THE "LEADEN HAIL."

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 170, 24 August 1914, Page 8

THE "LEADEN HAIL."

ARTILLERY AMMUNITION. DEVASTATION OF SHRAPNEL. Since Britain's last Continental war there has been a complete change in the nature of all ammunition. It was not till 1885 that a practical method of making a musket ball fit the grooves of a rifle was found, though in the Peninsula war two regiments were armed with rifled muzzle-loaders. It was very hard to load the guns, whioh "fouled" badly, and the soldiers had literally to hammer the bullets down the barrels. The advantages of the rifle were so great that scores of inventions were tried; and finally Prussia: led the way with the celebrated ''needlegun." This was not only rifled, but it was a breech-loader. The cartridge was of paper, the bullet egg-shaped and held in a sort of wooden eggcup which gripped the grooves of the rifling. The igniting device was in front of the powder, just behind the bullet, and it was exploded by a long needle which plunged through the powder to reach it. Quickly the French, ahd then the British, adopted rifled arms, using a bullet known as the Minie. This was the first of a shape comparable with the modern one —a cylinder with a head somewhat conical. At the rear end was a hollow, containing a plug, which was driven in by the explosion, and which spread the base oi* the bullet so as to fit the grooves. This device overcame a great drawback of previous designs; it prevented the escape of the propelling gas. past the ball. The rifle had a great bore —nearly threequarters of an inch. It was a muzzleloader. The bullet and powder were wrapped together in a paper case greased to exclude moisture, and in loading, the soldier bit off one end of the cartridge and poured the powder into the gun before ramming down the bullet. It was this ammunition which started the Indian Mutiny, for the Mohammedan an-.I Hindu troops believed that animal fat was used in the cartridges purposely, tc defile their users. THE .MODERN RIFLE.

The ■•Enfield rifle, of .577-inch'bore, was introduced in 185;>, and was a vastly superior weapon. It gave way to the Snider, which was virtually the Enfield converted into a breech-loader. This still used a Minie bullet, and those who have seen the old Sniders used in earlier days in New Zealand are probably aware that the bullet was lightened by a small closed cavity near the point to give it a better balance. ■ The whole British Army had Sniders at the time of the'Franco-Prus-sian war; and the French and Germans adopted the Chassepot and the Mauser respectively in 1869 and 1871. In 1874 Britain threw out the barking, kicking Snider for the handsome Martini-Henry hammerless weapon of calibre .45-inch, at that time the finest rifle extant; and it has not very long disappeared. Since then the army has carried two generations of Lee-Enfield magazine rifles, .303 calibre, firing a bullet of lead in a nickel jacket and loaded with cordite. Now every civilised nation uses small-bore rifles with some form of magazine. It is now an easy matter for a soldier to carry 150 rounds of ammunition, weighing about 101b. Austria and France use the Mannlicher and Lebel-rifles, of .315inch bore, Germany the Mauser, of ..'llO- - and Russia the "three-line," of .256-inch bore. Both Germany and France use a bullet which is shorter and'much sharper-pointed than that of the LeeEnfield.

j ARTILLERY AMMUNITION. While varied forms of ammunition I were in use by field artillery only a I few years ago, there are practically only two kinds of outstanding importance now, and one is of vastly greater importance than the other. First there is shrapnel, and secondly high-explosive shell. '"'Common" shell has a limited use. Shrapnel is sometimes combined with high explosives. Shrapnel is the projectile upon which the greatest reliance is placed for attacking troops anywhere but under really good cover. There is no intention on the part of a field gun of hitting any individual soldier with a 15-pound shot. That sort of thing was all very well in the days of old, when globular projectiles trundled across the field, lopping sundry heads and legs before they stopped. The shell to-day has a more glorious ambition. It is potential to slay its hundreds. It consists of a steel cylinder with a conical nose screwed on. The base of the shell is strong and thick, the sides as thin as they can be made to stand the strains of firing. One may regard the shell as a jar. Right at the bottom is a handful of powder, and on top of that au iron plate with a hole in it, and a tube passing through the hole stands the full height of the jar. The jar is then packed, as one packs onions in a pickle-bottle, with hardened lead bullets—about '.150 of them, weighing about seven pounds. Then the nose of the shell, consisting mostly of the "fuse," is attached. WHY THE SHRAPNEL BURSTS. The fuse of a shrapnel shell is a most ingenious thing. It is supposed to ignite the powder at the bottom of the shell a certain time after the gun is fired; but if it fails to do so it will certainly cause an explosion "on graze," that is, when the shell strikes the ground. It is a metal construction of many parts screwed together; and a pair of rings on the outside can be turned. They are grooved on one Hat side, and the'groove is filled with a slow burning composition; and holes drilled in the rings bring the grooves into communication with each other, while a hole in the body of the fuse leads from one of the grooves to the interior of the shell, where there is a small charge of powder to make a flame that will reach through the central tube to the bursting charge at the base. By turning the rings appropriately, various lengths of the composition can be placed between the communicatiug holes, and the time that elapses before the £;e reaches the interior of the shell adjusted to a

