Talk:Naval artillery

Merge Naval Gunfire into this article
This page is little more than a definition. See wiki policy on dictionary entries. Naval Gufire is essentially the same thing.--Counsel 18:02, 17 February 2006 (UTC)


 * This page needs expansion, not merging. Naval Gunfire support (which appears to be a particular term) is an application of the (main) armament of a warship for supporting land operations as opposed to merely engaging with a shore target. The main use of naval guns through the years has been between ships. A proper article on naval artillery would include an overview of the development of the armament of warships from the middle ages forward. GraemeLeggett 12:35, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I regard Naval artillery as a term that was current in the early 20th century. IMO, Naval Gunfire Support is a specific term of art referring to the use of gunfire from ships to "soften up" beaches before an amphibious landing is initiated. The idea that Naval Gunfire is used by ship against ship is a good one, too. I agree with GraemeLegget about the content of a proper article on Naval Artillery, but I think maybe a better name could be found. Lou Sander 16:42, 14 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately most newcomers wouldn't recognize the term Naval Gunfire Support even though that's the correct techical term - so it should remain Naval Gunfire. I'm a school-trained spotter from the US Marine Corps - former artillery officer and naval gunfire support officer trained at Ft. Sill and Little Creek in the 80s.


 * I don't see why newcomers wouldn't recognize Naval Gunfire Support but would recognize Naval Gunfire. Is there some particular reason for thinking so? Lou Sander 12:56, 22 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, it will need the requested move procedure. The sooner we initiate the formal procedure the sooner it'll move. GraemeLeggett 14:13, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

--- I also agree that this page should be expanded and NOT merged with Naval Artillery. Naval Artillery is just a small subset of NGFS. While the details may be complex, naval artillery is a fairly simple concept. NGFS includes a high level of coordination with any amphibious assault teams and is more of a mission rather than a class of weaponry. NGFS may utilize forward operating aircraft, be it manned or unmanned, as an aid in targeting and damage assessment. It is more complicated than simple "naval artillery". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 205.179.111.2 (talk • contribs) 23:09, 14 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Also, shouldn't the Naval Gunfire article be renamed Naval Gunfire Support? Lou Sander 12:02, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
 * That's what it originally was, before someone started moving & merging without discussion...--Jpbrenna 07:00, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I've moved Naval Gunfire back to naval gunfire support, which is the correct term. I also disagree with the merge, and since over the course of four months there seems to be a consensus not to merge, I'm removing the merge notices. TomTheHand 19:37, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: not moved. Aside from the capitalization issue, there does not seem to be any consensus or compelling evidence presented here that naval gunnery would be the best, or even a precise, term. Naval guns seems to have some support, but it should probably be a new move request at this point. ErikHaugen (talk &#124; contribs) 21:13, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Naval artillery → Naval Gunnery – The literature consistently refers to "naval gunnery" or "naval guns." In external sources, "Naval artillery" has a specific and limited meaning: it refers to land-based guns manned by naval personnel. I haven't encountered anyone using the term "naval artillery" to indicate shipboard guns in any cases other than WP, recent Internet forum posts, and excessively literal translations of German texts. This article should be renamed "Naval Gunnery." Chelt (talk) 13:14, 11 October 2011 (UTC) Oppose I can't recall many mentions of naval artillery specifically as naval-manned guns on land. You'll need to give specific citations before I believe that that's the commonest meaning of the term. And your preferred alternative is incorrect as I understand gunnery as the means used to hit the intended target, forex, methods of fire control, etc. Not anything to do with the guns themselves.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 22:19, 11 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Maybe naval gunnery, but not the capitalised proposal. Srnec (talk) 23:24, 11 October 2011 (UTC)


 * HNSA maintains a library of manuals and historical documents, at http://www.hnsa.org/doc/index.htm; the titles and descriptions on that page never include the term "artillery," though "guns" and "gunnery" do appear. Norman Friedman's book on battleship gunnery is titled Naval firepower: battleship guns and gunnery in the dreadnaught era.


 * I'd propose the opposite challenge: find a reliable source that uses the term "naval artillery" to refer to guns mounted on ships. Even a quick Google search for the term "naval artillery" reveals no examples of the term being used to indicate naval weapons, with the exception of recent Internet forum posts, lousy German translations ("artillerie" taken literally), and WP articles. Those search results do, however, quickly turn into historical texts referring to naval guns on land.


