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Post by Jas. Watson on Feb 23, 2009 14:09:25 GMT -6
I'd be glad to but I am rather technologically challenged. I know how to scan (but I doubt these things would fit in the scanner verry well--might try it though) and can take digital photos with the lab camera...but damned if I know how to get from the camera to e-mail--and certainly don't know how to post pictures on here. I'll get one of the techs here to get them at least on file then I can e-mail them to...somebody. What angle shots do y'all want? Just general or try to get inside views (as I say most of those pickup cases are crushed a bit). The headstamps are...not. The bases are plain. The metal is copper not brass on the carbine ones...haven't checked the pistol ones (but then we're not talking about them).
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Post by Mike Powell on Feb 23, 2009 15:05:15 GMT -6
Back to the zip or zing. Per Greer's 1876 tests, muzzle velocities of (1) Springfield Carbine firing .45-70, (2) same firing .45-55 and (3) Winchester 1873 Rifle firing Winchester cartridges (.44 RF or .44-40??) were 1364 fps, 1167 fps and 1127 fps, respectively.
The speed of sound at 3,300 foot elevation on a hot day is around 1140 fps. The 70 grain load stays supersonic for about 140 yards, while the 55 grain load does so only for 20 yards. At 100 yards their speeds are 1190 and 1060 fps. At 200 they've slowed to 1076 and 981 fps.
The suggestion that we shoot at somebody is worthwhile. We tried this in high school using a kid in a ditch and .30-'06. Don't remember the exact sound but the kid got scared after about five rounds; experiment called off. Also remember hours in the target butts with ample .308 about 6 feet overhead. I recall no sound other than the pop,pop,pop of rounds through the target which I always took to be the sound of paper and cloth giving way.
Perhaps as an adjunct to Geordie's Big Jaunt, some ballistic/acoustic study could be made. I've long wondered about sounds of gunfire from Wagon Box and Fetterman site as would be audible or no at the fort.
Yours,
Mike Powell
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Post by biggordie on Feb 23, 2009 16:14:40 GMT -6
Mike:
Unfortunately we wont be able to fire any meaningful volume of shots, ie no volleys etc. We might get one of the women to volunteer for the zip/zing experiments. I used to be able to shoot close enough to a person's ear for them to hear the round as it went by. Of course, if I missed and hit them, they wouldn't have heard it. You know the old saying........
JasW:
The best I can tell you is t0 check out the descriptions given by the archaeologists and their ballistics guy in the second book. Your cases are probably salted, or cannot be proven to have been fired between 1600 and 1730 on the day, anyway, or else nobody scratched his initials in them, or something....................there's ALWAYS something.
Gordie
PS Since I don't go into great lengths to base any of my story on cartridge case evidence, I think that I'll just limit my observations to: "Most of the soldiers had firearms of some sort, and quite likely some of the warriors did too.Both sides might have had bullets too. In any event, all of Custer's command wound up dead, presumably on the afternoon of 25 June, but perhaps some lasted until the 26th. All of them were dead by the 12th of August. There is some evidence that some of them were somehow killed by the NDNs mostly in the form of dead bodies, ,although some of these may have been salted by Superintendent Whatzizname in 1946, or 1923, or earlier or later."
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Post by Dark Cloud on Feb 23, 2009 16:30:30 GMT -6
That's right. It IS always something. That's the very point: they can prove nothing. Embrace reality and forego trying to institute pointless procedures and fussing about for an absolutely unproveable contention that is of no importance anyway.
You could do the shooting test with a microphone and remote digital recorder easy enough. But it would still be pointless. In any case, it's only a matter of time before it's suggested that Reno, in his cups, missed from close range, providing the zings Varnum remembers.
Yet again: has anyone qualified and objective verified the Weibert and Nye Cartwright findings? And where are these treasures so lovingly listed on the artifact maps?
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Post by Mike Powell on Feb 23, 2009 17:41:10 GMT -6
Gordie,
Now that you've established a background of shooting close to and through people, couldn't you just shoot one of the jaunters with a 55 and then a 70 grain load and ask them which hurt worse? The resulting indisputable fact could probably end 40% or more of the discussions here and considerably lower our carbon footprint. Surely someone will offer their buttocks to help save the planet.
Mike
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Post by zekesgirl on Feb 23, 2009 19:19:33 GMT -6
<<<<<<<<<<<Unfortunately we wont be able to fire any meaningful volume of shots, ie no volleys etc. We might get one of the women to volunteer for the zip/zing experiments. I used to be able to shoot close enough to a person's ear for them to hear the round as it went by. Of course, if I missed and hit them, they wouldn't have heard it. You know the old saying........>>>>>>>>> The only one of us with good enough hearing would be the young one. Which is not me! Can I bring my own rifles and play??? We can have a regular battle.
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Post by biggordie on Feb 23, 2009 21:36:23 GMT -6
zekesgirl:
I would be at a disadvantage, in that I am not allowed to transport firearms into, or out of, the U.S. of A., nor to have such in my possession while in that country. Something to do with parole conditions. And my daughter, as I've said many times, wont let me kill anyone anymore. She says that I must be "nice" now that I am a geezer.
