The Modern Use of Trebuchets

For your amusement:

In High School I joined an engineering club that built a Trebuchet every year to participate in an event held in early November in which teams compete to hurl a pumpkin as far as possible.

The event is World Championship Punkin Chunkin.

The largest Trebuchet there is called Yankee Siege which uses a counter weight that can hold 30,000 lbs. It can hurl a 50-100 lb projectile between 300-400 yards with a partially filled counter weight. Its maximum range to date is just over 2000 ft.

Midieval Trebuchets were used to either destroy fortifications or as terror devices, employed to throw dead animals or live enemies over the wall as a psychological weapon. They generally had a range of about 300 yards. In many ways they were the pinnacle of siege technology and were made obsolete by the advent of gunpowder. They fired slowly as it took a long time to reload the device.

The operation of a Trebuchet is a bit of history that you can witness and it is easy to see how these massive machines could tear down walls with ease or fill defenders with fear.