How well did wooden fortress hold up, couldn't the enemy just easily burn it down?

How well did wooden fortress hold up, couldn't the enemy just easily burn it down?

Other urls found in this thread:

wbir.com/article/news/local/how-fire-destroyed-the-i-85-steel-and-concrete-bridge/51-427325305
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sébastien_Le_Prestre_de_Vauban
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

The wood was probably too wet to burn consistently most of the time. Wooden defenses weren't generally something meant to last indefinitely.

>couldn't the enemy just easily burn it down
yes

hahaha what a fucking retarded thread

That’s one of the two main reasons for elevated positions and motes, besides, fires that could engulf an entire section of wall are hard to set. if the enemy can’t stand still next to the wall long enough to do that, which they can’t, the place won’t be burned.

Literally how? Shoot an arrow of fire at it? This isn’t game of thrones idiot.

Not really, as the wood retains moisture, so if you're in a wet or rainy area, then it would be hard, also how are you goting to get close to it without being shot at with arrows?

Poor gas on it? Light the gas with a match? This isn't rocket sciences, bucko

the Japanese designed a way to make wood not flammable

of course, that's superior Japanese invention, I bet the gaijins didn't have them

pack it with mud covering to increase fire resistance

ahhh yes their secret substance "wateru"

Have fun getting hit with arrows and rocks.

>muh superior japs
>be japan
>get nuked
>twice

Yea, plaster.

Have fun getting shot

>I bet the people who spent several centuries living in and attacking walled cities never thought of a way to make fireproof wood.

>drr, hey guys, how do I war?

Did it involve the ancient Japanese tradition of bukkake?

Absolutely. This happens all the time. Look how easily forest fires spread! Those TREES are full of WATER. Same principal applies to wooden retard fortresses.

Might as well wait until you get stone engrams do build your base.
Most dinos can damage wood and trolls will break it down easy

Gas as in gasoline? M8 it was first distilled in the 19th century. Did people hold out in wooden forts back then? Apart from the us army during the Indian wars? You must be dumb af nigger if you think that's a viable tactic. It doesn't burn long enough to ignite wet wooden logs.

Neat flag.

I meant whale oil

It's hard to get close enough to burn it down when you're under missile fire. Wooden fortifications were usually just temporary things. Also, bear in mind that the space between the walls is filled with earth.

Also, not politics. Take this shit to /k/.

No. Ever try to light a log. You need a big fire. Which is hard to do while being stabbed or shot

literally which historical army has access to enough whale oil to fling it at fortifications? Pitch would have been a better answer, but also those wooden forts usually had their walls filled with rubble and dirt to prevent being burned

Your average retard takes all of his knowledge on historical warfare from Total War and Hollywood, there's no point arguing with them. If they had the intelligence to read a book on the subject they wouldn't be asking the stupid questions anyways.

>couldn't the enemy just easily burn it down?
Getting large logs of wood to burn requires a large, intense fire. Which requires you to either
>set a large, intense fire at the base of the fortification (good luck doing this arrow fire and falling rocks)
or
>launching large burning projectiles at the fortification (at which point it isn't much more effective than launching ordinary massive shit at a wooden wall)

I'd be more worried about the people inside of it accidentally burning it down

Those were built mostly for the policing of the people living inside and protecting from random bandits.

If someone managed to muster up an army to take such a location there's little you could do but attempt to wait it out inside until they give up and move on or you starve.

But essentially, once an army shows up to "siege" you, you're already fucked.

It was usually a double wall with dirt in-between.
So it you burn it down there would be a dirt wall with another wall behind it

Pretty well compared to no wall.
Not very well if compared to stone wall and mote.

how did you know?

>it's a thinly veiled, though well fortified, wall thread

Try shooting a flaming arrow at a log cabin and see how fast the flaming arrow fizzles out.

hahaha what a fucking useless post

Everything burns

Did you know only one in five arsons are ever caught?

wbir.com/article/news/local/how-fire-destroyed-the-i-85-steel-and-concrete-bridge/51-427325305

You'd have to get to the wall first without getting shot

This, also in Europe, if you had the money, you would white wash them, next to making the fort white, it also made it very fire resistant. So while not technically impossible, it would be a bitch to catch it on fire.
As, fucken lot of city trash here, even dry wood does not just burn from fire being put in it, it requires a ton of heat, so either concentrated heat(flame thrower, Byzantine Empire has this), or a shitton of heat , think barrels of flammable stuff thrown at the wall, then set ablaze by a fire arrow, or three.
Lastly almost no one would make an100% wooden object, stone, dirt, and mud, and even man made chemicals would be put in as mortar, all of which had a cooling effect. Fact is few castles ever fell, the two combatants normally would parlay before things got that bad. After all, why even attack the damn thing, unless you wanted it to begin with, if all you want is for the inhabitants to die, then siege them, and let them starve, or die of the plague, of something.

the wooden walls are just a ruse, the real threat are the rifle pits in the brush to your left

Japan has much rain and no oil.
So it was no easy to burn in the old era.

Better capture rate than bank robberies. Did you know that you have a 95% chance of getting away with a single bank robbery? It's the second or third time that hangs you.

