Drone footage of a massive star fort

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/01/11/drone-footage-of-a-massive-sta.html

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Oh no. How do you make a 72 degree angle in Minecraft?

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What I love most about this is that at the time it was built they would have known that hardly anyone at the time would be able to see it in all its glory (from the air).

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That still looks like the after effects of real life drag-n-drop.

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Of course that was intentional. From ground level, it isn’t very easy to distinguish a ravelin from a bastion, which would make it more difficult to lay out your attack.

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Bresenham?

Yo Dog; I herd you like enfilade fire; so I basically kept putting bastions in your bastions until it ended up looking like a particularly militaristic fractal…

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Hell, there was a whole lot of drag-n-drop when it came to building the pyramids, too.

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I like the one in St Augustine:

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That’s not a star fort.

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For those who aren’t military architecture buffs, the star fort developed in response to artillery that could level the walls of medieval castles. The idea was not to build high, but low, and defend the base of the walls with glacis, berms that could prevent artillery from firing low and bringing down the walls.

Fort McHenry in Baltimore, site of “The Star Spangled Banner”, is a pretty cool star fort.

The Statue of Liberty sits in the middle of Fort Wood, built before the War of 1812. There’s a number of other star forts that defended NYC.

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Fort Pulaski is more of an ice cream fort:

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Googled it, fascinating history even if the designer didn’t get the “star” memo. Guinea pig for early rifled cannon in Civil War.

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Bastions and ravelins and crownworks, Oh my!

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Here’s Fort Monroe, VA, now closed.

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Canada used theirs (Citadelle_of_Quebec, with a glacis design) to successfully keep Americans out. It is still a military installation, and the Queen’s official residence when she’s in town.

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Halifax Citadel stands on guard.

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Hey, I know what is meant by “mamelon” and “ravelin”. Furthermore, I can tell at sight a Mauser rifle from a javelin.

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That one is just a copy of this one…

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Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, represent!

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