SHELLS AND MORE SHELLS

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 15 March 1917, Page 2

SHELLS AND MORE SHELLS

THE WONDERS OF THEIR,MANTJV FACTURE. WHAT IT COSTS TO KILL A HUMAN BEING Shells, and shells, and still more shells! Night and day, day and night, week in, week out, through summer and winter, they are being manufactured in their millions and tens of millions; and yet the insatiable hungry guns ask for ■ more. Shells, shells,, and still more shells! It is the nightmare cry of this nightmare war. Does it ever strike the average reader, amid the wild welter, of it all, that the increase in the cost, to put it bluntly, of killing a man? Statisticians are mostly agreed that for many i years on an average, the cost of this operation was about £3OOO, and that in South Africa, where the conditions wereexceptional, it- rose to £BOOO. But the French experts give higher figures, pointing out that in the Russo-Japanese war every man killed represented an expenditure of more than £4OOO. If the cause should prove to be greater in the European war, it will be mainly due to the prodigality of shells. In Northern France last December the French, thinking that the Germans were about to attack, hurled into their position 40,000 shells in thirty minutes, and : in the Vosges they have frequently rained 4000 on a front of only 200yds. No less generous are the Germans, as . they showed most conclusively during ? the battle for Przemysl, when they fired [ into the advancing Russians 700,000 high explosive shells in four hours. ; It may be of interest, in view of these statements, to give one or twoi details illustrative of the complexity and deli- , I cacy of the work required in the manu- | facturc of these murderous things which cost pounds to construct, and last only * a few seconds. First of all as to the propellant —cordite. Some of the final testing in the manufacture of this explosive involves accuracy up to .0001 of < a grain, and for the small ammunition, [■ in gauging the strands —a bunch of 11 ■ of which are used to fill even the rifle, [ cartridge —a micrometer is used. Equl ally minute is the care exercised to deU tect any chemical changes that take I j place in the course of manufacture. 13 With regard to the shell body, Ger- [ many is said to use cast iron for some I of her high explosive shells, but ours | * arc all turned out of forged steel, I though in the case of shrapnel shells a S simpler process can be adopted. Now, a | turret lathe can produce only about 20 I shells of 3in diameter in a working I* day, and consequently the French blew | away in half an hour projectiles roughly equivalent to the output of 2000 of such lathes for two days ! Acres of lathes —not to mention other machin- • ery —are therefore required for. a comparatively modern production of shells. Weight is an important factor in the manufacture of the shrapnel shell also. The bullets in it are of such a size that forty-one weigh a pound, and the allowable variation in that number is only one drachm. Yet there is an American machine which automatically casts rods of metal into bullets at the rate of 200,000 per hour. Next, th e fuse. For this the workmanship is even finer than for the other parts of the shell. Some of the holes arc ground by minute wheels, which revolve at a speed up to no fewer than 40,000 turns a minute, and in the production of a single complete fuse one I hundred different gauges arc required. Gauges! In sober truth, they are the bane of the shell-superintendent’s life. Some are so extremely delicate that they must be used quickly, or the heat of the hand will seriously effect them 1 and in many cases the unavoidable wear consequent on friction in measuring soon makes one untrue, and, therefore, useless. If we just take into account finally, the manufacture of the shell case and the filling, -we shall have som e idea of the processes that go to the manufacture of a shell, and it is this masterpiece of ingenuity and skill which is wasted by the hundred thousand in an hour.