Gun laying

Gun laying is the process of aiming an artillery piece or turret, such as a gun, howitzer, or mortar, on land, in air, or at sea, against surface or aerial targets. It may be laying for direct fire, where the gun is aimed similarly to a rifle, or indirect fire, where firing data is calculated and applied to the sights. The term includes automated aiming using, for example, radar-derived target data and computer-controlled guns.
Description.
Gun laying is a set of actions to align the axis of a gun barrel so that it points in the required direction. This alignment is in the horizontal and vertical planes. A gun is "traversed" (rotated in a horizontal plane) to align it with the target, and "elevated" (moved in the vertical plane) to range it to the target. Gun laying may be for direct fire, where the layer sees the target, or indirect fire, where the target may not be visible from the gun. Gun laying has sometimes been called "training the gun".
Laying in the vertical plane (elevation angle) uses data derived from trials or empirical experience. For any given gun and projectile types, it reflects the distance to the target and the size of the propellant charge. It also incorporates any differences in height between gun and target. With indirect fire, it may allow for other variables as well.
With direct fire, laying in the horizontal plane is merely the line of sight to the target, although the layer may make allowance for the wind, and with rifled guns the sights may compensate for projectile "drift". With indirect fire the horizontal angle is relative to something, typically the gun's aiming point, although with modern electronic sights it may be a north-seeking gyro.
Depending on the gun mount, there is usually a choice of two trajectories. The dividing angle between the trajectories is about 45 degrees (usually between 0 degrees and 90 degrees), it varies slightly due to gun dependent factors. Below 45 degrees the trajectory is called "low angle" (or lower register), above 45 degrees is "high angle" (or upper register). The differences are that low angle fire has a shorter time of flight, a lower vertex, and flatter angle of descent.
All guns have carriages or mountings that support the barrel assembly (called the "ordnance" in some countries). Early guns could only be traversed by moving their entire carriage or mounting, and this lasted with heavy artillery into World War II. Mountings could be fitted into traversing turrets on ships, coast defences or tanks. From circa 1900 field artillery carriages provided traverse without moving the wheels and trail.
The carriage, or mounting, also enabled the barrel to be set at the required elevation angle. With some gun mounts it is possible to depress the gun, i.e., move it in the vertical plane to point it below the horizon. Some guns require a near-horizontal elevation for loading. An essential capability for any elevation mechanism is to prevent the weight of the barrel forcing its heavier end downward. This is greatly helped by having trunnions (around which the elevating mass rotates vertically) at the centre of gravity, although a counterbalance mechanism can be used. It also means the elevation gear has to be strong enough to resist considerable downward pressure but still be easy for the gun layer to use.
Until recoil systems were invented in the late 19th century and integrated into the gun carriage or mount, guns moved substantially backwards when they fired, and had to be moved forward before they could be laid. However, mortars, where the recoil forces were transferred directly into the ground (or water, if mounted on a ship), did not always require such movement. With the adoption of recoil systems for field artillery, it became normal to pivot the saddle on the lower carriage, initially this "top traverse" was only a few degrees but soon offered a full circle, particularly for anti-aircraft guns. The introduction of recoil systems was an important milestone.
History.
Background.
The earliest guns were loaded from the muzzle. They were typically little more than bare barrels moved in wagons and placed on the ground for firing, then wooden frames and beds were introduced. Horizontal alignment with the target was by eye, while vertical laying was done by raising the muzzle with timber or digging a hole for the closed end.
Gun carriages were introduced in the 15th century. Two large-diameter wheels, axle-tree and a trail became the standard pattern for field use. The barrel was mounted in a wooden cradle with trunnions to mount it on the carriage. As technology improved, the trunnions became part of the barrel and the cradle was abandoned. Nevertheless, they were relatively large and heavy.
Horizontal alignment was a matter of moving the trail. To achieve the required elevation angle, various arrangements were used. At the simplest, it was wedges or quoins between the breech and the trail, but wooden quadrants, or simple scaffolds mounted on the trail, were also used to support the breech and provided larger choice of elevation angle. Screw elevation devices were also used as early as the 16th century.
However, naval and some fortress carriages and mounting evolved differently. Field mobility was not required, so large wheels and trails were irrelevant. Headspace below decks was often low. This led to compact carriages, mostly on four small wheels. Obviously, large horizontal traverses were more difficult, but such things were unnecessary when shooting broadside. However, in fortresses wider traverse was required. One solution was platform and slide mountings. Wide traverse was also useful on some shipmounted guns.
Laying required sights. At its simplest, this means nothing more than aiming the guns in the right direction. However, various aids emerged. Horizontal aiming involved sighting along the barrel, this was enhanced by a notch made in the ring around the barrel at the breech end and an 'acorn' on the ring around the muzzle. This was still used in the 19th century in some instances.
The range with a flat trajectory was called 'point blank' range. However, while point blank may have been enough for some purposes, field artillery (whether mobile or static) and guns in fortresses needed longer range. This required ways to measure elevation angles and know the relationship between the elevation angle and the range.
Early mechanical gunnery aids.
The first recorded device to measure an elevation angle was Niccolò Tartaglia's invention of a gunners' quadrant circa 1545. This device had two arms at right angles connected by an arc marked with angular graduations. One arm was placed in the muzzle, and a plumb bob suspended against the arc showed the elevation angle. This led to many calculations relating elevation angle to range.
The problem was that these calculations assumed what today is called an "in vacuo" trajectory – they made no allowance for air resistance against the projectile. What was needed were range and accuracy trials to determine the actual relationship between range and elevation angle. The practical approach was conducted by William Eldred, Master Gunner at Dover Castle, in gunnery trials in 1613, 1617 and 1622. He used a wide variety of guns, including the culverin, demiculverin, falconet and Saker. From the results of these trials, he produced range tables for elevations up to 10 degrees for each type with a standard propelling charge weight.
A problem affecting gun laying, was the tapered external barrel shape. This affected elevation when the gun was aimed by sighting along the top of the barrel. In the early 17th century, 'dispart sights' compensated for this. This was a piece of metal placed on the muzzle to make the line of sight parallel to the axis of the bore. Another technique involved measuring the depth of the barrel through the touchhole and at the muzzle, the difference being the wedge size needed to compensate for the tapered barrel.
The ballistic pendulum was invented in 1742 by English mathematician Benjamin Robins, and published in his book "New Principles of Gunnery", which revolutionized the science of ballistics, as it provided the first way to accurately measure the velocity of a bullet.
Robins used the ballistic pendulum to measure projectile velocity in two ways. The first was to attach the gun to the pendulum, and measure the recoil. Since the momentum of the gun is equal to the momentum of the ejecta, and since the projectile was (in those experiments) the large majority of the mass of the ejecta, the velocity of the bullet could be approximated. The second, and more accurate method, was to directly measure the bullet momentum by firing it into the pendulum. Robins experimented with musket balls of around one ounce in mass (30 g), while other contemporaries used his methods with cannon shot of .
The first system to supplant ballistic pendulums with direct measures of projectile speed was invented in 1808, during the Napoleonic Wars and used a rapidly rotating shaft of known speed with two paper disks on it; the bullet was fired through the disks, parallel to the shaft, and the angular difference in the points of impact provided an elapsed time over the distance between the disks. A direct electromechanical clockwork measure appeared in 1840, with a spring-driven clock started and stopped by electromagnets, whose current was interrupted by the bullet passing through two meshes of fine wires, again providing the time to traverse the given distance.
Tangent sights were introduced in the 19th century. These provided the rear sight used with an 'acorn' or similar foresight at the muzzle. The tangent sight was mounted in a bracket beside or behind the breech, the eyepiece (a hole or notch) was atop a vertical bar that moved up and down in the bracket. The bar was marked in yards or degrees. This direct-fire sight was aimed at the target by moving the trail horizontally and elevating or depressing the barrel. By the late 19th century the simple open tangent sights were being replaced by optical telescopes on mounts with an elevation scale and screw aligned to the axis of the bore.
Modern era of gunlaying.
Rifled and breech loading artillery were introduced from the mid-19th century, notably by William Armstrong, whose gun equipped Royal Navy warships from the 1850s.
An important advance in the art of gun laying came with the introduction of the first recoil mechanisms. The barrel recoil was absorbed by hydraulic cylinders and then the barrel was returned to its firing position by a spring that had stored some of the recoil energy. This meant the gun did not have to be repositioned after each time it was fired.
An early prototype incorporating this design feature was built in 1872 by Russian engineer, Vladimir Stepanovich Baranovsky. His 2.5-inch rapid-firing gun was also equipped with a screw breech, a self-cocking firing mechanism and it fired a fixed round (shell and cartridge case together). The recoil mechanism was contained in the gun cradle.
Despite this effort, nothing followed from it, and it was only with the introduction of the French 75 mm in 1897, that recoil systems started to become normal. The gun's barrel slid back on rollers, pushing a piston into an oil-filled cylinder. This action absorbed the recoil progressively as the internal air pressure rose and, at the end of recoil, generated a strong, but decreasing, back pressure that returned the gun forward to its original position. By this time smokeless powder had replaced gunpowder as the standard propellant.
The first practical rangefinder was developed by Barr & Stroud a pioneering Scottish optical engineering firm. Archibald Barr and William Stroud became associated from 1888. In 1891 they were approached by the Admiralty to submit a design for a short-base rangefinder for trial, and in 1892 they were awarded with a contract for six of their rangefinders. The device, operated by one person, brought two images from a distance object into coincidence allowing the distance to be calculated from their relative motions.
Now that the barrel remained aligned with the target after firing, the more primitive tangent sight was replaced with the rocking-bar sight for direct-fire sighting. These were installed on QF 4.7-inch Gun Mk I–IV quick firing gun from 1887. The rocking-bar (or 'bar and drum') sight had an elevation scale, could mount a telescope as well as the open sight, and provided a small amount of horizontal deflection. These provided 'independent line of sight' because they enabled data to be set on the mount and the telescope (or open sight) aimed at the target independent of the barrel elevation.
A related problem, particularly for large and longer range guns, was that the wheels could be at different heights due to the slope of the ground, which caused inaccuracy. Before the First World War, the British BL 60-pounder gun was fitted with oscillating (reciprocating) sights, using sighting telescopes, a sight clinometer and range scale as well as a deflection drum for the telescope. These mounts could be cross-leveled, which removed the need for the gun commander to calculate a deflection correction for uneven wheels. Cross-leveling introduced the third axis into laying.
Indirect artillery fire.
Modern indirect fire dates from the late 19th century. In 1882, Russian Lt Col KG Guk, published "Field Artillery Fire from Covered Positions" that described a better method of indirect laying (instead of aiming points in line with the target). In essence, this was the geometry of using angles to aiming points that could be in any direction relative to the target. The problem was the lack of an azimuth instrument to enable it; clinometers for elevation already existed.
