In this video exclusive to the History Hit YouTube channel, Louee Dessent and Luke Tomes headed to the Royal Armouries Museum firing range in Leeds to shoot three guns spanning four centuries of history!
With the help and guidance of Keeper of Firearms & Artillery at Royal Armouries in Leeds, Jonathan Ferguson, we fired a 16th Century replica arquebus, an 18th Century Brown Bess musket and finally the famous Lee Enfield bolt-action rifle.
We explore the evolution of guns by looking at some of the first guns in existence through to the weapons of The First World War and Second World War.
Up Next in Treasures Revealed
-
The Rollright Stones: Mind, Myre and ...
The Rollright Stones are some of Britain’s most remarkable and mysterious ancient monuments. They consist of three separate sites - a looming funerary monument built to contain dismembered corpses, a venerated stone circle, and a single monolith with an innominate purpose. Alice Loxton traces six...
-
The Hurricane
Hawker Hurricanes accounted for 60% of German losses in the battle of Britain. They were the most numerous fighter aircraft which the RAF deployed, partly owing to their rapid turn-around time (it took them only 9 minutes to be refuelled and re-armed). Dan Snow provides an overview of the 'workho...
-
HMS Warrior
In the late 1850s, Britain and France were involved in an arms race. Both sides were embracing new technologies like armour plating to try and create the ultimate battleship. In 1860 this produced the revolutionary HMS Warrior, a product of Britain's naval mastery in the 19th century and the Indu...
1 Comment