 * I'll grant that "Naval guns" might be more semantically equivalent to the current title. However, writers about naval topics just don't talk about the guns in isolation from the control systems. Chelt (talk) 01:06, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I could accept "Naval guns" as the most common term, but Hodges & Friedman and Schmalenbach (both listed here, IIRC) put the lie to your assertion about books only dealing with guns and gunnery both. Not to mention any book about naval guns prior to Tsushima.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:32, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Schmalenbach? Again, literal translations of German terms. Can you provide a 20th century English source that talks about "naval artillery," and if you can, can you find enough sources to outweight the preponderance of writing that refers instead to guns and gunnery? Chelt (talk) 03:33, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The OED defines "gunnery" as "(1) The science and art of constructing and managing guns, esp. large military and naval guns" - that is, not only control, but the design and service of guns. Chelt (talk) 03:37, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You deliberately missed my point in furtherance of your own agenda; I pointed out that Schmalenbach only covers German naval guns, not gunnery. I didn't use him to support the terminology point one way or another. I've already said that a better title is "Naval guns", although you lose the parallel with ordinary artillery which, presumably, is why the original term was used.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 13:51, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Oppose. Why a capital should be introduced is beyond normal understanding, for one thing. N oetica Tea? 05:33, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Oppose - "gunnery" should not be capitalized. Both "naval" and "gunnery" are common nouns and are capitalized only when they occur at the start of sentences, titles and headings. Joja lozzo  19:34, 12 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Oppose "naval gunnery" is the use of naval guns, such as the accuracy of a ship's gun crews, not the guns themselves. 70.49.126.190 (talk) 03:52, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment: There should be no capitalization of "gunnery". HandsomeFella (talk) 19:33, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The term "Naval Artillery"
I did a little researching and have determined that that the strict definition of Naval Artillery is: Naval guns ashore used in coastal defense and (usually) manned by naval personal. The naval guns are designed to track and fire on moving targets. Two way time (talk) 02:20, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * And your source is what?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:33, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I have a Navy publication. This link will take you to a pdf: http://www.eugeneleeslover.com/ENGINEERING/Naval_Ordnance_And_Gunnery/Naval_Ordnance_V1_Part1.pdf 137.144.145.158 (talk) 18:51, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Interesting stuff, thanks. No use of naval artillery, but a clear distinction between naval ordnance and naval gunnery. Naval ordnance would also be an acceptable name for this article, IMO.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 14:59, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I was a fully-trained Naval officer back in the 1960s, and I never heard the word "artillery" used in connection with naval guns. That, coupled with the total absence of citations, makes me VERY suspicious of the term "Naval artillery." I certainly support moving the article, but of course "Gunnery" shouldn't be capitalized. I think this article should be "Naval guns", because that is what it is about. Lou Sander (talk) 22:45, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I reviewed several generations of United States Navy publications (and interviewed two generations of naval and Marine Corps officers) during my Vietnam war era active duty, which included teaching midshipmen in a class entitled Naval Weapons Systems following practical experience as secondary battery officer aboard a cruiser. The United States Naval Academy textbooks of 1915 and 1920 were entitled Naval Ordnance and used the 16th-century terms gun and gunnery almost exclusively when describing rifled tube weapons and their use.  United States Marine Corps officers trained from those textbooks often used the naval term gun for their indigenous rifled artillery.  The above-noted Naval Ordnance and Gunnery reference was published in 1957 reflecting nomenclature adopted in 1948 (although it may have been in use during the second world war).  The officer in charge of a warship's weapons is described as the gunnery officer, although the first lieutenant controlled weaponry aboard auxiliary ships, reflecting the older tradition of deck department officers including gunnery among their responsibilities.  By the 1970s the senior warship officer's title had changed to weapons officer and navy textbooks were entitled Principles of Naval Weapons Systems.  These textbooks focused on sensors and guidance systems and gave comparatively little space to what they described as tubular impulse launchers.  United States naval focus on guided anti-vehicle weapons has left the impulse launchers largely within the realm of anti-personnel weaponry controlled by the Marine Corps; and the 1985 textbook uses the terms gun and artillery somewhat interchangeably reflecting predominance of land targets falling within the traditional responsibility of the Army (and Marine Corps using army weapons).  I like Lou Sander's suggested title of Naval guns to conform to the terminology of the era of their importance in ship vs ship combat, although the present title may be more useful for 21st century users accustomed to modern terminology.Thewellman (talk) 18:55, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

15th / 16th Centuries - Contribution based on a part of a chapter (artillery) of the article Portuguese India armadas
Time ago I introduce two paragraphs based on part of one of the chapters of the article Portuguese India Armadas. The authorship and credit goes entirely to the true author Walrasiad. And we have the most complete matter in that chapter by the author himself in that article. Perhaps the author might contribute or correct in the future to put it in another way or even more complete, if necessary. I might have changed a bit over the paragraph, but honestly, it seemed best to leave it roughly, in the words of the true author (although it is a part), to guarantee better accuracy and quality. I do not see any inconvenience in the case, but I leave this warning in case some cautions about possible plagiarism, since I never had such an intention.