The Germans solved this problem by inventing the Richtfläche, or lining-plane, in about 1890. This was a gun-mounted rotatable open sight, mounted in alignment with the bore, and able to measure large angles from it. Similar designs, usually able to measure angles in a full circle, were widely adopted over the following decade. By the early 1900s the open sight was sometimes replaced by a telescope and the term goniometer had replaced "lining-plane" in English.
The first incontrovertible, documented use of indirect fire in war using Guk's methods, albeit without lining-plane sights was on 26 October 1899 by British gunners during the Second Boer War. Although both sides demonstrated early on in the conflict that could use the technique effectively, in many subsequent battles, British commanders nonetheless ordered artillery to be "less timid" and to move forward to address troops' concerns about their guns abandoning them. The British used improvised gun arcs with howitzers; the sighting arrangements used by the Boers with their German and French guns is unclear.
Optical sights appeared in the first years of the 20th century, and the German Goerz panoramic sight became the pattern for the rest of the 20th century. They were graduated in degrees and 5 minute intervals, decigrads or mils (4320, 4000 or 6000/6300/6400 to a circle).
A feature of 20th-century laying was the use of one- or two-man laying. The US was notable for using two-man laying, horizontal on one side of the gun, elevation on the other. Most other nations mostly used one-man laying. The laying drill, dealing with all three axes, typically adopted this sequence: "roughly for line, roughly for elevation, cross-level, accurately for line, accurately for elevation".
The other main difference in sighting arrangements was the use of an elevation angle or alternatively the range. This issue became more complicated in World War I when the effects of barrel wear in changing muzzle velocity were fully recognised. This meant that different guns needed a different elevation angle for the same range. This led many armies to use an elevation angle calculated in a battery command post. However, in the 1930s the British adopted calibrating sights in which range was set on the sight, which automatically compensated for the difference of muzzle velocity from standard.
An alternative to this was a 'gun rule' at each gun; in this case the range was set on the rule and an elevation angle read and given to the layer to set on the sight. The issue was finally resolved by the introduction of digital computers in the battery command post that calculated the correct elevation angle for the range and muzzle velocity accurately and quickly.
Apart from calibrating sights, there was no significant difference in field artillery laying arrangements for most of the 20th century. However, in the 1990s new or modified guns started adopting digital sights, following their successful use in the multi-launch rocket system developed in the 1970s. In these the azimuth and elevation were entered manually or automatically into a layers computer, then guided the layer's use of horizontal and elevation controls until the barrel was in the required horizontal and vertical alignment. This computed a correction for the cross level of the gun and used feedback from electro-mechanical devices, such as gyroscopes and electronic clinometers, aligned to the axis of the bore. These devices were subsequently replaced by ring laser gyros.
Coastal and naval gun laying advances.
Most coastal artillery was in fixed defences, "fortresses" in some form. Their targets moved in two dimensions, and the gun had to be aimed at the target's future position. Some guns were relatively small calibre and dealt with relatively close targets, others were much larger for long-range targets.
Coast artillery employed direct fire, and until the late 19th century laying had changed little, apart from gaining telescopic sights, over the centuries.
Nineteenth-century improvements in gun design and ammunition greatly extended their effective range. In 1879, Major HS Watkins of the Royal Garrison Artillery invented the depression range finder, the position-range finder and associated fire control systems.
His description explains its essence:
It took almost 20 years to get it to full effectiveness, but its general principle became the norm for heavy artillery fire control and laying. Shorter-range guns retained conventional direct-fire laying with telescopes for much longer. In the 20th century, coast artillery, like field and the larger anti-aircraft guns, included corrections for non-standard conditions such as wind and temperature in their calculations.
Fire control systems.
Naval artillery on board capital ships soon adopted gunlaying arrangements broadly similar to Major Watkins' coast artillery pattern. The introduction of breech-loading guns, then recoil systems and smokeless powder, completed the change in warship armament from hull-mounted to turreted guns.
However, ships had a complication compared to land based guns: they were firing from a moving platform. This meant that their laying calculations had to predict the future position of both ship and target. Increasingly sophisticated mechanical calculators were employed for proper gun laying, typically with various spotters and distance measures being sent to a central plotting station deep within the ship. There the fire direction teams fed in the location, speed and direction of the ship and its target, as well as various adjustments for Coriolis effect, weather effects on the air, and other adjustments.
The resulting directions, known as a firing solution, would then be fed back out to the turrets for laying. If the rounds missed, an observer could work out how far they missed by and in which direction, and this information could be fed back into the computer along with any changes in the rest of the information and another shot attempted.
Rudimentary naval fire control systems were first developed around the time of World War I. Arthur Pollen and Frederic Charles Dreyer independently developed the first such systems. Pollen began working on the problem after noting the poor accuracy of naval artillery at a gunnery practice near Malta in 1900. Lord Kelvin, widely regarded as Britain's leading scientist first proposed using an analogue computer to solve the equations which arise from the relative motion of the ships engaged in the battle and the time delay in the flight of the shell to calculate the required trajectory and therefore the direction and elevation of the guns.
Pollen aimed to produce a combined mechanical computer and automatic plot of ranges and rates for use in centralised fire control. To obtain accurate data of the target's position and relative motion, Pollen developed a plotting unit (or plotter) to capture this data. He added a gyroscope to allow for the yaw of the firing ship. Again this required substantial development of the, at the time, primitive gyroscope to provide continuous reliable correction. Trials were carried out in 1905 and 1906, which although completely unsuccessful showed promise. He was encouraged in his efforts by the rapidly rising figure of Admiral Jackie Fisher, Admiral Arthur Knyvet Wilson and the Director of Naval Ordnance and Torpedoes (DNO), John Jellicoe. Pollen continued his work, with tests carried out on Royal Navy warships intermittently.
Meanwhile, a group led by Dreyer designed a similar system. Although both systems were ordered for new and existing ships of the Royal Navy, the Dreyer system eventually found most favour with the Navy in its definitive Mark IV* form. The addition of director control facilitated a full, practicable fire control system for World War I ships, and most RN capital ships were so fitted by mid 1916. The director was high up over the ship where operators had a superior view over any gunlayer in the turrets. It was also able to co-ordinate the fire of the turrets so that their combined fire worked together. This improved aiming and larger optical rangefinders improved the estimate of the enemy's position at the time of firing. The system was eventually replaced by the improved "Admiralty Fire Control Table" for ships built after 1927.
By the 1950s gun turrets were increasingly unmanned, with gun laying controlled remotely from the ship's control centre using inputs from radar and other sources.
Telescopic sights for tanks were adopted before World War II, and these sights usually had a means of aiming off for target movement and graticules marked for different ranges. Tank sights were of two general types. Either the sight was in fixed alignment with the axis of the bore with ranges marked in the sight, and the gunner laid the range mark on the target. Or during laying the gunner physically set the range to offset the axis of the bore from the axis of the sight by the correct amount and laid using the centre mark in the sight.
Some sights had a means of estimating the range, for example using a stadiametric method. Other tanks used an optical coincident range-finder or after World War II, a ranging machine gun. From the 1970s these were replaced by laser range finders. However, tank guns could not be fired accurately while moving until gun stabilisation was introduced. This appeared at the end of World War II. Some were hydraulic, while others used electrical servos. During the 1970s tanks started being fitted with digital computers.
Anti-aircraft gun laying.
The need to engage balloons and airships, from both the ground and ships, was recognised at the beginning of the 20th century. Aircraft were soon added to the list and the others fell from significance. Anti-aircraft was direct fire, the layer aiming at the aircraft. However, the target is moving in three dimensions and this makes it a difficult target. The basic issue is that either the layer aims at the target and some mechanism aligns the gun at the future (time of flight) position of the target or the layer aims at the future position of the aircraft. In either case the problem is determining the target's height, speed and direction and being able to 'aim-off' (sometimes called deflection laying) for the anti-aircraft projectile time of flight.
German air attacks on the British Isles began at the beginning of the First World War. Anti-aircraft gunnery was a difficult business. The problem was of successfully aiming a shell to burst close to its target's future position, with various factors affecting the shells' predicted trajectory. This was called deflection gun-laying, 'off-set' angles for range and elevation were set on the gunsight and updated as their target moved. In this method when the sights were on the target, the barrel was pointed at the target's future position. Range and height of the target determined fuze length. The difficulties increased as aircraft performance improved.
The British dealt with range measurement first, when it was realised that range was the key to producing a better fuse setting. This led to the Height/Range Finder (HRF), the first model being the Barr & Stroud UB2, a 2-metre optical coincident rangefinder mounted on a tripod. It measured the distance to the target and the elevation angle, which together gave the height of the aircraft. These were complex instruments and various other methods were also used. The HRF was soon joined by the Height/Fuze Indicator (HFI), this was marked with elevation angles and height lines overlaid with fuze length curves, using the height reported by the HRF operator, the necessary fuse length could be read off.
However, the problem of deflection settings—'aim-off'—required knowing the rate of change in the target's position. Both France and UK introduced tachymetric devices to track targets and produce vertical and horizontal deflection angles. The French Brocq system was electrical, the operator entered the target range and had displays at guns; it was used with their 75 mm. The British Wilson-Dalby gun director used a pair of trackers and mechanical tachymetry; the operator entered the fuse length, and deflection angles were read from the instruments.v
In 1925 the British adopted a new instrument developed by Vickers. It was a mechanical analogue computer Predictor AA No 1. Given the target height its operators tracked the target and the predictor produced bearing, quadrant elevation and fuze setting. These were passed electrically to the guns where they were displayed on repeater dials to the layers who 'matched pointers' (target data and the gun's actual data) to lay the guns. This system of repeater electrical dials built on the arrangements introduced by British coast artillery in the 1880s, and coast artillery was the background of many AA officers. Similar systems were adopted in other countries and for example the later Sperry device, designated M3A3 in the US was also used by Britain as the Predictor AA No 2. Height finders were also increasing in size, in Britain, the World War I Barr & Stroud UB 2 ( optical base) was replaced by the UB 7 ( feet optical base) and the UB 10 ( optical base, only used on static AA sites). Goertz in Germany and Levallois in France produced instruments.
By World War II the situation was largely as follows: for targets up to a few thousand yards away, a smaller-calibre automatic gun was used, with simple sights that enabled a layer to judge the lead based on estimates of target range and speed; for longer-range targets, manually controlled predictors were used to track the target, taking inputs from optical or radar rangefinders, and calculating firing data for the guns, including allowance for wind and temperature.
After World War II predictors changed from being electro-mechanical analogue computers to digital computers, but by this time heavy anti-aircraft guns had been replaced by missiles, but electronics enabled smaller guns to adopt fully automated laying.


