Superguns

A supergun or long range gun is an extraordinarily large artillery piece. This size may be due to a large bore, barrel length, or a combination of the two. While early examples tended to have a fairly short range, more recent examples have sometimes had an extremely high muzzle velocity, resulting in a very long range.

For more see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supergun.

Data

All data for long range guns (LRG) is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_railway_artillery

Exploratory analysis

library(readxl)
library(ggplot2)
library(GGally)
library(dplyr)

## 
## Attaching package: 'dplyr'

## The following object is masked from 'package:GGally':
## 
##     nasa

## The following objects are masked from 'package:stats':
## 
##     filter, lag

## The following objects are masked from 'package:base':
## 
##     intersect, setdiff, setequal, union

library(broom)
library(tidyr)
library(rgl)
library(rglwidget)

## The functions in the rglwidget package have been moved to rgl.

library(pca3d)
library(scatterplot3d)
library(car)

## 
## Attaching package: 'car'

## The following object is masked from 'package:dplyr':
## 
##     recode

LRG <- read_excel("LRG.xlsx")
LRG

LRG%>%group_by(Country)%>%count()

Mean and maximum values

LRG%>%select(Range_M,Velocity_MPS,Weight_t,Caliber_mm,Barrel_M,WW,Elevation)%>%
  group_by(WW)%>%
  summarise("M[Range]"=mean(Range_M),"M[Velocity]"=mean(Velocity_MPS,na.rm = T),
            "M[Barrel]"=mean(Barrel_M,na.rm =T),   "M[Caliber]"=mean(Caliber_mm),"M[Weight]"=mean(Weight_t,na.rm=T),
            "M[Elevation]"=mean(Elevation,na.rm=T))

LRG%>%filter(Country==c("Germany","France","GB","USA"))%>%select(Range_M,Velocity_MPS,Weight_t,Caliber_mm,Barrel_M,Elevation,Country)%>%
  group_by(Country)%>%
  summarise("M[Range]"=mean(Range_M,na.rm = T),"M[Velocity]"=mean(Velocity_MPS,na.rm = T),
            "M[Barrel]"=mean(Barrel_M,na.rm =T),   "M[Caliber]"=mean(Caliber_mm),"M[Weight]"=mean(Weight_t,na.rm=T),
            "M[Elevation]"=mean(Elevation,na.rm=T))

LRG%>%select(Range_M,Velocity_MPS,Weight_t,Caliber_mm,Barrel_M,Elevation,Country)%>%
  group_by(Country)%>%
  summarise("Max[Range]"=max(Range_M,na.rm = T),"Max[Velocity]"=max(Velocity_MPS,na.rm = T),
            "Max[Barrel]"=max(Barrel_M,na.rm =T),   "Max[Caliber]"=max(Caliber_mm),"Max[Weight]"=max(Weight_t,na.rm=T),
            "Max[Elevation]"=max(Elevation,na.rm=T))

Density and box plots

LRG%>%ggplot(.,aes(log(Range_M),fill=Country)) +
  geom_density(alpha=0.3) + ggtitle("Range density")

LRG%>%ggplot(.,aes(log(Weight_t),fill=Country)) +
  geom_density(alpha=0.3) + ggtitle("Weight density")

LRG%>%ggplot(.,aes(Barrel_M,fill=Country)) +
  geom_density(alpha=0.3) + ggtitle("Barrel density")

LRG%>%ggplot(.,aes(log(Caliber_mm),fill=Country)) +
  geom_density(alpha=0.3) + ggtitle("Caliber density")

LRG%>%ggplot(.,aes(log(Velocity_MPS),fill=Country)) +
  geom_density(alpha=0.3) + ggtitle("Velocity density")

LRG%>%ggplot(.,aes(log(Elevation),fill=Country)) +
  geom_density(alpha=0.3) + ggtitle("Elevation density")

LRG%>%ggplot(.,aes(Country,Caliber_mm,fill=Country)) + geom_jitter() +
  geom_violin(alpha=0.3) + ggtitle("Caliber boxplot")

LRG%>%ggplot(.,aes(Country,log(Range_M),fill=Country)) + geom_jitter() +
  geom_violin(alpha=0.3) + ggtitle("Range boxplot")

LRG%>%ggplot(.,aes(Country,Barrel_M,fill=Country)) + geom_jitter() +
  geom_violin(alpha=0.3) + ggtitle("Barrel boxplot")

LRG%>%ggplot(.,aes(Country,Weight_t,fill=Country)) + geom_jitter() +
  geom_violin(alpha=0.3) + ggtitle("Weight boxplot")

LRG%>%ggplot(.,aes(Country,Velocity_MPS,fill=Country)) + geom_jitter() +
  geom_violin(alpha=0.3) + ggtitle("Velocity boxplot")

LRG%>%ggplot(.,aes(Country,Elevation,fill=Country)) + geom_jitter() +
  geom_violin(alpha=0.3) + ggtitle("Elevation boxplot")

Linear regression plots

ggplot(LRG,aes(Velocity_MPS,Range_M,size=Caliber_mm,col=Country)) + geom_jitter() + geom_smooth(method = lm,na.rm = T,se=F)+ggtitle("Linear regression Range~Velocity by Country")

ggplot(LRG,aes(Barrel_M,Range_M,size=Caliber_mm,col=Country)) + geom_jitter() + geom_smooth(method = lm,na.rm = T,se=F)+ggtitle("Linear regression Range~Barrel by Country")

ggplot(LRG,aes(Elevation,Range_M,size=Caliber_mm,col=Country)) + geom_jitter() + geom_smooth(method = lm,na.rm = T,se=F)+ggtitle("Linear regression Range~Elevation by Country")

ggplot(LRG,aes(Barrel_M,Velocity_MPS,size=Caliber_mm,col=Country)) + geom_jitter() + geom_smooth(method = lm,na.rm = T,se=F)+ggtitle("Linear regression Velocity~Barrel by Country")

Conclusions

Germany was a true leader in long range guns race both in WW1 and WW2 with 130 km maximum range of fire and 18 types of guns.
Range of gun fire (Range_M) is proportional to Muzzle Velocity (Velocity_MPS), Barrel length (Barrel_M) and Barrel Elevation angle (Elevation).

Long range guns. Part 1