Wizard of Id by Parker and Hart for March 27, 2012

That’s a different way to play Fetch .

Watch where you drop that Henery.

There have been rumors for years that somewhere out there is a video of a Navy fighter plane over Vietnam racing a shell fired from the USS New Jersey. I don’t know that its real or even possible but that would be totally Bad@ss. This strip reminds me of that.

can you call the cannonball, wise advisor with teeth in the law?

Perfect missile defence shield.

Cannon Ball Run !!!

Too cute!

Is the Wizard breaking the fourth wall and talking to the audience?I don’t believe I’ve seen this in this strip before.

Let’s hope Wiz never bringd Henry to the battlefield. We wouldn’t want him chasing all those canonballs now, do we?

Henry’s flying because he doesn’t like dragon his feet.

They have magic, they have a fire-breathing air force – literally -and they have artillery, and yet they still get invaded from time to time by those pesky Huns. Something is awfully wrong here! Must be with the highest level in their chain of command, if you ask me…

…ball?

There are a number of photographs and movies of all sixteen inch guns being fired simultaneously at the same target, and in no firing did the ship displace more than nineteen inches of rocking movement.

One time when the USS New Jersey was on station during the Korean Conflict, an Army spotter was calling in singlle rounds. Somebody decided they needed a pictute of BB-62 in action, so they sent up a helicopter to take the picture and fired all nine cannon broadside. How would you like to be that spotter? As I recall, it cost the taxpayers about $60,000 for that picture for the papers.

I have also been told that when all the 16" are fired broadside ti will move the ship about 2 feet sideways in the water.

Yeah, that’s a fetch until he drops the ball on your foot…

2700 FPS is the muzzle velocity, about 2.4 Mach. The round slows down considerably in flight, and is visible in many instances. It’s entirely possible that an F4, F8, or A5 could pace a projectile in flight near the end of its travel.

http://blog.usni.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/iowabroadside.jpg

The muzzle velocity of the 16 inchers was 2700 feet per second, and the terminal velocity about 1600 feet per second (into the ground!). the F-14 can do 2260 feet per second, so a weird movie possible (projectile overtakes plane, then falls behind and down).

In a booklet entitled “US Navy War Photographs”, I have a picture of the Missouri taken from another ship during WWII where she is firing her six forward 16 inch “rifles” and you can actually see all six of the 16 inch projectiles in air about the ship’s length distance from the ship.