Mega Man X7

Mega Man X7, known as in Japan, is a video game developed by Capcom for the PlayStation 2 console. It is the seventh main game in the "Mega Man X" series and the first in the series to appear on the sixth generation of gaming consoles. "Mega Man X7" was first released in Japan on July 17, 2003, with North American and European releases following in October 2003 and March 2004 respectively. The European version features a redrawn logo also used for future releases in the region. It was also released for Microsoft Windows exclusively in South Korea and Taiwan until the re-release as part of "Mega Man X Legacy Collection 2" ("Rockman X Anniversary Collection 2" in Japan) on July 24, 2018 for the worldwide release and July 26, 2018 for Japan, whose Windows version was released internationally via Steam along with PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. It is the first and only "Mega Man X" game to be a third-person shooter (as well as the third "Mega Man" game to use third-person view due to the "Mega Man Legends" franchise).
"Mega Man X7" takes place in the 22nd century. Daily human life is often disrupted by "Maverick" crime from the "Reploids" robots that live and work among them. The heroic "Maverick Hunter" Mega Man X has retired from the battlefield. As such, various groups have begun springing up to stamp out the ever constant threat of Maverick activity. Axl, a member of "Red Alert", questions his group's methods and deserts the team, only to be pursued by its leader, Red. Like other games in the series, "Mega Man X7" is an action-platform game in which the player fights through an octet of selectable stages. The game differs from previous side-scrolling entries by featuring fully 3D graphics intermixed with both 3D and 2D gameplay.
The development of "Mega Man X7" involved a challenging transition of the well-known "Mega Man X" characters into 3D. However, the reinvention of the series in both graphical and gameplay respects was met with a hostile critical reception. Reviewers found the game's foray into the third dimension well-intended but poorly executed.
Plot.
Following the Eurasia and Nightmare incidents, Reploids work diligently to rebuild the Earth. Growing weary of the seemingly never-ending Maverick Wars, X decides to retire in search of more peaceful solutions, leaving Zero in charge. In X's absence, Maverick activity rapidly begins to rise, which leads to the formation of an unsanctioned anti-Maverick vigilante group known as Red Alert. As the group grows more and more reckless, one of their members, a new generation Reploid prototype named Axl, decides to defect. Red, the group's leader, is angered by Axl deserting them, and goes on a rampage to get him back.
Axl is chased through a city by a mechaniloid sent by Red Alert to retrieve him, and the ensuing chaos draws the attention of Zero. After a battle against the mechaniloid, Zero takes Axl into custody at Maverick Hunter HQ. In response, Red issues a challenge to the Hunters: he will release some Mavericks that Red Alert has in captivity, and whichever group can defeat the Mavericks first will gain possession of Axl. Zero goes into action without hesitation, and Axl's remorse for what he has done fuels his desire to become a Maverick Hunter. As Zero and Axl battle Red Alert, Axl reveals that he possesses the ability to copy the DNA of other Reploids, making him invaluable to Red. X initially stays out of the conflict, feeling that it is pointless, but later joins in hoping to end the war quickly. Elsewhere, Red communicates with a mysterious figure known as "The Professor," who gives him additional power and shows him what Axl's copy ability can do. The Professor then takes possession of Red Alert, and orders Red to retrieve Axl.
Following the defeat of the Mavericks, the Hunters infiltrate Crimson Palace, the home base of Red Alert. There they defeat a reluctant Red and discover a rebuilt Sigma, who was behind Red Alert's corruption. Despite the Hunters defeating Sigma twice, he rises once again and punches Axl through a wall, before vowing to X and Zero that he will again return. Suddenly, Red reappears and Sigma attempts to possess him, but it turns out to be Axl (copying Red's DNA), who then proceeds to blast Sigma out of a window from the top of the palace.
The ending of the game depends on which character was used to defeat Sigma:
Gameplay.
"Mega Man X7" is the first of the two games in the series to have 3D gameplay in addition to the standard 2D style. When starting the game, the player has only access to returning Maverick Hunter Zero and newcomer Axl. The player can send the two characters to the same stage and both can be changed whenever the player needs to. In order to unlock X, the player must rescue 64 reploids (out of a possible total of 128) or defeat the eight main bosses in order to unlock him. Unlike the preceding games, chips must be used immediately after they are gained and cannot be deactivated, nor changed from one playable character to another. Once all the chips for that playable character are completely maxed out, that particular character can no longer receive anymore chip upgrades.
An auto-aim feature is added for both Axl and X allowing the player to lock on to enemies. The target can be changed by pressing a dedicated button.
Unlike previous games, X can air dash and fully charge his buster by default. Armor capsules from Dr. Light also return, and after obtaining the full set, the player can choose between unarmored X or armored X on the Stage Select.
While Zero and X retain their common weaponry, Axl has a new ability called "Copy Shot". If the player destroys certain types of enemies with said technique, they will leave an item upon their destruction. If the item (a glowing red sphere) is picked up, Axl will transform into a copy of the enemy he destroyed, with all of its features (speed, weapon, etc.).
The game also has a New Game Plus feature, by completing the game and saving it, and then starting a new game from loading that particular save file. This feature allows for X to become available after the opening stage with any collected armor parts kept and all the chip upgrades from the previous game are retained.
Development.
"Mega Man X7" was developed by a team of about 30 people, led by producers Tatsuya Minami and Tatsuya Kitabayashi of Capcom Production Studio 3. This was the first game in the "Mega Man" series worked on by Kitabayashi. He explained that transitioning the character models of "Mega Man X" from 2D to 3D graphics was a challenge, but that including both 2D and 3D gameplay was not, as they had planned to have them in equal amounts for the game. The development team took into account the less-than-favorable reception for "Mega Man X6", but instead of simply trying to make the next game new and fresh with 3D graphics, they decided to focus on "getting 3D right". The team also attempted to build upon the action-style gameplay for which the "Mega Man" franchise is known along with the more adult-themed storyline of the "Mega Man X" series. This involved adding the newer, non-traditional character Axl to deepen and better the narrative. Kitabayashi emphasized, "He's young, he's running away. He's like the new younger character of the group, and that's why I wanted to put him in there." Minami stated in an interview that the game would feature multiplayer for up to two players. However, the final version of the game lacks this option.
Prominent "Mega Man" artist and Capcom producer Keiji Inafune had little involvement in the "Mega Man X" series after the fifth installment. His only contribution to "Mega Man X7" was lending advice to the illustrators on creating the new protagonist Axl. Inafune had been careful to make X and Zero unique when he originally designed them, and he wanted to give Axl the same treatment. The game's primary artist, Tatsuya Yoshikawa, signed on when the project was well underway. He decided to take after his predecessor Haruki Suetsugu for the direction in which to design the characters. Yoshikawa thought the team would have to create "polygon friendly" bosses, but decided to stick to the traditional design concepts set forth by the early "Mega Man X" games. As the series had finally transition into 3D, Yoshikawa also expected the team to rethink the way the game was made as they had done in the first "Mega Man X" title. Inafune stated, "My personal opinion was that 3D is simply a graphical style, and just because a game is going 3D like "X7" was, it doesn't mean we 'have to' make it a 3D game.
The musical score for "Mega Man X7" was composed by nine individuals. A 46-song soundtrack was released by Suleputer in Japan on October 1, 2003. The game's opening theme, "Code Crush", is performed by Rina Aiuchi. The ending theme is "Lazy Mind", performed by Showtaro Morikubo, the voice actor for X in the Japanese games. A CD single for each of the songs was released in Japan on July 20, 2003 and August 6, 2003 respectively.
Reception.
"Mega Man X7" debuted on Japanese sales charts as the third best-selling video game at copies. By its second week on sale, the game had sold 71,739 copies in the region and by its third week, 89,775 copies. Media Create sales data lists the game as having sold 111,778 copies by the end of 2003 in Japan. A budget re-release of the game was included alongside the PlayStation versions of the first six original "Mega Man" games as part of the "Rockman Collection" in Japan on December 19, 2003.
"Mega Man X7" received mixed to negative reviews. While it attracted some positive remarks for the character switching and Reploid rescue systems, the general consensus was that the game's mixture of 2D and 3D gameplay was well-intentioned but poorly executed. IGN found the characters unbalanced as the shooters X and Axl felt far more useful than the melee fighter Zero. In particular, critics commented that the camera and controls do not translate well from 2D to 3D. Criticism has been aimed at the English voice actors' performance, to the point that it has been recommended to try listening to the original Japanese audio. The music has been described as generic and, while appealing, it does not stand out against what previous installments have offered.
GameSpy concluded "I can't fault Capcom or the "MMX7" team for trying to reinvent a series that had obviously completely lost its way... [but] the flaccid 2D sections in this game aren't half as good as any of the levels in the original "Mega Man X". The 3D bits are more compelling, but still substandard." IGN instead placed the blame wholly on the 3D sections: "We can't help but think that "Mega Man X7" would have been better-suited staying 2D. But until Capcom realizes that the better action-oriented 3D titles allow you to manipulate the camera whole-heartedly, future installments of the series will likely run into the same problems that this one did."
In a retrospective article involving the franchise's worst games, 1UP.com included "Mega Man X7" citing "usual 3D design issues" and the titular character requiring to be unlocked as the game's flaws. GamesRadar compared it with the similarly poor received "Castlevania" for the Nintendo 64 due to how both games tried staying away from their predecessors' formula by adding 3D gameplay and the transition failed to gamers.


