Few firearms have attracted as much attention, curiosity, and mythical attributes as the blunderbuss. Indeed, it often seems that fiction has overwhelmed the facts. To add to the mystery, the literature is conflicting with regard to defining exactly what a blunderbuss is, what it was used for, and how it performed. What is the difference between a blunderbuss and a musketoon? Is the blunderbuss really designed as a weapon of defence using whatever ammunition one might find in the garden? What was the real purpose of the flared bell mouth of the blunderbuss? Despite the extraordinary interest, the many extant examples of blunderbusses found in public and private collections, and the numerous related publications over centuries, it appears that virtually no properly controlled scientific studies have been carried out to address blunderbuss ballistics. Unfortunately, it was not possible for the author to carry out the carefully designed comprehensive experiments required for such a study. Thus, this article is a modest attempt to combine what information is available from some published blunderbuss ‘tests’, together with the results from more scientific forensic studies of the performance of sawn-off shotguns, and the addition some ballistic science and suggested scaling laws, to improve our understanding of blunderbuss ballistics.

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英国大炮及其弹道学

很少有枪支能像大炮一样引起如此多的关注、好奇心和神话属性。事实上，小说似乎常常掩盖了事实。更神秘的是，文献在准确定义大炮是什么，它的用途和性能方面存在冲突。blunderbuss 和 musketoon 有什么区别？大炮真的被设计成一种使用花园里可能找到的任何弹药的防御武器吗？大喇叭喇叭喇叭口的真正目的是什么？尽管引起了极大的兴趣，但在公共和私人收藏中发现了许多现存的大错例子，以及几个世纪以来的众多相关出版物，似乎几乎没有进行适当控制的科学研究来解决大炮弹道问题。不幸的是，作者无法进行此类研究所需的精心设计的综合实验。因此，这篇文章是一个适度的尝试，将一些已发表的大炮“测试”中的可用信息与对锯断式霰弹枪性能的更科学的法医研究结果结合起来，并添加了一些弹道科学和建议的缩放定律，以提高我们对大炮弹道学的理解。