...

That looks like pizza

grabherbythepussy.jpg

A fire requires 3 things: fuel, heat, and oxygen. Wood is fuel, great, we've established that. Oxygen is readily available, in fact, 78% of air is oxygen. Great. Heat. That's a hard thing to provide in abundance when you're getting shot at with arrows. You can't just go camp out underneath your enemy's wall and start hitting flints together and blowing until you start a nice flame. Fire isn't magic. Also, the spreading of fire is quite difficult. It's often easy in a forest, because there is a fuckton of dry underbrush, which doesn't exist on a wooden wall. Maybe you could burn a little section of it, and lose a bunch of men in the process. A much better option was usually seige, sappers, disease, poisoning of the water, a gate ram, ect. I'm sure wooden walls were burned down every now and then, but I doubt fire was big on their minds.

They were used mainly against germania and gaul, who were not known to use flame arrows, more or less just crude melee weapons.

You use an abatis a few hundred yards away from the wall to prevent them from even getting to it. You also wet it during a siege.

Big if true. Sauce? What is the average take?

have you ever tried to lite a thick stick on fire with a liter stick? that shit takes forever just for a thick stick

what a smartass

Not enough, they only keep $10k or so on hand now usually. It's like niggers who steal ATMs, there's only about $2k in there.

Forgot to take my shill saging name off.

Not very much, which is why they typically rob more than one and get caught.

No, you're just a fucking idiot. Read a god damn book.

more often than not the wooden part of fortifications was covered in clay. the Ottomans even had to come up with specialized ammunition to shake it off because it made wooden forts that much more resistant to cannon fire
also, i don't think you appreciate how hard it is to set a fucking log on fire

Yes they could if that was the goal, and depending on the fort. Treated wood is nothing new and if done can be extremely hard to burn.

Red pill me on Star forts please Sup Forums. What makes them so defensively sound?

>bad guys coming towards wooden fort with flames
>shoot arrows at them

Its not like you could just stroll up and set it on fire

Yeah Native Americans in 1830 could just go to the gas station trade some feathers for gas and burn down frontier forts.

>the Japanese designed a way to make wood not flammable
>of course, that's superior Japanese invention, I bet the gaijins didn't have them
oh my kek

Forest fires are a mix of tons of plants and fire fuel. A wall of solid wood is harder to light.

ITT: city retards who never attempted to start a wood fire.
I'm disappointed Sup Forums.

Canon balls bouncing off of those walls I think.

If a hole is punctured they still can't rush it because they would be shot at from multiple angles.
You... you know they can just position cannons to shoot the broadside right?

Oh well, burning it all down is more useful to society at this point anyways.

Not flammable you say?

Yes I know but did they know?
But pointing them broadside has also disadvantages because you only get a part of the target in your view so if you overshoot a little bit you will miss it.
But I also said I think so I don't know for sure. It's just something I picked up somewhere and don't have any sources for.

Why would they bounce off bro?

RETARD is just backpedalling

Hehehe what a fucking terrible reply

imagine trying to start a campfire 5 feet away from enemies poking you with spears, shooting and throwing stuff at you

fire arrows are a meme and did very little, really the only way would be to bring pitch/oil jars to smash on the walls

Well angled is of course better for armor. They built them that way because each wall is covered by another wall and infantry has a harder time piling up at the bottom of the wall. They built the walls low and thick to help against cannon fire and they dug ditches around to slow down infantry and also maintain the height advantage that a normal fort would give (see low thick walls)

>leafposter

>red pill
All you need to know.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sébastien_Le_Prestre_de_Vauban

as far back as the classical greeks they were covering their siege towers in peatmoss and presoaking it before the battle

The angle matters. If you shoot right at a wall pretty much all the energy is absorbed by the wall. If you shoot slightly from the side the ball will lose little energy to the wall and just keep flying.

it should be noted that using pitch/oil to burn down a palisade would be like making bomb casings out of gold

Lay off the drugs retard

also hides. you can layer hides on a structure to prevent wood underneath from catching fire.

>I ... I don't know what I meant
gtfo faggot

>ahhh yes their secret substance "wateru"

Nope , you simply plaster the wood. The plaster is inflammable and the wood wont get on fire since the flames can't get any air.

>every edge is defended by gunners which have been presighted

>there is no place on the battlefield where the enemy can take cover from your guns

>any outside position they take will also be presighted and have no cover

this means that no attack against one can ever be done in stages and the entire fort must be taken within a single battle lest you leave to rest for the night and need to retake all ground the next morning.

did they fold the wood a thousand times?

Nobody reads books on wooden fortress defenses, gaylord

Yes its 1000 times stronger than Damascus wood.

>Great view of every Direction
>Wedged edges which absorb the impact of cannonballs (imagine the difference of shooting a solid projectile at a flat surface vs towards a wedged surface)
>If infantry storms the flat sections of the walls, the people on the points can shoot at their backs.

>static defences

Clearly people in this thread don't appreciate the weakness of static defences.

it's not impregnable but it's the best fortification type until ~1900s