John F. Kennedy assassination rifle

The John F. Kennedy assassination rifle is a long-barrelled firearm that was used to assassinate John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States.
In March 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald, using the alias "A. Hidell", purchased by mail order a 6.5×52mm Carcano Model 91/38 infantry rifle (described by the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy as a "Mannlicher–Carcano") with a telescopic sight. He also purchased a revolver from a different company, by the same method. The Hidell alias was determined from multiple sources to be Oswald. Oswald fired the rifle from the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, Texas, mortally wounding Kennedy as his presidential motorcade drove by on November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time. Photographs of Oswald holding the rifle, a palmprint found upon examination of the rifle, and detective work tracing its sale, all eventually led to Oswald. Marina Oswald later testified she was told by Lee that the rifle was also used before in an attempt to assassinate retired U.S. Army General Edwin Walker in Dallas.
History of the rifle.
The Oswald rifle is an Italian "Fucile di Fanteria" (Eng: Infantry rifle) "Modello 91/38" (Model 1891/1938) manufactured at the Royal Arms Factory in Terni, ("Regia fabbrica d'armi di Terni"), Italy, in 1940. The stamp of the royal crown and "Terni" identifies this manufacturing site. Its serial number identified it as the single weapon of its type made with that number. The so-called Model 91 bolt-action rifle had been introduced in 1891 by Salvatore Carcano for the Turin Army Arsenal. After 1895, the Modello 91 used an "en bloc" ammunition clip similar (but not identical) to the Austrian Mannlicher ammunition clips, and hence the names of Mannlicher and Carcano came to be associated with the Oswald rifle; this included association with them by the Warren Commission. The ammunition used in the clip was the 6.5×52mm "Cartuccia Modello 1895" rimless cartridge (designed in 1890), also sometimes called Mannlicher–Carcano ammunition, after the rifle designer and the general type of clip it used.
In 1938, the basic Model 91 long rifle design was discontinued in favor of a new short rifle design, the Model 38, with a new type of ammunition: a spitzer-pointed 7.35×51mm round. The 7.35mm M38 was manufactured from 1938 to 1940. In 1940, with the war well under way and unable to stockpile sufficient amounts of 7.35×51mm ammunition, the short rifles were re-designated "Modello 91/38", and were again manufactured to fire the original round-nosed 6.5×52mm ammunition. The serial-numbered C2766 rifle, sent to Oswald as a surplus advertised "Italian carbine" in 1963, was a short infantry rifle of this type (though technically not a "moschetto" carbine model), manufactured for the 6.5×52mm cartridge. This 6.5mm Carcano M91/38 was only manufactured for two years, 1940-1941, and discontinued in favor of a new 6.5mm long rifle, the M91/41, which was made until the end of the war.
The C2766 rifle was a part of surplus rifles sold by the Italian Army, through a tender, to the New York company Adam Consolidated Industries. Before its shipment to New York Harbor in September 1960, the rifles were refurbished in Storo, Trentino at the Riva plant (which worked for the Beretta Group).
Purchase of the revolver.
On October 9, 1962, Lee Harvey Oswald rented post office box number 2915 in Dallas, Texas. On January 27, 1963, Oswald ordered a Smith & Wesson "Victory" Model .38 special revolver from Seaport Traders of Los Angeles, using the name A. J. Hidell, and his post office box as address, for $29.95 () plus postage and handling. It was shipped to him C.O.D. by rail on March 20, and due to policies on shipping of pistols to prevent them from being sent to minors, he was required to pick it up directly at the offices of the Railway Express Agency in Dallas.
Purchase of the Carcano.
On March 12, 1963, Oswald placed an order for another mail-order weapon. This time it was for a "6.5 Italian Carbine" from Klein's Sporting Goods located in Chicago, as advertised in the February 1963 "American Rifleman". Using the alias "Alek Hidell", a variation of the "A.J. Hidell" alias employed to purchase the Smith & Wesson pistol five weeks earlier, Oswald ordered the rifle (model not given in the advertisement), complete with an attached new 4x telescopic sight, for $19.95 () plus postage and handling. His money order for this amount included the price of the rifle ($12.78), plus a telescopic sight ($7.17) that was to be custom mounted to it as part of the package. The rifle was also shipped to him at his post office box in Dallas, also (by coincidence) on March 20, the same day as the pistol. He picked up the rifle at the post office on March 25.
The rifle portrayed in the ad and the rifle Oswald received were not the same.
Klein's Sporting Goods had initially shipped surplus Carcano model M91 TS carbines ("moschettos") under their "Italian carbine" ad. However, effective April 13, 1962, Crescent Firearms, the wholesale supplier of Italian rifles to Klein's, had been unable to supply Carcano TS carbines, and had switched to surplus Carcano M91/38's, which fired the same 6.5 x 52mm ammunition. The M91/38 rifles were a slightly longer short infantry version of the Carcano TS and had a barrel rather than the barrel of the TS carbine model. They also had a completely left-side-mounted sling rather than the under-stock sling of the TS. Thus, while Oswald got a slightly longer M91/38, which was not quite the same Italian rifle shown in the advertisement photograph (the ad photo was not changed until April 1963), he did get a very similar telescope-modified Italian 6.5 mm short rifle.
Oswald asked his wife Marina in late March to take several photographs of him posing in their backyard with the rifle and pistol and holding copies of the newspapers "The Worker" and "The Militant." Three of the photographs were discovered among Oswald's belongings on November 23.
Walker shooting.
Marina Oswald testified that Lee told her on April 10, 1963, that he had used the rifle earlier that night in an attempt to assassinate retired U.S. Army General Edwin Walker, a controversial political activist, at Walker's home in Dallas. The bullet was deflected from hitting Walker when it struck a window frame. Oswald escaped, hiding the rifle and retrieving it a day or two later. Jeanne De Mohrenschildt, an acquaintance of the Oswalds, testified that when she and her husband George visited the Oswalds on April 13, she saw a rifle, that "looked very much like" the Carcano, standing in the corner of a closet. When she told George what she had just seen, he joked to Lee, "Did you take a pot shot at Walker by any chance?"
The De Mohrenschildts later found a copy of one of the backyard photographs, dated by hand 5 April 1963 (in Russian) and autographed by Oswald on the back with the message "To my friend George from Lee Oswald" in a record album they had loaned to Marina before the De Mohrenschildts moved to Haiti in May 1963.
Discovery.
The Warren Commission found that, in the weeks before the assassination, Oswald kept the rifle wrapped in a blanket and hidden in the garage of friends Michael and Ruth Paine, where Marina was living at the time and where Oswald would occasionally visit. Michael Paine described "a package wrapped in a blanket", which he thought was camping equipment. He did find this odd, saying to himself "they don't make camping equipment of iron pipes any more". Marina testified that, after she and Lee moved their belongings to the Paine home in September 1963, she found the rifle in the blanket while searching for a part for her child's crib.
The Commission concluded that Oswald had smuggled the rifle into the Texas School Book Depository on the morning of the assassination, November 22, 1963, in a brown paper package, which he had told a co-worker contained "curtain rods", although Oswald later denied this, and said that he carried only a lunch bag that day. He also said that he did not own a rifle.
About half an hour after the assassination of President Kennedy, a floor-by-floor search of the Texas School Book Depository Building was commenced by Dallas police, joined by sheriff's deputies. The rifle was found by Deputy Sheriff Seymour Weitzman and Officer Gene Boone among cartons on the sixth floor.
The two officers who found the rifle—and later Captain Fritz—picked it up by the sling, but did not handle it until the arrival of Lt. Carl Day of the crime scene search section of the identification bureau. Lt. Day then held the rifle by the stock, in one hand, "because it was too rough to hold a fingerprint" and inspected the rifle with a magnifying glass in his other hand. He checked that the bolt had no prints on it before Fritz ejected a live round.
Also found in the same vicinity were three 6.5×52mm brass cartridges later proven to have been fired from Oswald's rifle. One of the empty cartridges, CE 543, was dented in the area of the neck. Ballistic experts testified to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) that this likely occurred when the rifle was rapidly fired and the cartridge was ejected. When four test bullets were fired from the rifle, one of the four cartridges had a dented neck, similar to CE 543.
The rifle was subjected to further forensic examination at the laboratory. A palm print was discovered on part of the rifle that could only have been put there when the rifle was not fully assembled. Such a palm print could not be placed on this portion of the rifle when assembled because the wooden foregrip covers the barrel. He did not complete his investigation, however, because he was told to stop, and to hand the rifle over to FBI Agent Vince Drain, because the FBI would finish the investigation. He later did his own research, however, and concluded that the prints were Oswald's, because by then he had Oswald's prints on file.