small fraction of a Seconal. In the far past, gunners trusted to the flash of the powder round the loose fitted shell to light the fuse; or even fired it- with - a match just before discharging the gun. Neither of these plans will serve now. As for the first, no gas, theoretically, escapes; and for the second, there is not time to fool about with a match like that. There are two percussion caps in the fuse, both held firmly in place by little metal fastenings, but both fairly heavy. Their sensitive sides face each other, but they are in separate chambers. The chamber nearest the nose of the shell communicates with the time fuse in the movable rings, and the other directly with the powder in the shell. Fastened in the partition between the two chambers are small steel spikes, and the detonators, if they are forced upon the spikes, will, explode. At the moment the gun is fired,, the. shell begins to move so quickly that the foremost detonator, anxious not to start off so rapidly, breaks away from its fastening, and is pierced by the needle; it fires, and starts the time fuse. If by any chance the time fuse should ,fail to act, the other cap will operate. Sitting upon a firm piece of metal, it *

had to start suddenly like the shell; but stopping is another matter. When the shell strikes the ground, the cap exercises its privilege of inertia and goes on- still, as far as it can, which is as far as the waiting needle. It goe3 off; and virtually at the instant the shell's speed is checked by the ground it is shattered.

THE EFFECTS OF SHRAPNEL. Shrapnel is "set" to burst some distance in front of the ground it is desired to-hit. When the charge explodes, it wrecks the thin steel shell, bursting it usually into several pieces, and scatters the bullets, which immediately hail upon the ground. At average range they will all fall upon a strip of ground a little over a chain wide, and perhaps three hundred yards long; and with this shell as a sort of lethal broom, the battery of artillery sweeps the area where the enemy lie. If he lias howitzers, the artillerist can rain his snrapnel down so steeply so as to reach men in Avell-designed trenches. .

THE LYDDITE SHELL. * High explosive shells are "filled, as, a rule, with lyddite, or seme similar explosive. Picric acid is used "in medicine and in the arts" in considerable quantities. At one time certain popular socks of a most vigorous yellow colour were dyed .with it. But it is mostly used in making picrates of potassium and ammonium, which are the explosives aforesaid. They explode with extraordinary violence, making a dense black smoke, and smashing a shell into tiny fragments. When the detonation is incomplete, the smoke is yellow, and the neighbourhood may be stained a bright yellow; and the fumes are very evil to breathe. The shell is not primarily a man-killer; its chief use ia for wrecking light protective structures, and one shell well placed will smash a small wooden house completely. Such shells do not need any fuse; they will explode through the shock of striking. The damage ' done is extremely severe within about a chain, but beyond that, little harni is done. As a rule the chief result, if a shell , lands on the ground, is the sudden digging of a pit in the ground. It was one of the jokes current during the siege of Ladysmith that a hole was a particularly safe place to sit in, because no two shells ever landed in the same place.

THE FIRING CHARGE. As to the propelling charge in the gun, that has changed radically within the past dozen years. When Armstrong invented his clever breechloader, the shell was put into the gun first, and then the powder, dene up in a flannel bag, was pushed in after it. Now th« quickfiring guns require a simpler load ing, and the ammunition is exactly like a magnified rifle cartridge. A big brass cartridge contains the charge of cordite, and in its base carries a percussion cap; and the shell is fixed in the cartridge. This is "fixed ammunition." Each guu is attended by a limber, which has the cartridges in handy racks, and which tilts up so that they are convenient to the gunner's hand. Almost as fast as the men can load them, the field guns can send the screeching shells away; and the problem which always haunts the artillery commander ia whether his supplies are soundly managed enough to keep his limbers full and his guns busy. —Wellington "Evening Post."