Projectile that changed the artillery
It is not for nothing that artillery is called the god of war, but this capacious definition still needed to be earned. Before becoming the decisive argument of howling parties, artillery has come a long way of development. In this case, we are talking not only about the development of the artillery systems themselves, but also about the development of the used artillery ammunition.
A great step forward in increasing the combat capabilities of artillery was the invention of the British officer Henry Shrapnel. He created a new ammunition, the main purpose of which was to fight the enemy with manpower. It is curious that the inventor himself did not witness the triumph of his brainchild, but he found the beginning of the use of new ammunition in combat conditions.
Henry Shrapnel became the creator of the projectile, which brought artillery to a new level of its power. Thanks to shrapnel, artillery was able to effectively deal with infantry and cavalry, located in open areas and at a considerable distance from the guns. Shrapnel became a steel death over the battlefield, hitting troops in marching columns, in moments of rebuilding and preparing for an attack, on halts. In this case, one of the main advantages was the range of use of ammunition, which could not provide the canister.
Henry Shrapnel, whom descendants began to call the "killer of infantry and cavalry," began to create a new artillery ammunition at the end of the XNUMXth century. The idea of a British army officer was to put together a new weapons - two types of already known shells - a bomb and buckshot. The first ammunition was a hollow core filled with gunpowder, and having an ignition tube. The second - was a set of metal striking elements that were placed in a bag, or in the late stages of development in cardboard, metal packaging of a cylindrical shape. Shrapnel’s idea was to combine the striking power of these two ammunition, from the bomb he wanted to borrow the radius of destruction and the power of the explosion, and from the buckshot, the lethal effect of defeating the enemy’s openly located infantry and cavalry.
The birthplace of shrapnel can be called Gibraltar, where Lieutenant of the British Royal Artillery Henry Shrapnel was appointed in 1787. Here the inventor not only served, but also seriously studied the experience of the Great Siege of Gibraltar (1779-1783), mainly the use of artillery by the opposing sides. Six months after arriving at the fortress, the lieutenant showed his brainchild to the commander of the British garrison. The date of the first experiment using shrapnel is December 21, 1787. As a weapon, an 8-inch mortar was used, which was loaded with a hollow core, inside which was placed about 200 musket bullets and the powder necessary for an explosion. They were shooting from the fortress towards the sea from a hill about 180 meters above the water level. The experiment was deemed successful, the new ammunition exploded about half a second before meeting the water surface, the water literally boiled from being hit by hundreds of bullets. The officers present, including Major General O'Hara, were well impressed by the tests, but the Gibraltar garrison commander did not dare to take the implementation of the project under his personal patronage.
As a result, in 1795, Henry Shrapnel returned to the British Isles with ideas, test results, but without the ammunition itself and the prospects for its production. Already in the rank of captain, he did not abandon his idea and engaged in “the beloved affair of the inventors” - active correspondence with all sorts of officials. Continuing to improve the new ammunition Henry Shrapnel prepared several reports to the Commission of the Artillery Council. Here his paper lay motionless for several years, after which the inventor received a refusal to support the work. However, Shrapnel did not intend to surrender and literally threw the commission with his messages and suggestions, after all the artillery officer knew a lot about conducting good artillery preparation. As a result, in June 1803, the bureaucratic British monster fell under the attacks of a persistent officer, and a positive review was received on his messages. Despite the fact that at that time the problem of premature detonation of ammunition was not fully resolved, the results of tests conducted in England were considered successful and encouraging. A new artillery shell entered the approved list of ammunition for the British field forces, and Henry Shrapnel himself 1 November 1803 year advanced in service, receiving the rank of major artillery.
The grenade grenade proposed by officer Henry Shrapnel was made in the form of a hollow solid sphere, inside which there was a charge of gunpowder, as well as a bullet. The main feature proposed by the inventor of the grenade was a hole in the body, which was placed in the ignition tube. The firing tube was made of wood and contained a certain amount of gunpowder. Such a tube served as both a moderator and a fuse. When fired from a cannon, gunpowder ignited while it was in the barrel bore in the firing tube. Gradually, while the projectile flew toward its target, the powder burned through, as soon as it burned out all, the fire approached the powder charge, which was located in the hollow case of the grenade itself, which led to an explosion of the projectile. The effect of such an explosion is easy to imagine; it led to the destruction of the body of a grenade, which in the form of fragments and bullets flew apart, hitting the enemy’s infantry and cavalry. A feature of the new projectile was that the length of the pilot tube could be adjusted by the gunners themselves before the shot. Thanks to this solution, it was possible to achieve an explosion of a grenade at the desired time and place with an acceptable level of accuracy at that time.
The brainchild of Henry Shrapnel was first tested in real combat conditions of 30 on April 1804 of the year. The debut of the new shell came on the attack on the fort New Amsterdam, located on the territory of Dutch Guiana (Suriname). Major William Wilson, who in the battle led the actions of the British artillery, later wrote that the effect of the use of new shrapnel shells was stunning. The garrison of New Amsterdam decided to capitulate after the second salvo, the Dutch were amazed that they were suffering losses from their musket bullets at such a large distance from the enemy. It should be noted here that the smooth-bore guns of that era could effectively shoot a canister at a distance of 300-400 meters, while the cores flew to a distance of 1200 meters, the same was true for smooth-bore guns, whose firing range was limited to 300 meters. In the same year 1804 Shrapnel was promoted to lieutenant colonel, later this artillery officer and inventor successfully rose to the rank of general and even received money from the British government in the amount of 1200 pounds a year (a very serious sum of money at that time), which also shows recognition of his merits. And shrapnel was becoming more common. In January, 1806, the new ammunition brought death and horror to the opponents of the British in southern Africa, where the empire, over which the sun never set, regained control of the Cape colony, after a new projectile was used in India, and in July, 1806, and in the battle at Maida . New artillery ammunition quickly took its place in the sun and every year was increasingly used in battles around the world.