Police Chief Jesse Curry testified that—despite believing that the FBI had no jurisdiction over the case—he complied with FBI requests to send the rifle and all other evidence to their laboratories in Washington. During the night after Kennedy's murder, the rifle was taken by FBI agent Vincent Drain from Dallas to Washington D.C., who then gave it to FBI agent Robert Frazier. He testified that he kept it in the FBI office until November 27, 1963, whereupon it was sent back to Dallas and given back to someone at the Dallas Police Department for reasons unclear. It was later sent back to the FBI headquarters in Washington.
Sebastian Latona, supervisor of the Latent Fingerprint section of the FBI's Identification Division, testified that the palm print found on the barrel of the rifle belonged to Lee Harvey Oswald. Experts agree that palm prints are as unique as fingerprints for the purpose of establishing identification.
Initially misidentified as being a German-made Mauser rifle, the Dallas police, upon examination in their lab, determined it to be an Italian-made Carcano. The Warren Commission concluded that the initial identification of the rifle as a Mauser was in error. The House Select Committee on Assassinations investigated claims from researchers that the rifle in fact was a Mauser. The Committee compared photos taken by the Dallas police of the rifle in place, a news film of the rifle being recovered, news photos of the rifle being carried from the Depository, numerous news photos and films of the rifle being carried through the halls of the Dallas police headquarters, as well as photos later taken by the FBI and the Dallas police, and compared them to the Carcano rifle held at the National Archives. They concluded the rifle depicted in the photos and films was the same rifle held in the Archives and therefore was the Carcano and not a Mauser.
Rifle.
This surplus-sold rifle had the markings: "CAL. 6.5", "MADE ITALY", and "Terni", (the city of the manufacturer: the Royal Arms factory, "Regia fabbrica d'armi di Terni") stamped with the Italian royal crown as part of the Terni factory symbol, and "ROCCA" (the manufacturer of the bolt cocking piece); it also had the serial number C 2766 and the numerals "1940" and "40" (the year of manufacture).
The 4-power telescope, made by Ordnance Optics, had been attached to the rifle by a gunsmith at Klein's Sporting Goods, an American retailer, shortly before being sold as a single unit with the surplus rifle, to Oswald.
Joseph D. Nicol, superintendent of the Illinois Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, and Robert A. Frazier, FBI special agent, testified to the Warren Commission. A distinctive gouge mark and identical dimensions also identify it as the rifle Oswald is holding in several photographs taken in his backyard by his wife in March 1963.
A 6.5×52mm Carcano round-nosed fully copper-jacketed bullet, of a type normally used in 6.5 mm military rifles (such as the Carcano) was found on Governor Connally's gurney in Parkland Hospital. This bullet (CE 399, see single bullet theory), and two bullet fragments found in the presidential limousine, were ballistically matched to the rifle found in the book depository building. A partial palm print of Oswald was also found on the barrel of the gun.
Agents of the FBI learned on November 22, 1963, from retail gun dealers in Dallas that Crescent Firearms, Inc., of New York City, was a distributor of surplus Italian 6.5-millimeter military rifles. When contacted, Crescent Firearms said that they had shipped the rifle with the serial number C2766 to Klein's Sporting Goods Co., of Chicago. On the morning of November 23, Klein's found the order coupon and shipping record, showing the rifle was ordered by and shipped to "A. Hidell" at post office box 2915 in Dallas, Texas. That box had been rented under the name of Lee H. Oswald. Oswald was carrying two forged identification cards with the name "Alek James Hidell" in his wallet at the time of his arrest.
The handwriting on the order coupon perfectly matched that of Oswald's when compared to his passport application and letters he had written. The Italian Armed Forces Intelligence Agency reported that the rifle with the serial number of C2766 was unique in its records.
In 1979, photographic analysis by the House Select Committee on Assassinations found that the rifle in the National Archives was photographically identical, in a number of distinctive marks, to the one found in the book depository and photographed at the time by numerous journalists and the police. The rifle was also identical in its dimensions to the one seen in the Oswald backyard photos, and both had the same damage mark on the stock.
Revolver.
The snub-nosed Smith & Wesson "Victory" Model .38 Special revolver, serial number V510210, which Oswald had in his hand when he was arrested in a movie theatre eighty minutes after the assassination, was identified by model and serial number as the one purchased by mail order using the same P.O. Box as the rifle, and also by an "A.J. Hidell", with handwriting that matched Oswald's (the pistol, however, was not shipped to this P.O. box, but to a freight outlet with a notice going to the box, as Texas law required a check of age for pistol buyers which the post office could not do). The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald used the revolver to murder Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit about forty-five minutes after the assassination when Tippit stopped Oswald on a residential street.
Shirt.
In the crevice between the butt-plate and the wooden stock of the Carcano rifle recovered from the Texas School Book Depository, a tuft of several cotton fibers of dark blue, grey-black and orange-yellow shades were found.
Upon his capture in a theater less than two hours after Kennedy was killed, Oswald was wearing a brown shirt composed of dark blue, grey-black and orange-yellow cotton fibers over a white T-shirt, the same type of fibers that were recovered from the rifle after close examination by experts.
After tests of the colors, shades, and weave patterns of the fibers found on the gun, Paul Stombaugh, a special agent of the FBI Laboratory's Hair and Fiber Unit, matched the fibers found on the gun to the fibers from Oswald's shirt design.
Firing range.
During his Marine Corps service in December 1956, Oswald scored a rating of "sharpshooter" (twice achieving 48 and 49 out of 50 shots during rapid fire at a stationary target 200 yards [183 m] away using a standard issue M1 Garand semi-automatic rifle), although in May 1959, he qualified as a "marksman" (a lower classification than that of "sharpshooter"). Military experts, after examining his records, characterized his firearms proficiency as "above average" and said he was, when compared to American civilian males of his age, "an excellent shot".
However, Nelson Delgado, a Marine in the same unit as Oswald, used to laugh at Oswald's shooting prowess and testified that Oswald often got "Maggie's drawers"; meaning a red flag that is waved from the rifle pits to indicate a "complete miss" of the target during qualification firing. He also said that Oswald did not seem to care if he missed or not. Delgado was first stationed with Oswald in Santa Ana, California, at the beginning of 1958, meeting him for the first time there and a little more than a year after Oswald first made sharpshooter.
Skeptics have argued that expert marksmen could not duplicate Oswald's shooting in their first try during re-enactments by the Warren Commission (1964) and CBS (1967). In those tests, the marksmen attempted to hit the target three times within 5.6 seconds. This time span has been heavily disputed. The Warren Commission itself estimated that the time span between the two shots that hit President Kennedy was 4.8 to 5.6 seconds. If the second shot missed (assuming the first and third shots hit the president), then 4.8 to 5.6 seconds was the total time span of the shots. If the first or third shot missed, that would give a minimum time of 7.1 to 7.9 seconds for the three shots. Modern analysis of a digitally enhanced Zapruder film suggests that the first, second, and final shot may have taken 8.3 seconds.
Many of CBS's 11 volunteer marksmen, who (unlike Oswald) had no prior experience with a properly sighted Carcano, were able to hit the test target twice in under the time allowed, although they were all afforded multiple attempts. The only man who scored three hits was firearms examiner Howard Donahue from Maryland.
FBI tests.
The FBI tests of the Carcano's accuracy showed:
1) FBI firearms expert Robert A. Frazier testified that "It is a very accurate weapon. The targets we fired show that." From , all three bullets in a test firing landed approximately high, and to the right, in the area about the size of a dime (0.705 inch diameter). At , the test shots landed high, within a circle. Frazier testified that the scope's high variation would actually work in the shooter's favor: with a target moving away from the shooter, no lead correction would have been necessary to follow the target. "At that range, at that distance, , with this rifle and that telescopic sight, I would not have allowed any lead — I would not have made any correction for lead merely to hit a target of that size."
It should be pointed out here that it is possible Frazier made a mistake when he stated the rifle shot 2.5 inches high at 15 yards. As the barrel of a rifle is lower than its scope, and the bullet is travelling in a high arcing parabola on the way to its target, a bullet normally crosses the line of sight from the scope at 10 to 20 yards, meaning the rifle would not shoot high at all at 15 yards. For a rifle to be 2.5 inches high at 15 yards, it would be shooting several feet high at 100 yards.
2) The rifle couldn't be perfectly sighted using the scope (i.e., thereby eliminating the above overshoot completely) without installing two metal shims (small metal plates), which were not present when the rifle arrived for testing, and were never found. Frazier testified that there was "a rather severe scrape" on the scope tube, and that the sight could have been bent or damaged. He was unable to determine when the defect occurred before the FBI received the rifle and scope on November 27, 1963.
Ballistics Research Laboratory tests.
