or the right colour to be marketed for jewelry). Sounds like a win-win for everyone.

Or use Ferrera-Rocher as ammunition and then attack while the enemy are vomiting.

[deadtorius]

I doubt the ancients had better eyesight, 1000 men standing in line 300m away is most likely pretty easy to see and you just chuck rocks in that direction and if your lucky it hits someone. Modern rifles are meant to hit an individual target, I doubt slingers or even ancient archers were able to pick out an individual target at 300m and hit it effectively.
Kind of like the Napoleonic tactics of standing in line to shoot at 50 yards since the darn muskets were so ineffective that only by massing your firepower could the average soldier hope to hit anything. Still not sure I would want to be standing under a hail of lead musket balls or lead sling shots.

[grahambriggs]

slingers might cast lead bullets over 350 yards, .

And the effective combat range of a modern assault rifle is 300 meters. Wow.

Clearly the British army would be more effective if they changed to slings. No more ammunition worries.

Ancient weapons have been considered in later times. Wellington, it is said, enquired about raising a body of longbowmen for the peninsular war - largely i suspect on the grounds that the enemy infantry were unarmoured and the rate of fire ware greater than that of muskets. But was told there were insufficient men who could use one.

Benjamin Franklin was quoted as saying ‘If we could have longbows the American revolution would be won in three years′

[grahambriggs]

Lead shot was ceratinly more effective than pebbles - hence it's use in the Macedonian army with "a present from Philip" written on it.

The problem with all theoretical ranges though is that accuracy is an issue, the projectile loses speed through air resistance and so has less force and the enemy has time to crouch behind his shield. Plus, ammunition supply comes into play. I'm a bit suspicious of secondary sources that make such claims. Is the author drawing on first hand accounts? Or have they done tests to see if slings could do that damage at extreme ranges?

Good quality slingers, on the other hand, seemed to focus on accuracy. The well known example being balearic slingers in training having to hit their food before being allowed to eat it.

[lawrenceg]

Clearly the British army would be more effective if they changed to slings. No more ammunition worries.

The rifle already comes with a sling.

[marioslaz]

Hmm. Strangely, I wasn't trying to claim that everything non-spherical is unstable! Spherical projectiles are also obviously not the most efficient, otherwise we would presumably still be using them for everything. They are merely an easy starting point, something that will behave reasonably in flight without the need for any cleverness.

Here is some examples of lead projectiles in Republican era (photo from Archeological museum of Bologna)

Slings were cheap if you used stones, but with lead projectiles you were more effective. Lead projectiles of course were not cheap.

[ShrubMiK]

Yep, seen those before.

My point was that I would have thought they would have a tendency to tumble end-over-end in flight, increasing the effect of air resistance on range and accuracy, unless the sling imparts spin around the long axis.

How big and heavy are those? They would have less armour-penetrating potential than an arrow point, although presumably heavier so there's a chance that concussive effect would do some sort of damage to the target anyway.

[philqw78]

What does the writing mean??

[Strategos69]

I can read in one of them CAES IMP, which can mean CAESAR IMPERATOR
I can't help with the rest

[philqw78]

I was hoping for stuff like "Up yours Herman" or "From Flavius with love" like modern projectiles.

[marioslaz]

Slings in Roman army were made of leather: a little sack with two strings. There is also some evidences of staff slings, that is a sling mounted on a pole. They rotated 2-3 times over head and then they released the shot. These projectiles are a couple of inches long and weight was between 20 and 130gr (~1-5 ounces). Accordingly to ancient reports, slinger could be very accurate, enough to hit a duck on fly (I suppose anyway not just a single bird, but on a flock). Slings were used also to hunt and Balearic slingers, as you surely know, were credit to be between the most accurate slingers of their era.
Writings on projectiles could be very different. You can find name of a city, number of a legion, name of a manufacturer, simple advices to the projectile ("hit", or "kill" or even "hurt") or messages to enemy: "get this", "eat this", "here is the present" and so on...

[ShrubMiK]

Sorry, but I'm very sceptical about this claimed super-accuracy of slings at any reasonable range. I'll need convincing

Leaving aside the possibility of less accuracy in flight for aerodynamic reasons, there's also the consideration that the mechanics of powering and releasing a sling shot are surely less repeatable than drawing a bow and releasing.

There's sighting and aiming to consider as well. You look down the arrow and, with some allowance for range drop and wind you hit what you see (if it is a stationary target, anyway). If you fire the sling directly above your head it means the offset is only vertical not horizontal. but there's still the question of at what point around the circle does the shot come out? Presumably from the side rather than the front of the circle.

(Which leads to another question. Which way did a sling rotate? It feels natural to me for a right-handed slinger to rotate such that looking down from above the sling would be going anti-clockwise, and with arm more or less vertical. That would mean the release point is going to be a fair way to the side of the eyeline. Maybe with a bit of practise you could rotate the other way with no awkwardness, which would breing the release point directly above the eyeline.)

What error in angle does it take to miss a human sized target at say 100m? Not very much.

Just because a huntsman goes out with a sling and comes back with a couple of rabbits to feed his family doesn't of itself tell you that he didn't take 100 shots to do it! As has already been pointed out, stones are cheap and plentiful. And rabbits generally aren't shooting back at him or leaping at his throat (Mr. Python excepted), which might put his aim off slightly.

So we've seen modern tests into how far sling shots of various types can fly, which are interesting and food for thought and may or may not have much relevance for gauging performance of ancient slingers. But I'd be interested to know if sling enthusiasts have attempted to demonstrate high accuracy of slings at various ranges?

This is all bottom-up argument of course, which is not how the rules are arrived at. Top-down points of scepticism are that just because an author attributes amazing feats to some group of people doesn't mean it was actually true; and that if slings were cheaper yet as effective as bows in general, do we have any evidence of people who had the option to use bows but preferred slings?

[ShrubMiK]

I like this guy, btw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dnIgrDjS30&NR=1

Couldn't find much equivalent content of slingers in realistic action, I may have a firther look tomorrow, but I did just find this one which is interesting, especially when somebody comments on the first shot having serious curve!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvmpyzL4wd4

(This is the guy who on the distance chart according to www.slinging.org is in third place overall and first place using stone rather than fancy projectiles).

The sling is obviously extremely long in this case, which presumably increases distance but makes accuracy harder.