Earliest Gun Battle?

[Dusty Morningwood]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_britain_batt...GVvZmJyaXRhaQ--

[Slowhand Bob, 24229]

Earliest guns in battle were probably used in China, based on most tales I have heard????

[Gold Canyon Kid #43974]

Earliest guns in battle were probably used in China, based on most tales I have heard????

All the history I have read says that is the case.

[Captain Woodrow Cahill, SASS # 54363]

There may have been prior battles fought elsewhere using guns as far back as the 10th century in China, but this is the first evidence of their use in Britain. It's still rather amazing that these artifacts survived after being buried in damp soil for 500 years.

 

One bit of irony - the lead bullet is also still intact. So much for it being an environmental hazard.

[Slowhand Bob, 24229]

That may be BUT what iffen you dug it up and thought it was a peanut and ate it??? According to Sara Brady you would have to spend the rest of your life as a broke tooth retard, very bad medicine thet lead is.

[Colorado Coffinmaker]

Actually, probably just a couple of hours after the "second" firearm was assembled in China.

 

Coffinmaker

[Driftwood Johnson, SASS #38283]

Howdy

 

The guns in question probably looked something like this:

 

Handgonne

 

They were called Handgonnes. You are looking at the rear end, the business end is at the far end of the photo. Basically they were an iron or bronze barrel with a wooden rod protruding out of the end.

 

This photo is a pretty good representation of how they were used:

 

Shooting Handgonne

 

Although the weapon in this photo is not a very good representation of an actual handgonne, the gunner is using it the way they were actually used. There was a touch hole at the top of the barrel, just like on early cannons. A small amount of powder was placed in a depression at the mouth of the touch hole. The wooden rod was squeezed against the body to steady the weapon. The rope in the gunner's hand is a smoldering fuse or 'match'. In order to fire the weapon, the gunner had to place the smoldering end of the match to the touch hole to light the priming charge. Then the flame would propagate down to the main charge inside the bore. Obviously, shooting this way was highly inaccurate. The gunner's attention was on touching the match to the touch hole, not aiming the weapon.

 

The success of these weapons, and the reason they supplanted bows was two fold. It only took a day to train a man to use one. It took years for an archer to master the long bow. Accuracy was not important with the handgonne, a line of men facing the enemy would all fire a volley more or less at once, each man simply pointing the weapon in the general direction of the enemy. Shooting this way, there would usually be plenty of hits.

 

It took the development of the Matchlock some 100 years later to come up with a weapon that could be aimed in the conventional manner that we are used to. The Matchlock had a stock not much different than what we are used to today. It could be mounted to the shoulder and the weapon could be sighted just like we do today. And the development of the serpentine lock freed the gunner from having to manipulate a match into a touch hole, the lock mechanism did it for him. His attention could be directed at aiming.

 

As far as the environmental impact of lead on the soil is concerned, you can be sure if the lead ball is pitted, that it has been leaching lead into the soil.

[Marauder SASS #13056]

From the first sentence, it appears they are referring to the earliest in Great Britain (and possibly Europe):

Archaeologists believe they have found evidence of the first use of firearms on a British battlefield after fragments of shattered guns were unearthed on a site that saw one of the bloodiest battles ever fought on English soil.

 

Good info, Driftwood.

[Driftwood Johnson, SASS #38283]

Howdy Again

 

Let's not forget that firearms were still experimental weapons at this point. Characterizing this battle as a 'gun battle' is a little bit misleading. There were still plenty of archers, as well as mounted knights and cavalry who fought in European battles at this time. At this time gunners constituted a very minor part of any army.

 

It was not until the early 1500s with the advent of the matchlock musket, that firearms began to supplant archers on European battlefields.

[Jack Houston # 35508]

I'd say just after midnight