Assuming you traveled back in time to the 1400's, would a recoiless rifle be the easiest bang/buck weapon to make with available materials for siege-work? The launcher is just some strong sheet metal and the round is just a warhead on top of a casing full of holes and propellant?
>>28390308
Why?
There were cannons in the 1400's.
>>28390365
Not nearly as portable a recoiless rifle and very few could be loaded from the breech.
![FLA-1574-Product[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/tAdJgZy.jpg "FLA-1574-Product[1].jpg")
Sharps Rifle with falling block action and percussion caps. Shooting nitrated paper cartridges.
This is the best you could do with Renaissance material science and industry.
An entire Army with breech loading rifles, could allow any European power to take over all of Europe. Since they will be facing matchlocks, pikes, and halberds.
I don't know why you wouldn't just take some Poudre B.
>nitrocellulose - nitric acid and cotton fibers, both understood in the 13th century
>paraffin - distilled hydrocarbons were first recorded in the 9th century
It'd take a few attempts to get the formulation right, obviously. But you'd revolutionize warfare a few hundred years earlier than you were supposed to. Once you figure out how to build it you have entire state arsenals that can be readily converted to producing it with materials at hand.
>>28390308
>1400
>sheet metal
>>28390469
Try again. You try to fire that made by some craftsman in the 14th and it will blow up. The key is metallurgy. The steel used in the 1850s-1860s was light years ahead of 14th steel. Steel was a horribly expensive resource to produce until the industrial revolution and new forging techniques and formulas. Then it was cheap, strong and the machining was precise.
Ain't nothing like that existed or could exist back then. Even the fulminated mercury cap technology requires machines.
>>28390684
Or just cordite. Nitrocellulose, nitroglycerine, and petroleum jelly. Rolled in to thin sheets that are easily cut in to any shape or size required, significantly easier to store and transport than black powder, not to mention safer. And you have the advantage of a propellant that's something like four times as powerful as black powder for the same weight without generating smoke.
>>28390412
In the 15th century breech loading was reasonably common for cannons. It would later on be largely abandoned as the single-piece cast cannons offered significantly greater strength.
>>28390469
Such an army might be very difficult to stop on the battlefield, but better rifles won't keep your men safe from disease and starvation as you march them around.
>>28390308
Nigga, if you want to revolutionize the 1400s bring some fucking antibiotics. Your army will consistently be larger than all of your contemporaries because you won't lose half of it to disease just walking to the battlefield.
Pretend you're a prophet with the power to heal all wounds, attract religious fanatics, launch the final crusade.
>>28390741
On the disease part. If you went back with modern ideas sanitation would be primary on my list but getting a bunch of shit farmers to stay clean may be worse then fighting any army.
>>28390721
you could do it in iron of the period. it is just going to be heavier and bulkier.
Fuck that shit
Can I go back to classical times and make a hot air balloon?
>>28390755
People didn't understand how disease worked, they weren't stupid. They thought bad smells made you ill, but were otherwise pretty clean.
Every single day they'd line the floor with rushes to help insulate the home and provide a barrier to the floor. And then at the end of the day they'd scoop them all up and throw them out for a new set, because damn nigga they aren't going to live in a house with day old rushes that's gross. Yeah, they had no idea what cleanliness actually was, but that didn't stop them from being clean like human beings always have been. The only concrete archaeological evidence we have for pre-historic human habitation are middens, giant mounds of bones and shells and fossilized turds because even literal cavemen knew better than to shit where they ate.
>>28390768
No, you can't. Iron is incredibly brittle. Why do you think they made cannons like barrels with strips of iron bound in rings of iron (reason we call a gun barrel a barrel), is because iron wouldn't stand up and if you scale it down, try to rifle it and use a decent civil war era charge its going to kaboom.
>>28390814
Yes and no. What you're saying isn't wrong. But there are great periods in history where basic common sense sanitation was thrown out and not used.
