The Sling: king of the missile weapons

[Erpingham]

Dave, I am surprised anyone could hit a target with an AK47 at 1,000 yards or so.  Are you sure it was not a Dragunov (SVD-63) sniper rifle? 

Be fair patrick - asking the guy what weapon he was using probably wasn't a priority on having been hit in a fire fight

[Patrick Waterson]

Be fair patrick - asking the guy what weapon he was using probably wasn't a priority on having been hit in a fire fight

It can matter, though: "Do you realise you should have had a +1 on that last roll?" 

[Dave Beatty]

It was definitely an AK.  The poor dumb dude just emptied a whole clip in my general direction and scored the proverbial golden BB hit.  What he didn't know was that I had two US Navy A-7s on high CAP with 1200 rounds of 20mm and 24 cans of MK-20 Rockeye and I called them in on his position which was about a klick away (as measured on the tourist map I was using).  When the mortuary affairs guys investigated what was left of the building a day or so later they pulled 8 bodies and 8 AKs out of the rubble.  So it was definitely an AK.  Plus I still have the bullet which was lodged in my flak jacket and it looks like a 39.  I actually have an old Mosin Nagant that I sometimes hunt with and it shoots a 7.65x54 so do have something to compare it with.  BTW, it wasn't Mister Charles, it was some poor unlucky Cuban down in Grenada in October, 1983.

[Patrick Waterson]

Thanks, Dave - it just never crossed my Brit-trained mind that someone would loose off a whole clip at 1,000 yards.

Good call with the strike, by the way. 

[Chuck the Grey]

I apologize for the delay in posting the information from the Manfred Korfman's 1973 Scientific American article on the sling. Life, work and family matters have consumed me over the last month. The article is a general survey of the sling in history and does not have any footnotes or references listed. There is very little information of use to the gamer on the use of the sling.

For the range of the sling, Korfman quotes Xenophon's speech to the 10,000 that the Rhodian slingers had double the range of the Persian slingers due to the use of lead missiles by the Rhodians as opposed to the large stones used by the Persian slingers. Korfman quotes Xenophon as saying the Rhodian slingers outrange the Persian archers.

Korfman further states, "On the basis of Xenophon's comment alone, it seems probable that a slinger casting lead missiles could attain a range in excess of 400 meters."

Korfman also quotes Vegetius description of biconical sling missiles being deadlier than arrows against leather armor. Vegetius claims that even if the sling missile didn't penetrate the armor, it would cause a fatal internal injury.

Korfman uses an incident from Thucydides to demonstrate the effectiveness of slingers. When the Acarnanians district was invaded, they harassed the invaders with a hail of missiles at long range with the result, "it was not possible for [the invaders] to stir without armor."

Korfman describes two methods of launching a missile from the hand sling (funda in Latin). In the first, the slinger whirls the sling in a semi-horizontal motion around his head before releasing the missile. In the second method, the slinger whirls the sling in a vertical plane parallel to his body before launching the missile. The second method would result in a high angle trajectory.

That's all the information that I found that might be useful to a gamer. If you have any questions, I will be glad to try to answer them.

[Patrick Waterson]

Thanks, Chuck.

Xenophon's coment is:

"For the rest of the day the one army continued its march and the other its pursuit. And the barbarians were no longer9 able to do any harm by their skirmishing at long range; for the Rhodian slingers carried farther with their missiles than the Persians, farther even than the Persian bowmen. [17] The Persian bows are also large, and consequently the Cretans could make good use of all the arrows that fell into their hands; in fact, they were continually using the enemy's arrows, and practised themselves in long-range work by shooting them into the air. In the villages, furthermore, the Greeks found gut in abundance and lead for the use of their slingers." - Anabasis III.4.16-17

The Greek actually has the Rhodians outrange "ton Person esphenodon kai ton toxoton", i.e. the Persian slingers and archers.  The 'lead for the use of [Greek] slingers' almost certainly explains why, although the Rhodians may have employed a different model of sling and a different technique to gain extra range.

One may note in passing how the Cretans "were continually using the enemy's arrows, and practised themselves in long-range work by shooting them into the air", indicating that they were familiar with indirect shooting.