In an effort to test the rifle under conditions that matched the assassination, the Infantry Weapons Evaluation Branch of the U.S. Army's Ballistics Research Laboratory had expert riflemen fire the assassination weapon from a tower at three silhouette targets at distances of . Using the assassination rifle mounted with the telescopic sight, three marksmen, rated as master by the National Rifle Association, each fired two series of three shots. In the first series, the firers required time spans of 4.6, 6.75, and 8.25 seconds respectively. On the second series, they required 5.15, 6.45, and 7 seconds. The marksmen took as much time as they wanted for the first target at , and all hit the target. For the first four attempts, the firers missed the second shot at by several inches. Five of the six shots hit the third target at , the distance of President Kennedy from the sixth floor window when he was struck in the head. None of the marksmen had any practice with the assassination weapon beforehand except to work the bolt.
CBS conducted a firing test in 1967 at the H. P. White Ballistics Laboratory located in Street, Maryland. For the test, 11 marksmen from diverse backgrounds were invited to participate: 3 Maryland State Troopers, 1 weapons engineer, 1 sporting goods dealer, 1 sportsman, 1 ballistics technician, 1 ex-paratrooper, and 3 H. P. White employees. CBS provided several Carcano rifles for the test. Oswald's rifle was not used in this test. The targets were color-coded orange for head/shoulder silhouette and blue for a near miss. The results of the CBS test were as follows: 7 of 11 shooters were able to fire three rounds under 5.6 seconds (64%). Of those 7 shooters, 6 hit the orange target once (86%), and 5 hit the orange target twice (71%). Out of 60 rounds fired, 25 hit the orange (42%), 21 hit the blue portion of the target (35%), and there were 14 misses on the target (23%).
One volunteer was unable to operate his rifle effectively, so the following statistics are based on the 10 remaining shooters. The mean time of all 10 shooters was 5.64 seconds, with a mode of 5.55 seconds. The mean times for the top five, and bottom five shooters were 5.12 seconds and 6.16 seconds, respectively. There was a high occurrence of jamming during the test. On average, the rifles jammed after 6 rounds. The most rounds fired without jamming were 14, 11, 10 in a row. The least was 0 (back to back).
The first shooter to lead off the experiment was Al Sherman, Maryland State Trooper. The record of his effort:
5.0 sec: 2 orange, 1 blue / 6.0 sec: 2 orange, 1 blue / NT (jam at 3rd cartridge)/ 5.2 sec: 1 orange, 2 low / 5.0 sec: 1 orange, 2 blue. Sherman was able to fire 8 rounds before his rifle jammed. Of all the shooters, the fastest times were: 4.1 sec, 4.3 sec, 4.9 sec, 5.0 sec. The best accuracy was 3 orange in 5.2 seconds. The rifles were oiled and allowed to cool down between shooters. CBS reporter Dan Rather attended this experiment.
During the investigation by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (1976–1978), the lead attorneys for the Committee, Robert Blakey and Gary Cornwell, were allowed to use WC-139 at an FBI firing range. The attorneys wanted to see how fast the bolt action could be operated. Blakey was able to fire two rounds in 1.5 seconds and Cornwell fired two rounds in 1.2 seconds. This was an experiment to test a possible theory that Oswald in his excitement may have pointed and fired, as opposed to aimed and fired. Some critics of the Warren Commission had claimed it was impossible to fire a Carcano rifle in less than 2.3 seconds. Both the CBS and HSCA tests proved conclusively that the claim was not accurate.
Other research.
In 1972, the Kennedy family chose John K. Lattimer, MD, as the first nongovernmental expert to examine evidence taken at Kennedy's autopsy. Lattimer performed ballistic tests and other research to prove that Lee Harvey Oswald was likely the sniper who shot and killed President John F. Kennedy from the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas. Dr. Lattimer frequently performed a demonstration of Oswald's shooting, firing three well-aimed shots within 8.3 seconds with Carcano M91/38 and under the same firing conditions. By doing so Dr. Lattimer intended to prove that Oswald could have performed such a feat. He continued to perform this demonstration well into his late 80s. Lattimer owned Oswald's Marine shooting record which he said showed that Oswald was an excellent shot. In 1980, Dr. Lattimer wrote a book: "Kennedy and Lincoln: Medical & Ballistic Comparisons of Their Assassinations" in which he did an investigation of both the Lincoln and the Kennedy assassinations, and supported the findings of the Warren Commission. In his book, Lattimer theorized that President Kennedy's arms exhibited the "Thorburn Position" with elbows extended and arms folded inward, as a neurological reaction to the bullet wound to his spine.
Vincent Bugliosi put forward the hypothesis that Oswald aimed the Carcano with the open sights, which reduced the time necessary to take the three shots postulated by the Warren Commission. He notes that, with the downward slope on Dealey Plaza, President Kennedy's head would have appeared to Oswald to be a stationary target as the vehicle moved down and away at a slow speed. This suggestion also therefore makes any claim that the scope was defective to be meaningless with respect to Oswald's shooting ability.
However, with the M91/38 open sights being factory set to be accurate at 200 meters, the final shot being well under 100 meters and the M91/38 not being a very flat shooting rifle to begin with (up to high at 100 meters), this rifle would have been shooting quite high and would have made hitting Kennedy extremely difficult. This would have been further exacerbated by the steep downward angle from the sixth floor of the Depository building to the limo, which would have made the shot go even higher than what Oswald would have been aiming at.
In 2008, the Discovery Channel produced a documentary that played out several different versions of the Kennedy assassination on a dummy that had been specifically designed for ballistics tests, recreating the elevation, wind speed and distance at a California shooting range. Their forensic analysis, backed by computer models, showed that it was most likely that the shot that killed President Kennedy came from the Texas School Book Depository. They also concluded that a shot from the grassy knoll would have completely obliterated Kennedy's skull, contrary to what is seen in the Zapruder film. However, in this conclusion they assumed that an assassin on the grassy knoll would have used hollow point ammunition, which expands on impact to maximize damage. Thereafter, they attempted a second shot from the grassy knoll position, using a solid round. Analysis revealed that this bullet would have passed through Kennedy's skull from right to left, causing an exit wound on the left-hand side of the skull that did not match any postmortem reports. They also suggested that the bullet trajectory from this shot would have struck and likely killed Mrs. Kennedy.
Later history.
The rifle remained in the possession of the FBI from November 1963 to November 1966, except for brief periods in 1964 when it was loaned to the Warren Commission and tested by the U.S. Army's Weapons Evaluation Branch. Likewise, the pistol was held by the FBI from November 1963 to November 1966, except for a brief period in 1964 when it was loaned to the Warren Commission.
In December 1964, Lee Oswald's widow, Marina, sold whatever right, interest, or title that she had in the rifle and pistol for $5,000; and in March 1965 she sold whatever power of sale she had in them for an additional $5,000. A $35,000 additional payment to Marina Oswald was contingent upon the buyer obtaining possession "free and clear of all adverse claims".
The buyer, Denver oilman and gun collector John J. King, commenced an action in federal court in May 1965 for the recovery of the weapons from possession of the U.S. government. In response, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division of the Internal Revenue Service began an "in rem" forfeiture proceeding against the rifle and the pistol. The U.S. District Court held that Oswald had used fictitious names when purchasing the weapons, in violation of the Federal Firearms Act of 1938, which allowed for immediate seizure and forfeiture of any such illegally obtained weapons.
The lower court's decision was reversed on appeal in July 1966, with the appellate court holding that "There is no provision in the Federal Firearms Act requiring a purchaser to use his true name when ordering weapons from a dealer licensed under the Act", and that the government would have to acquire title to the weapons by condemnation. Thereafter, in November 1966, the U.S. Attorney General, acting under the authority provided by Public Law 89-318, published his determination that the various items considered by the Warren Commission, including the weapons which were the subject of the forfeiture proceeding, should be acquired by the United States. Upon the publication of the Attorney General's determination, "all rights, title, and interest in and to" the weapons "vested in the United States".
The buyer sued the U.S. government for damages of $5 million for the taking of the weapons, but his claim was rejected by the court, which set the case for trial, and wrote:
King's claim was heard at trial in federal court in 1969, where a twelve-person jury agreed with the government's contention that Lee Oswald had abandoned the rifle in 1963, therefore Marina Oswald had no claim to it or a right of sale. King received no compensation for the rifle's taking by the federal government, although he did receive $350 in compensation for the government's taking of the pistol found on Oswald at his arrest, which King had also purchased from Marina Oswald.
The rifle and the pistol are now kept in a secure location within the National Archives and Records Administration Building in College Park, Maryland. A replica of the rifle is on display at the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas by the stairs where detectives found the original rifle.