Gordie
PS the vast majority of the finds shown on Greene's map, if that is the one referenced, are in the Battlefield Collections, down in the basement, and one can gain access for research purposes by making an appointment in advance [per whatever procedures are currently in place]. I can't go there anymore - something to do with outstanding warrants, or some such......
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Post by bc on Feb 23, 2009 22:45:51 GMT -6
They used to do a drill in the army where you low crawled under barbed wire while they fired M-60 machine guns overhead. They quit doing it before the time I went to basic training at Fort Puke cause some idiot got claustrophobic and stood up.
bc
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Post by AZ Ranger on Feb 24, 2009 5:24:27 GMT -6
Mike I think you are right on with that speed of the bullets and whether they are sonic or subsonic. If fired from a longer barrel the speed is greater also.
Besides I would expect the sound of the firearm makes at the first exit of the barrel should be louder than the buzzing of bullet even at several hundred yards.
During some hunts there is lots of bullets flying around. Since the majority of hunters are relatively safe there are few accidents. I have heard bullets in the air and when they strike a tree you can hear the thud. I would not describe the sound as a zing unless it hit something such a rock on the ground and deflected. To me it is a buzzing sound but describing sound is not that easy to do. Have no clue what speed they were traveling when I heard them.
Have any of you fired a 1911 45 and seen the bullet going away from you?
AZ Ranger
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Post by AZ Ranger on Feb 24, 2009 5:27:49 GMT -6
This site might have a lead on who to ask on what to look for. www.afte.org/distmemberreferal.htmIf I had to make a guess on what an expert might look for to separate 55 from 70 at some signigicant level of probability. - maybe there is a reaction between the blackpowder and the case wall that may be lacking where the wad contacted the case wall
- the movement of the wad may have effected the case wall
- the compression of the base metal maybe different and measurable
The easiest way was to xray the unfired catridges found. The ones with fragement of the wad retained would be relatively easy to identify as a 55 gr carbine round. If you pick them up and don't note the exact location and anything found inside the case then you have a nice artifact with no value as to whether it was a 55gr or 70gr .45-70 of significance to the battle. I could ask our DPS firearms expert at the crime lab but it always a difficult conversation. Nothing is as simple as just looking.
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Post by AZ Ranger on Feb 24, 2009 5:30:22 GMT -6
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Post by markland on Feb 24, 2009 7:41:08 GMT -6
That's right. It IS always something. That's the very point: they can prove nothing. Embrace reality and forego trying to institute pointless procedures and fussing about for an absolutely unproveable contention that is of no importance anyway. You could do the shooting test with a microphone and remote digital recorder easy enough. But it would still be pointless. In any case, it's only a matter of time before it's suggested that Reno, in his cups, missed from close range, providing the zings Varnum remembers. Yet again: has anyone qualified and objective verified the Weibert and Nye Cartwright findings? And where are these treasures so lovingly listed on the artifact maps? I hereforth declare this to be number 17. Billy
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Post by Jas. Watson on Feb 24, 2009 10:40:34 GMT -6
I'm at a loss. This ctg thing all started because someone said here, that while looking over a large collection of picked up cases he didn't see a single 45/70 case. And naturally we all wonder how the heck someone could so easily discern so easily one way or the other. I can't. So I dig out some from my batch of junk...look them over really carefully even to the point of running a glass down inside...and all I see is Montana dirt in there. So no matter what part of the field these came from, or when they were dropped there (definitely period fired though) or by who, the question still remains; how is it so damned easy to spot whether they are 45/70 or 45/55 when they all look about the same. How can anyone say by looking at a pile of these that there is none of one and all of another? I'm stumped--and still haven't gotten a real answer......
JW~
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Post by Dark Cloud on Feb 24, 2009 11:21:31 GMT -6
28. You can't count OR read, Markland. Try WalMart's Blue Ice Helper.
We were originally told here, years back, that you had to xray the case and sometimes indications of the wadding would be there. If indications were NOT there, that's all it meant. After a century or whatever in the outdoors, many things can vanish and appear with copper.
How in the world can you be so sure it's "period fired"? The only relevant period is that two hours on June 25, 1876 or, if Reno field, those two days. How were you able to discover that?
This is the Glossary of Information need again. As I understand it, ALL the cases for the carbine are .45/70, which references chambering SIZE. Some, perhaps all, had the reduced 55 grains of the carbine cartridge load. So technically, all the cases are .45/70, but the load could be 55, and can be distinguished by weight with a complete cartridge (did the Army clearly mark them? Doubt it; soldiers would expect that....), or kick when fired, or magnifying glass soon after firing, or an x-ray machine thereinafter. None of which establishes relevance to the battle.
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Post by Jas. Watson on Feb 24, 2009 15:10:18 GMT -6
DC, Pretty much my views exactly. But on 'period fired' I got you on that one! I am in a lab and checked the firing pin dents and interior of the cases to determine that the amount of metal breakdown (corrosion) is consistent with a century of outdoor expsosure (I am trained and experienced in that to be able to tell--we do it with Civil War stuff all the time). And besides who after the 19th century would be shooting really obsolete (and very undependable by then) internal primed (with notoriously bad shelf life) ammunition anyway? Of course it's possible...but hardly probable, so I could make a safe call that they were period fired--by which I don't necessarily mean those exact two hours or whatever...because after all they could be 'plants', right? Only that they are very consistent with other army casing found in the area.
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