Do you believe you could defeat Horatio Nelson's navy with a single .50 BFG and a hold full of ammunition for it?

Thank you user, very cool.

you would fire a few shots and then your crew would burn you alive for witchcraft

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this
plus mk211 raufoss.

Is that a joke? They had no interior waterproofing, they had no way to stop water going from one stage to another or one deck to another.

The question is how many of them do you have to kill from beyond their effective range before they give up?
A 36 pounder had a range of what, 6 or 700m? The gau19 posted up thread could clear decks from at least 3x that distance. Stick it on the fastest ship you can find and just keep harrying them.

Yes, I do. Mostly because they're British.

>and a hold full of ammunition for it?
I'm assuming there would be a few extra barrels?
Because that's a lot of ammo to run through one barrel.

Yes, but each one will cost you a barrel of rum. You have replacement parts for everything but the receiver.

What would you bring if your goal was just not getting pressed into service by the roving press gangs?

I bet .50 AP-I would do wonders for the structural integrity of masts.

A 36 pounder could throw an explosive shell about 2.3 miles.

He said .50 BFG

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Just keep shooting their officers until the chain of command is gone.

Good luck sniping boat-boat, though.

Theres a difference between maximum range and effective range.

based and redpilled

effective range of a M2HB is like 1.5km, and by that distance its probably lost enough energy that it wouldn't tear through the ships of the line like you would hope.

>What is API v wood

Wow I never knew the warthog turret was real

THICC

You don't need to shoot through the hull, just wreck the rigging and everyone on the deck.
You can't run a ship like that from entirely below deck.

Nothing in Halo is original. Have you seen James Cameron's Aliens, or read Iain M. Banks' Culture series?

Has anybody tried shooting solid wood with large calibers? There's got to be at least one gunfag on youtube who's tried different thicknesses

youtube.com/watch?v=KZgzuso-wCU

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if you knew where they stored their powder it would be game over

nahh...the captains would realize that they are dealing with some kind of powerful musket, they would make everyone non essential to ship movement take cover and quickly improvise cover for the ones that have to make the ship move, get in range, order the personnel in cover to prepare to fire and blast your ship into smithereens.

They had wooden plugs that they would hammer into holes.
They also had carpenters on board to fix any hull damage and a bunch of guys with buckets.
Its not going to sink unless its on fire or ripped in half. Also wood floats.

below the waterline

between this (the fact that naval officers were generally intelligent and capable men) and this (the fact that the 50bmg was juuust getting through a 16 inch thick pine tree), i would say that you would get absolutely fucked. Ships had incredibly thick oak planking, and massive crews. unless you had some kind of unassailable clifftop position, i think the officers would send most of the men below decks, get close enough to fire on you, and then unleash massive broadsides at you and turn you into atomized faggot mist

what if your ship was armed by 20+ men with .50 BMG rifles and two 1919's?

>itt: people who don't know shit about ships of the line

.50 BMG has nowhere near enough power to punch through the 25 to 30 inches of solid oak of the average Man-o-war's hull.

Blue tips, people. Fucking blue tips.

Ships of that age were nothing but wood, canvas, hemp, and tar. Tar everywhere for waterproofing. Flammable as fuck. Get a few fires started and it's fucking over. If you have an M2 or better yet a GAU 19 you can start far more fires than they crew could hope to put out. Once fire gets to powder it's even worse.

Another option is to snipe officers. If you have a position of concealment the navy wouldn't know what to attack. Even if they start scanning around with telescopes you're not creating a cloud of black powder smoke to give away your position.

>sniping
>at a moving ship
>at a specific individual
>on a moving ship
>on the open seas

Why has OP not clarified what kind of position you're in? On a ship? On land? What?

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Crews at that time were highly trained in fire drills, and even way before the battle of Trafalgar, ships of the line were equipped with complex and efficient fire extinction systems. You will run out of bullets before they run out of water.

Also, good luck hitting the powder magazine, which was the most armored part of the ship and way below the waterline.

Perhaps "sniping" is the wrong word. Targeting? You've got essentially unlimited ammo, there's no need to fall into the one-shot-one-kill mentality.

Then they'll just seek cover, making your job even harder, wooden cover or not.

Yes, they did fire drills because the risk of fire was so high. M2HB fires what, 500-ish rounds a minute? Yeah, ain't no way they're putting out that many fires that fast, especially when you're spreading them all over the ship. If they start sending sailors up on deck to deal with fires then those men are getting mowed down.

I agree you'd probably never get a direct hit on a magazine but it's likely for fire to spread there. Not to mention there would be smaller amounts of powder elsewhere that could easily act an an accellerant.