7 cm mountain gun

The 7 cm mountain gun was a Japanese ordnance first used in 1883. Because of the relative expense of steel at the time, the gun was produced with a bronze barrel. The 7 cm was used in the First Sino-Japanese War as the main artillery, and was used again in the Russo-Japanese War by second-line troops.


Old Armory (Williston, North Dakota)

The Old Armory on 1st Ave., E., in Williston, North Dakota, was built in 1915 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.
According to its NRHP nomination, the building's significance rests on two factors:
The Old Armory brought together diverse sectors of the public in its creation and
subsequent use: local government, military, private business, and the general
townspeople. In architectural character it is uncommon, yet representative of a oncepopular
type of design for armory buildings in the state.
Although designed by Robert Stacy-Judd, a distinguished architect, the architect's prominence is not noted in the NRHP nomination. In 2012, the local community planned various historically sensitive renovations and fundraising to support the work.


Peter Zimmerman

Peter D. Zimmerman is an American nuclear physicist, arms control expert, and former Chief Scientist of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is currently Emeritus Professor of Science and Security at King's College London. He retired from the college in August 2008 and was named Professor Emeritus on 1 September of the same year.
Biography.
Peter D. Zimmerman was born in Portsmouth, Virginia on 15 June 1941. He graduated from Stanford University in 1963 with a Bachelor of Science degree. He earned a Filosofie Licentiat degree at Lund University in 1967 and a Ph.D. at Stanford University in 1969. All degrees are in experimental nuclear and elementary particle physics.
Zimmerman was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1988.
Zimmerman worked several times at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency until the agency was folded into U.S. Department of State, and worked closely with other physicists there such as David S. Wollan. He was Science Advisor for ACDA at the time it was merged into the Department of State in March 1999.
He then became Science Adviser for Arms Control in the U.S. Department of State.
After the election of George W. Bush as president Zimmerman left the State Department and then served as the Chief Scientist of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from August 2001 until January 2003 and as Democratic Chief Scientist until March 2004.
In 2004, Zimmerman became Professor of Science and Security in the Department of War Studies at King's College London.


Andrew Jackson Barchfeld

Andrew Jackson Barchfeld (May 18, 1863 – January 28, 1922) was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.
Barchfeld was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to German immigrants from Prussia. He attended Pittsburgh Central High School and graduated from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1884. He was a physician, hospital executive, and member of the common council of Pittsburgh from 1886 to 1887. He was a member of the Republican State committee. He was an unsuccessful candidate for election to Congress in 1902.
Barchfeld was elected as a Republican to the Fifty-ninth and to the five succeeding Congresses. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1916. He was a delegate to the peace congress at Brussels in 1905. He was a member of the commission to the Philippine Islands in 1910, and a member of the Panama Canal Commission in 1912.
Barchfeld died on January 28, 1922, in the Knickerbocker Theater disaster in Washington, D.C. Interment was in South Side Cemetery in Pittsburgh.


San Joaquin Hills

The San Joaquin Hills are a low mountain range of the Peninsular Ranges System, located in coastal Orange County, California.
They extend in a northwest-southeast direction, starting in the northwest in Newport Beach at the southern edge of the Los Angeles Basin, and extending southeast to San Juan Capistrano.
Geography and habitats.
Named summits in the San Joaquin Hills include (from north to south)
French Hill in Turtle Rock, Irvine;
Signal Peak and Pelican Hill, both of which are near the Newport Coast neighborhood of Newport Beach;
Temple Hill in Laguna Beach, more commonly known as "Top of the World" after the neighborhood situated on its peak;
and Niguel Hill in Laguna Niguel.
Geology.
A fault line, the San Joaquin Hills blind thrust, lies eight miles below the hills. Scientists have suggested that the San Joaquin Hills have been formed by uplift from this fault.
The main ridge of the San Joaquin Hills runs southeast from the Upper Newport Bay area, attaining its maximum height of roughly near Laguna Beach. Many of the high ridges exceed in height. The hills stretch over a distance of about and can be up to broad. In many places, the San Joaquin Hills drop directly into the Pacific Ocean, creating the steep sea cliffs that characterize the region. Streams that originate on the west slope of the range include Buck Gully, Los Trancos Creek, Muddy Creek, El Moro Creek, Emerald Creek, Prima Deshecha Cañada, Segunda Deshecha Cañada, and Christianitos Canyon. The east side is drained by Bonita Creek, Sand Canyon Wash, San Joaquin Wash, and La Cañada Wash. Cities bordering the range include Newport Beach, Irvine, Laguna Hills, Aliso Viejo, Laguna Beach, Laguna Niguel, Dana Point, San Juan Capistrano, and San Clemente.
Because of erosion phenomena during the previous Ice Age, the San Joaquin Hills are not one continuous mountain range, but instead are bisected by numerous water gaps cut by rivers flowing southwest from the Santa Ana Mountains. In the north, Newport Bay was formed by the Santa Ana River switching its course to the south, cutting across the northern part of the range. Laguna Canyon was formed by San Diego Creek, but eventually the larger creek changed course and left a wind gap through the hills. The largest canyon by far is Aliso Canyon, cut by Aliso Creek. Further south, the hills dissipate into smaller ridges and are bisected by the canyon of Salt Creek. The southern extent of the hills are cut by San Juan Creek.
Flora and fauna.
The native vegetation of the hills is in the California coastal sage and chaparral and California chaparral and woodlands ecoregions, largely coastal sage scrub, but other habitat types include grasslands, oak woodlands, wetlands, and riparian habitats along several streams.
In past ages the land that is now the San Joaquin Hills lay under the ocean: construction for the San Joaquin Hills Toll Road unearthed a number of artifacts and more than 40,000 fossils, up to 35 million years old, including 5-million-year-old fossilized whales.
History.
The hills take their name from Rancho San Joaquin, owned by Jose Andres Sepulveda. Formed in 1842 by the merger of two smaller ranches, this ranch included the northern part of the hills and likely had Laguna Canyon as its southeastern boundary. Rancho San Joaquin later became part of the Irvine Ranch. Mexican Rancho Niguel was located in the southeastern section of the hills.
The San Joaquin Hills blind thrust may be the source of the earliest recorded earthquake in California, a large earthquake felt in what is now northern Orange County on July 28, 1769 by Gaspar de Portolà.
Development.
Two neighborhoods within the San Joaquin Hills take the name of the hills for their own:
San Joaquin Hills, Newport Beach, California, a former census-designated place annexed to the city of Newport Beach, and San Joaquin Hills, Laguna Niguel, California, a master-planned community located in the city of Laguna Niguel. Other neighborhoods set in and named after hills in this range include University Hills and Turtle Rock in Irvine.
State Route 73, also called the San Joaquin Hills Toll Road, extends through the length of the hills from Newport Beach to San Juan Capistrano. State Route 133 crosses the hills through Laguna Canyon in Laguna Beach, and they are also crossed in several other places by less major roads.


