About Sin-gi-jeon

[Tevin Chung from South Korea]

Singijeon(신기전) is a Korean traditional weapon.(It is known as Hwa-cha in other countries.)
It was created in 1440 by King Sejong the Great and during the reign of King Sejong, Korea's scientific technology was superior to any other country.
Singijeon is a automatic arrow launch system, which is a precursor to the rocket launch.
Singijeon is divided into two parts, which are split into a projectile fired into an arrow and arrow.
Usually the launch pad is called 'Hwa-cha', and the arrow is also called Singijeon.
It has gunpowder on their backs, and when they light powder, they fly like rockets.
If you shoot it once, you fly 100 arrows simultaneously.
Since there's a rocket on the arrow, its range goes farther than the humans can shoot.
The weapons were said to have played a very big role in the war between Korea and Japan.
Go to the link to see it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gmFep_UqAo


Now Question is this, Assuming that you are in a Japanese samurai army, unfortunately, when your troops are in the range of singijeon, how likely are you to survive?

(If you think you are wearing thick armor and you can live in an arrow, you are mistaken. One kind of singijeon is that if the arrow is stuck in your body, a rocket will explode.)

[Copper Bezel]

Is this a rhetorical question? If so, what is your point? Your video gives a pretty decent demonstration of the rockets' effectiveness. Just going on that demo, one hwacha wouldn't substitute for a line of archers, but if I understand the battlefield mechanics at all, it would be very likely to break ranks and cause a few casualties.

It's worth noting that this artillery role isn't unique for 1440. Grapeshot cannons were invented in the West around the same time.

[p1t1o]

There is no arrow that can pierce *all* armour. The best tempered plate armours from italy could resist a level-shot bodkin and an uncontained gunpowder charge isn't going to do much more than disorient a person in full-plate. Gunpowder is not that powerful.

Traditional Samurai did not have access to this sort of armour, but they were no strangers to projectile weapons - Note the sorts of shields used in the top-left of this image:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... elds_(tate).jpg/800px-Samurai_using_shields_(tate).jpg

Long story short - this weapon, like many others, has its utility on the battlefield - but, like many others, it was not a magic silver bullet that can kill anything and win any battle, of course there are counters to it.

Best defence of course would be not to be in the beaten area or in the firing arc, its not un-flankable.

[LaserGuy]

I'm guessing that the main problem with a weapon like this is not so much the destructive power of the initial volley, which, to all appearances, seems quite deadly, but rather that you need to manually reload every one of those arrows if you want to fire it again. You may be able to greatly limit its effectiveness as well by deploying your troops differently (in the Siege of Haengju, the Japanese samurai apparently used a very tight formation that these sort of weapons are quite optimal against).