That's fine. Stop shooting. When they come back out, resume.

Like I said originally, that idea depended on you having some means of concealment.

he said a hold full of ammo so I assume a ship, which is probably on water. What's the point of fighting a navy on land.

Also that warship is really aesthetic for me idk why

>A 36 pounder could throw an explosive shell about 2.3 miles.
and land it in about a 2.3 mile radius.

>Even if they start scanning around with telescopes you're not creating a cloud of black powder smoke to give away your position.

You've overlooked one fact: You're on a single ship fighting against like 30 ships. So much for not giving away your position you clown.

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No, but adding one per french ship would have turned the tide of the battle at trafalgar.

No but a 12 boat squadron of PT boats would have wiped the floor with them. Torps using contact fuses would easily lay waste to ships of the line, and PT boats often mounted 40mm and 37mm guns, which would have had enough punch to lay waste to even trideckers.

After the Battle of Trafalgar the HMS Pickle was dispatched to send word back to Britain about the victory and upon its arrival the whole country rejoiced and for a long time the date was celebrated with everyone throwing "Pickle Parties".

I had always wondered why the fuck the ship was named Pickle. Apparently it's because it was bought by a Vice Admiral for the Jamaica station in direct defiance of orders not to purchase ships. The ships original name was Sting. The admiralty, learning about the purchase too late to do anything about it, ordered the name changed to Pickle. As in "In a pickle", "In a tough spot". Because this Vice Admiral had put them in a tough spot by purchasing a ship without permission but now the deed was done.

I find that hilarious.

>What's the point of fighting a navy on land.
They'd never see it coming.

it doesnt have to punch through the hull, just the masts

a quick burst from a 50 gatling gun to the base of 1 or 2 mast means the ship isnt going anywhere

Like I said, it only works if you can maintain concealment. If there's only my ship vs. theirs then you're right, that plan won't work. however if there are other ships around, or if there is land around, then there is no real way for them to know where the fire is coming from.

Do you get to choose the boat you fight on?

How would a modern naval vessel hold up to the shells used at the time?

He specified that the gun used would be a BFG .50

This thing

I wish we could get OP to clarify. OP wote "50 BFG". That doesn't exist. It's either "BFG 50" out of order, or it's a typo of "50 BMG". I assumed the latter.

after 200 or so shots, your retinas would detach

That is a GAU-19. It's .50 BMG with 3 barrels instead of the GAU-8's 6 barrels of 30mm. The GAU-19 is actually designed to go on armored trucks rather than aircraft.

French pre-dreadnoughts were too ugly to sink

absolutely not, you'd be outmaneuvered and buggered mercilessly by a thousand drunken sailors

Fun fact, wood floats - that's why boarding actions where the way to win fights on wood wall ships

Was buggery still a capital offense at the time?

No. Honestly .50 BMG isn't going to do a ton of damage to a large, 3 foot thick hulled ship of the line.

You'd need to hit something that would catch flame as opposed to simply smouldering the hull ist gonna burst aflame

The whole ship has tar everywhere. Tar is used to treat the ropes to stop them from rotting, it's painted on the outside of the hull to protect the wood from water. The gaps between the timbers were "caulked". That means that little bits of rope and fiber, soaked in tar, were hammered into the gaps for waterproofing. 50 cal rounds tend to cause a lot of splintering when they impact wood, creating ideal tinder. The whole damn thing is a tinderbox waiting to go up.

Now I agree that not every shot is going to start a fire, but if you have essentially unlimited ammo hosing hundreds of potential fires every minute and the sailor's firefighting efforts are hampered by the incoming rounds, you bet there would be a problem.

As an aside, look up "red hot shot" in the age of sail. Very nasty.

Why the fuck are you faggots talking about spraying them with hundreds and thousands of rounds when you're using a single-shot rifle?

OP, we really need to know details. Are we stationed on board Santissima Trinidad, are we in a frigate under our command, are we in a pinnace? Are we the only presence, or are we just magically present at Trafalgar so shit is going down anyways? Do we appear in the middle of the fleet, or at range, or do we appear in France as he was about to sail for the Caribbean?

hey, to the victor go the spoils

No. If you're within range to do any sort of real damage with .50 BMG, you're also within range of a 50-gun broadside.

>.50 BFG
>short range
Pick one.

A 24 lb cannon could reach out to about 1600 meters or so as an effective range for shooting at things that aren't other thick-sided ships. So if you're some chucklefuck in pinnace or gig with your bolt-action rifle, yeah, you might pick off a few guys before you get splattered, but you're gonna die.

>when you're using a single-shot rifle?

Because it's not clear that we are using a single-shot rifle. See