Turkey shoot

A turkey shoot is an opportunity for an individual or a party to take advantage of a situation with a significant degree of ease.
The term likely originates from a method of hunting wild turkeys in which the hunter, coming upon a flock, intentionally scatters them. Once the flock is scattered, the hunter sets up and waits, as the scattered flock will return to that point individually, making them easy targets.
Sport usage.
Besides a literal turkey hunt, the term "turkey shoot" may also refer to a shooting contest in which frozen turkeys are awarded as prizes. The shoot is most commonly held using shotguns aimed at paper targets about 25–35 yards away. Original turkey shoots, however, date at least to the time of James Fenimore Cooper and were contests in which live turkeys were tied down in a pen and shot from 25–35 yards. If the turkey died, the shooter received it as a prize. That gave rise to the military term (see below). Today, turkey shoots are still popular in the rural United States. The winner is chosen according to which target has a shot closest to its center crossmark. Due to the random nature of the exact pattern of pellets that a shotgun shoots, that removes almost all skill from the contest and allows every shooter an equal chance.
Another contest, depicted in the 1941 Gary Cooper film "Sergeant York", provided a caged turkey with a protective wall. Above the cage was a slot in which the turkey could raise its head. Single-shot rifles were used, and if the shooter was skilled and fast enough, the turkey was shot in the head, rewarding the shooter it as his prize.
Military usage.
In military situations, a turkey shoot occurs when a group or team catch the enemy off-guard or outgunned to the point of being unfair, as in the following famous examples:


Randall Forsberg

Dr. Randall Caroline Forsberg ( – ) led a lifetime of research and advocacy on ways to reduce the risk of war, minimize the burden of military spending, and promote democratic institutions. Her career started at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in 1968. In 1974 she moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts (where she earned her Ph.D. in 1980) to found the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies (IDDS) as well as to launch the national Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign. Randall Forsberg was accompanied by an important colleague by the name of Hellen Caldicott while she was leading the Nuclear freeze movement in both Manhattan and Central Park. Both women were met with many challenges in their efforts to lead the Nuclear Freeze Movement. These challenges included gender discrimination and discreditation as influential leaders by the media. Forsberg's strong leadership in the nuclear freeze movement is thought to be very influential in the writing of foreign policy during the Reagan administration and is even credited with catalyzing the negotiation of the INF treaty between President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.
Background.
Randall Forsberg (née Watson, 1943–2007) was born in Huntsville, Alabama. Randall, often referred to as "Randy" is the daughter of Douglass Watson She graduated from Columbia University in 1965 and later moved to Pennsylvania where she taught English and married her husband Gunnar Forsberg and moved to Stockholm in 1967. The couple later divorced. It is here that she became interested in arms control issues while working at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute as a typist in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1974, she returned to the United States, and became a graduate student in defense Studies in the Department of Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After earning her Ph. D. in 1980 she founded the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies (IDDS). The IDDS is a "non-profit center that studies global military policies, arms holdings, production and trade." As director of the IDDS, Forsberg was responsible for publishing the "Arms Control Reporter" monthly and "IDDS Almanac: World Arms Holdings, Production, and Trade" once a year. In December of 1979, Forsberg gave a speech in Louisville at the annual meeting of Mobilization for Survival, an anti-nuclear organization. It is this speech that gained Forsberg momentum for her anti-nuclear campaign and led her to publish "Call to Halt the Arms Race" in 1979. This publication was the manifesto of the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign. The four-paged document advocated a bilateral halt to the testing, production, deployment and delivery of nuclear weapons. By 1982, Forsberg's nuclear freeze campaign had gained support from various state and county governments, over 100 national organizations, numerous large labor unions, and many other organizations. Support for Forsberg's grassroots movement was very evident in 1982 when the freeze resolutions appeared on ballots in nine states. The polls showed that 10.8 million out of 18 million US citizens voted in favor of the freeze. On June 12th of the same year, approximately one million people gathered in Central Park to show their support for a Nuclear Freeze at anti-nuclear weapon rally. In 1983, after receiving the MacArthur Foundation grant, Randall became president of a group known as Freeze Voter. This group organized and collected large amounts of money in an effort to endorse candidates in the 1984 who were for nuclear disarmament.
Forsberg was awarded a doctorate in 1980 and she started the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies, which became an important resource for the peace movement and anti-nuclear weapons movement. In 1983 Forsberg was awarded a $204,000 MacArthur Foundation "genius grant for" showing unique artistic, intellectual or social creativity. In 2005 she became Anne and Bernard Spitzer Chair in Political Science and International Security Studies at the City College of New York. To add to her long list of achievement, Forsberg also served as a board member for the Arms Control Association. Dr. Forsberg died of cancer on October, 19 2007 at the age of 64. She is survived by her daughter, Katarina Forsberg.
Government service.
Talks at West Point, the US Air Force Academy, the National Defense University, and the German War College; and met with senior government officials of Russia, China, Germany, Norway, and other countries. She was on the board or advisory board of the "Boston Review", Arms Control Association, "Journal of Peace Research", University of California Institute for Global Cooperation and Conflict, and Women's Action for New Directions from ____ until her death in 2007.
Publications.
Articles.
As well as articles in "Scientific American", "International Security", "Technology Review", "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists", and "World Policy Journal".


Voulge

A voulge (occasionally called a pole cleaver; also spelled vouge) is a type of polearm that existed alongside the similar glaive in medieval Europe. Superficially, a voulge might strongly resemble a glaive, but there are some notable differences in construction. First, the attachment of the voulge blade to the shaft was usually done by binding the lower two thirds of the blade to the side of the pole; the glaive would often have a socket built into the blade itself and was mounted on top of the pole. In addition, while both had curved blades, that of the voulge was broad and meant for hacking, while that of the glaive was narrow and meant more for cutting. A voulge thus looks something like a squashed bardiche, or just a meat cleaver attached to a long pole. Troops that used the weapon are called voulgiers.


Hick Cady

Forrest Leroy "Hick" Cady (January 26, 1886 – March 3, 1946) was a backup catcher in Major League Baseball who played for the Boston Red Sox (1912–17) and Philadelphia Phillies (1919). Cady batted and threw right-handed. He was born in Bishop Hill, Illinois.
In a seven-season career, Cady was a .240 hitter with one home run and 74 RBI in 355 games played.
Cady managed in the minors in 1922 and 1924.
Cady died in a hotel fire in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at the age of 60.


Museo Campano

The Museo Provinciale Campano di Capua (commonly referred to as Museo Campano) is a provincial museum located in Capua, southern Italy. Established in 1870 and inaugurated in 1874, it is housed in the historic Palazzo Antignano. The museum is dedicated to ancient Italian civilization in Campania, and is home to an extensive collection of ritual statues representing "matres matutae" coming from the ancient Roman site of "Capua antica". It also hosts the second largest lapidarium in the region, after that of the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.
History.
On August 21, 1869 a "Committee for the conservation of monuments and objects of antiquity and fine arts" was established by royal decree in what was then the region of Terra di Lavoro. The committee approved the establishment of a museum of antiquities in Capua, which was officially founded in 1870. The historic Palazzo Antignano (whose Lombard origins date back to the IX century, but which was heavily altered in the mid-XV century) was chosen as the seat of the new museum, which opened to the public in 1874.
The museum was established for the purpose of properly preserving and displaying the large quantity of precious archaeological material that had been discovered in the region, especially thanks to the excavations conducted on the many nearby archaeological sites. The museum continued growing over time, and in 1933 the building was rearranged to adapt to the ever-expanding collections.
On September 9, 1943 an Allied air strike hit Capua, killing about a thousand people and destroying circa 75% of the buildings in the city, including Palazzo Antignano. Some important pieces of the collections were destroyed. Rebuilding of Palazzo Antignano started in 1945, and in 1956 the museum was reopened.
Palazzo Antignano.
The palace was the home of the prominent Antignano family, which gained prominence under the rule of Alfonso V of Aragon. In its present form the palace dates back to the XV century, but incorporates much older spolia such as Longobard capitals and columns, as well as the remnants of the Longobard church of "San Lorenzo ad Crucem", deconsecrated in 1594.
The façade features a Catalan Gothic portal and Renaissance elements; inside, the main courtyard boasts a monumental open staircase.


Per Oscarsson

Per Oscar Heinrich Oscarsson (28 January 1927 – 31 December 2010) was a Swedish actor. He is best known for his role in the 1966 film "Hunger", which earned him a Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor.
Early life.
Oscarsson was born, along with his twin brother Björn, on 28 January 1927 on Kungsholmen, Stockholm, to parents Einar Oscarsson, an engineer, and Therèse, née Küppers. The twins had two elder siblings. Their mother, who was German, died of cancer in 1933.
Career.
Oscarsson was best known for his role as Pontus, a starving writer, in the social realism drama "Hunger", based on the Knut Hamsun novel by the same name, a role for which he won the 1966 Bodil, the Guldbagge Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role and the 1966 Cannes Film Festival best actor awards. His most recent film role was as Holger Palmgren, the character Lisbeth Salander's publicly appointed guardian, in the 2009 movies "The Girl Who Played with Fire" and "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest", based on Stieg Larsson's famous novels.
Death.
A fire started in the house of Per Oscarsson and his wife Kia Östling on the night of 30–31 December 2010. On , a relative found the house burned to the ground with only the foundations and chimney remaining. Oscarsson had not been heard from since the fire. A body was discovered in the ruins of the house on , and was presumed by police to be either the body of Oscarsson or that of his wife. A second body was discovered on , which increased the possibility that both Oscarsson and his wife had perished in the fire. On , the deaths of Oscarsson and his wife were confirmed through dental records by Swedish police. Oscarsson died four weeks before his 84th birthday.


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