The second aspect is to develop further the contributions and other Mediterranean navies and other states (and search about it), in case you find it gets a little "unbalanced" the role of Portugal at that turning point in naval artillery. The big leap was taken in Portugal since the late 15th century and is recognized by historians, and I think the reference was missing in the article. Then I leave to you all the assessment of all the evaluation of this and the eventual better development and more balanced information for this chapter of this article, if it is the case. Thanks --LuzoGraal (talk) 20:54, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

It is hard to belive that Portugal imported cooper since it is one of Europe's largest exporters And producers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.180.152.59 (talk) 15:00, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

External links modified (February 2018)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Naval artillery. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20020220090540/http://riv.co.nz/rnza/hist/local/rbl6.htm to http://riv.co.nz/rnza/hist/local/rbl6.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080213152724/http://riv.co.nz/rnza/hist/gun/rifled2.htm to http://riv.co.nz/rnza/hist/gun/rifled2.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 21:49, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

table with ranges
I thought it might be instructive to add a table with info on how firing ranges were changing over time. Unfortunately I felt forced to squeeze lots of comments into the footnotes, which is not in line with the convention adopted here (it keeps footnotes purely referential), unfortunately I did not see any other way. Also location of the table within the article is not very fortunate, as it sits in a section dealing with early age while the table data is most interesting for 19-20th centuries. However, sections dealing with later periods are stuffed with great photos and there is no place for a table there. --2A02:A31B:833C:7480:D1DB:49C2:3C07:BAF3 (talk) 09:22, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm struggling with converting these references into footnotes in their own footnote group, using efn. So far, I've done that conversion, and I have now converted the reference portion of each footnote back into actual references. Then next task is to properly format those references and consolidate identical references. -Arch dude (talk) 19:24, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
 * hello Arch dude, great stuff, thanks for your effort. I think the whole thing makes more sense now. rgds, --2A02:A31B:833C:7480:C88E:8E31:5388:AC0B (talk) 21:09, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Copyright infringement?
I stumbled on a book that had large parts of this exact Wikipedia article. "Tools of War: History of Weapons in Early Modern Times". Did Wikipedia use this book or did this book use Wikipedia, who was first? Try a google search for this part: "Increased projectile weight through increased caliber was the only method of improving armor penetration with this velocity limitation" My first hit is on books.google.com, my 2nd hit is this Wikipedia article. At least about 1/3 can also be found in this book, even an image. Assuming this book copied Wikipedia, not just a few sentences but entire articles, is this legal? NicoLaan (talk) 15:49, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Hey NicoLaan. the publication date of the book you mentioned was may 12, 2016. if you happen to know when this section of the article was added, then check the date on it. If the date is later than May 12 2016 then yup, its copied. reporting the user might help as well. I'm not to sure about the legal side of things, but my guess is that it would need a citation. I would suggest looking up Wikipedia's rules on the subject. hope this helps! 172.116.88.149 (talk) 03:03, 4 May 2018 (UTC)


 * If we've copypasted from a book then we will need to a) reword our text to address copyright issues, and b) add a citation for the facts we're pointing to. If a book is copypasted from Wikipedia then the author is a bit lazy and they don't deserve to charge people for their work, but its not unlawful as the information in our articles is intended to be freely reusable by third parties. -- Euryalus (talk) 03:10, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but it's a violation of copyright law. Wikipedia is copyrighted. Copys are permitted only in accordance with our copyright licence, which requires that the copy is attributed to Wikipedia. If the book does not credit Wikipedia, then they broke the law. (Unless the editor who added the material to Wikipedia also wrote the book or granted a separate license of the material). -Arch dude (talk) 05:27, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

FOLLOWUP: That verbiage has been in our article since before 2016, so it was not copied into Wikipedia from the book. -Arch dude (talk) 05:21, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Reverts
I reverted your edits because one was nonsensical and the other changed text without changing the source. If that battle was the first one in Asia, then what's your source for that statement? I don't imagine that the existing source supports that statement.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:48, 16 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the reply. I see what you mean, and I am sorry for the sloppy editing. Well now checking the allready included reference it seems that it states that the Korean Battle is the first in general and not in Asia, which is conflicting with the above references. So I rewrote the sentance simply as a list of early Asian records of such use of weaponry. Nsae Comp (talk) 20:42, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Over-simplified ranges
The table under "Artillery ranges" is very close to being original research. The short/medium/long ranges are mostly arbitrary, especially when they mix completely different eras of gunpowder technology. How far you could reliably hit or damage something varied on many different factors. With galleys, for example, Guilmartin (1974, pp. 199-200) describes that commanders fighting other galleys would hold their fire until the very last minute since it was not worth the risk of firing at several hundred yards, miss and have the enemy galley close the distance in less time than it took to reload the guns.

