Eli5 how the guns on large navy ships actually work? They are just shooting really large bullets at other ships in the sea? Like, does it use combustion to accelerate the projectile?
In: 9
Just a large cannon with an explosive projectile. Same exact principal that’s been used on ships for 100s of years. The trend since the end of WWII has been to move away from giant guns and use missiles instead.
The exception to this is a [rail gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun) which uses electo magnetic force to accelerate the projectile instead of combustion.
If you want to learn something really fascinating, check out how the [giant mechanical computers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1i-dnAH9Y4) worked on those WWII battle ships to figure out exactly where to point those guns.
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