>>28390846
My point is that what we consider to be common sense wasn't a thing in times gone by. We know that lead is as toxic and dangerous as a thing can be, but the Romans kept entire cities sustained by lead pipes. We know that washing your hands is probably a good idea because we understand microbial lifeforms, but a cook in the 1400s wouldn't understand that; to him, as long as his hands look clean they obviously are clean because the concept of something so small that it isn't visible to the human eye is absolutely alien.
>>28390902
I get that and I'm not disagreeing with you. What I'm trying to add though is easy things that were even known to them back then go out the window.
>>28390932
>>28390902
If you subscribe to the Guns, Germs, and Steel, line of thinking. Most of the disease problems could be solved by keeping the drinking water away from the sewage, and keeping the livestock and butcher shops separate from themselves and the people.
>>28390932
Yeah, but that's probably circumstance more than anything. You live in a city that literally wasn't designed to have sanitation or even a dumping ground for human waste, so you dump that shit in the river because you have no other choice. And then some poor asshole downstream collects drinking water for the day.
>>28390963
I used to. Its interesting but Diamond has been discredited many times. At least he made made me think.
>>28390736
Petroleum jelly requires at least some petroleum refining. Even with the future know-how, I don't think you could do that at renaissance tech.
>>28390752
>Pretend you're a prophet with the power to heal all wounds, attract religious fanatics
It's like you want to get burned at the stake
>>28391026
"The raw material for petroleum jelly was discovered in 1859 in Titusville, Pennsylvania, United States, on some of the country's first oil rigs. Workers disliked the paraffin-like material forming on rigs because it caused them to malfunction, but they used it on cuts and burns because they believed it hastened healing."
Take the rod wax, distill lighter products, and you've got petroleum jelly. And the Greeks knew about distillation just fine.
If you want to honestly want to change the battlefield during the 1400s, try not to get fixated on pieces of equipment. I know half of the people in this thread are probably circle jerking to the thought of using HE rounds to fuck up Cavalry.
But developments like the four-course crop rotation, vaccinations, even postal services would drastically benefit your army.
If you really want a piece of kit to make your army unstoppable. Radio.
Give the knights and commanders in your army walkie talkies and chain of command wouldnt have to rely on bugles and signals.
>>28391157
Don't forget a good police force to maintain order.
>>28391157
desu reorganizing the entire military and feudal system (a la napoleon) and fighting with every man available sounds like the best way to win.
>>28391157
>knights
>chain of command
You could argue that command positions based on training, performance, seniority, and experience instead of being born to the right family would benefit.
Nobility was what made you a knight, not because you were intelligent or actually good at fighting. Peasant were peasant because society made them that way, and if they were trained and educated, could probably make a terrific NCO or commanding officer.
>>28391617
>Napoleon
>Getting rid of the Feudal System
Louis the 14th, Mazarin and Richelieu are rolling in their graves.
>>28391717
closer to the Mongolian system of meritocracy, I think it would be interesting to see that in medieval Europe
>>28391717
Of course that would be incredibly helpful, but most high rank commanders during the 1400s would be of noble rank and blood. Typically Knights and lords
As for peasants, many were granted a level of rank in their army , however they would be subordinate to nobility or freemen that were professional soldiers (men of experience and education).
>>28390815
>Iron is incredibly brittle
Iron is incredibly DUCTILE you fucking nitwit. Carbon is what makes it it brittle and then you either have steel or some grade of cast iron, not iron iron. But being ductile means it doesn't handle pressure well, thus the reinforcements.
>>28391830
>DUCTILE
*Malleable
>>28391827
There were plenty of commoners that were armed and trained to knightly standards, and served as more-or-less noncoms. They were called 'serjeants.'
http://steventill.com/2010/08/13/medieval-history-term-of-the-week-sergeant/
The more you know.
>>28391886
Wow I never knew this. Thanks man.
>>28391981
You're welcome.