At the very least, completely different types of artillery should be presented separately. Having 600 years of tech in the same table is pretty iffy. Peter Isotalo 16:28, 27 June 2023 (UTC)


 * The effective range article may be of interest. Thewellman (talk) 18:13, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Not in this context. It has a short passage about the modern definition of "effective range" for all kinds of weapons and is otherwise more of a coatrack of various definitions relating to engineering, math and physics.
 * Peter Isotalo 21:45, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

The purpose of naval artillery
The article seems to suffer from that unfortunate notion that ship-sinking naval artillery is the only really relevant naval artillery. This is not quite how the history of technology works. It's not always a neat line of progression up to modern times.

It seems to me that pretty much all the content about how the Portuguese were focused on anti-ship cannons as early as the 15th century is incorrect. This pretty much completely ignores the Mediterranean as the main focus of the European powers until at least Lepanto. I recommend reading Guilmartin as a start. He's pretty influential regarding the development of naval artillery. Peter Isotalo 22:50, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Portugal had no interests east of the Pillars of Hercules, only on the western coast of Africa and points across the Atlantic, so citing historians who make such broad statements is rather misleading. The deleted text had what look to be good sources and should be restored in some way as I suspect that most naval historians haven't tapped Portuguese sources, focusing solely on the Northern European and Mediterranean sources. I think that some of the superlatives in the deleted text might need to be toned down, but it seems that there are two parallel threads of development going on, especially before Philip II inherited Portugal, although I'm not sure how ultimately influential Portuguese developments were. Perhaps none at all, but I think that it does deserve coverage.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 23:26, 2 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Guilmartin and others do actually describe Portuguese activity, especially in the Indian Ocean. There's no need to look up obscure primary sources to get "the Portuguese perspective". To the best of my knowledge, authors like Guilmartin, Glete and Rodger aren't myopically obsessed with just Western Europe or anything like that. They're not the naval history scholars out there either. Check out their works and they'll guide you to plenty of others. Hattendorf & Unger's War at sea in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance is a very nice anthology with a lot of really good analysis.
 * I can't stress enough how important I believe it is to deal with the skewed perspective on pre-modern naval warfare. I see this all over English Wikipedia and I honestly think it's because too many users are stuck in the modern-era perspective of how sea power and naval warfare should work. I keep running into articles that try to describe 16th century ships as belonging to "classes" and just generally being way too specific about measurements, ranges, accuracy, etc. Not too surprising considering how dominant projects like OMT are. I sincerely believe we have a pretty serious systemic bias towards the modern era within our coverage of military history. There's some decent coverage of Roman and Byzantine warfare, but other than that, it's pretty bad. I mean, we had this nonsense article about "pre-industrial armoured ships" for over a decade and no one from WP:MILHIST seems to have noticed. Peter Isotalo 09:20, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia reflects its editors' biases and interests, how could it not? Personally, I'm not much interested in the Age of Sail and have done very little on ships before the Napoleonic Wars. And I'm OK with that. We each have to hold up our torch to illuminate our little portion of the Encyclopedia as best we can. And if that reinforces the coverage of one area while neglecting other, possibly more important areas, so be it. It's the nature of the beast. If you've identified an area that you feel is undeservedly neglected, you have it within your power to at least partially rectify that.
 * I remember that pre-industrial armoured ships article. For my own part, it seemed that people were willfully misunderstanding the true nature of the Korean turtle ships, but I didn't have the sources to hand or the energy to refute/correct it against what I expected to be energetic resistance. I'm glad that somebody did, and if that person was you, thanks for your efforts.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 13:26, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

With regards to "together with the elimination of windage as a result of the tight fit,"
I have a suggestion to make regarding the aforementioned excerpt. I think anyone who understands anything about guns would think they understood the sentence, but miss its meaning entirely. I only visited the windage link due to curiosity as to how windage would be defined in Wikipedia, and, alas, it turns out it's an entirely different usage than what an overwhelming majority of people use today.

Clearly the editors of this article understand very well the subject matter and how to write an excellent Wikipedia about it, but since the burden falls on me to argue my case, let me start by saying that, obviously, words mean what people understand them to mean. Since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a technical book, words that a very small percentage of the reader base would recognize should be clarified. Therefore, I would suggest changing the word to something that won't be misleading.

Of course, the final decision and the manner in which it shall be done should be left to the editors of the page, or to whomever might be bold enough.

Best regards, ~Dr Victor (talk) 19:34, 22 January 2024 (UTC)