Over time, the British invention became widespread in the armies of all countries. One of the examples of successful use of shrapnel is the famous “attack of light cavalry” during the years of the Crimean War of the 1853-1856 years. The witness of the battle, General of the French Army Pierre Bosquet, described it best of all at one time: “This is great, but this is not war: this is madness.” We can only agree with the French general, the attack of the English light cavalry brigade, commanded by Lord Cardigan, entered into history. Poetry, paintings, and then films were devoted to this event. The attack itself under Balaclava under the fire of the Russian artillery, which used shrapnel, and the shooters, located on the heights dominating the terrain, cost the British about half the brigade’s personnel and even more horses.
It is worth noting that it was Russian artillerymen who made a significant contribution to the improvement of ammunition. In the Russian Empire, he found his own Henry Shrapnel, his place was taken by the Russian artillery scientist Vladimir Nikolaevich Shklarevich. Once in the armies of the world only began to appear rifled guns, Vladimir Shklarevich presented a new type of projectile - diaphragm shrapnel with a central tube and bottom camera, this happened in 1871 year. The presented ammunition looked like a cylindrical body, the diaphragm (cardboard partition), it was divided into two compartments. In the bottom compartment of the Shklarevich projectile was placed a charge of explosive. Ball-shaped bullets were placed in another compartment. Along the axis of the projectile was a central tube, which was filled with pyrotechnic composition. On the front of the projectile was placed the head with a cap. After the shot from the gun, an explosion occurred and the ignition of the slowly burning pyrotechnic composition in the longitudinal tube. In flight, the fire passed through the tube and reached the powder charge in the bottom compartment, which led to the explosion of the projectile. The explosion was pushing the diaphragm forward along the projectile's flight, as well as the bullets behind it, which flew out of the projectile. The new scheme proposed by the Russian engineer allowed the use of ammunition in modern rifled artillery. There was a new projectile and a significant plus. Now, when the projectile was blown up, the bullets did not fly evenly in all directions, as originally happened when the spherical grenade of the Shrapnel construction was blown up, but directed along the axis of the flight of the artillery projectile with a deviation from it. This decision increased the combat effectiveness of artillery fire when shooting shrapnel.
The design presented was a significant disadvantage, but it was quickly eliminated. The first projectile of Shklarevich envisioned firing only at a predetermined distance. The deficiency was eliminated already in 1873, when the tube of remote blasting of a new ammunition with a rotating ring was created. The main difference was that now from the capsule to the blast charge the fire went along the path consisting of three parts. One part, as before, was the central tube, and the remaining two sections were channels with the same pyrotechnic composition, but located in rotating rings. By turning these rings, the gunners could change the amount of the pyrotechnic composition, providing shrapnel at a distance that was needed during the battle. At the same time, two terms appeared in colloquial artillery calculations: the projectile was put "on shrapnel", if it was necessary that it exploded at a great distance from the gun and "on the canister" if the remote tube was regulated for a minimum burning time. The third use of such projectiles was the “strike” position, when the path from the capsule to the blasting charge was completely blocked. In this position, the projectile exploded only at the moment of encountering an obstacle.
The use of shrapnel shells reached its peak by the beginning of the First World War. According to experts, for the field and mountain artillery caliber 76 mm such shells were the absolute majority of ammunition. In this case, shrapnel was actively used by large-caliber artillery systems. For example, in the 76-mm projectile fit about 260 bullets, and in 107-mm already about 600. In the event of a successful break, a similar deadly swarm of lead could cover an area 20-30 meters wide and up to 150-200 meters deep - almost a third of a hectare. With a successful break, only one shrapnel could cover a section of a large road, along which in the column a company of 150-200 moved along with its machine-gun gigs.
One of the most effective episodes of using shrapnel shells came at the beginning of the First World War. 7 August 1914, captain Lombal, the commander of the 6 battery of the 42 regiment of the French army, during the battle that began, managed to locate the German troops that had left the forest at a distance of five kilometers from the location of their guns. A cluster of troops was fired with shrapnel shells from 75-mm guns, 4 guns of his battery made 16 shots in total. The result of the shelling, which caught the enemy at the time of restructuring from marching to battle formation, was disastrous for the Germans. As a result of an artillery strike, the 21 th Prussian Dragoon Regiment lost only 700 people killed and about the same number of trained horses, after such a strike the regiment ceased to be a combat unit.
But by the middle of the First World War, when the parties switched to positional actions and the massive use of artillery, and the quality of the officers of the warring parties fell, the minuscule shrapnel began to manifest themselves. Among the main shortcomings were:
- a small slaughter effect of spherical shrapnel bullets (usually quite low-grade ones), any obstacle could stop them;
- powerlessness against targets concealed in trenches, trenches (with a flat shooting trajectory), dugouts and caponiers (with any trajectory);
- low efficiency of firing at a long range when using poorly trained officers, especially reservists;
- a small damaging effect against the material part of the enemy, even openly located.
- greater complexity and high cost of such ammunition.
For these reasons, even during the First World War, shrapnel was gradually supplanted by a fragmentation grenade, which had an instant fuse, which did not have these shortcomings and, moreover, had a great psychological effect on the enemy soldiers. Gradually, the number of shrapnel in the troops was declining, but even during the Second World War, such ammunition was used quite extensively, as search engines working on the battlefield can tell you. And the very use of shrapnel shells was also reflected in fiction, for example, the famous novel Volokolamsk Highway. In the second half of the 20th century, shrapnel shell, which had been a real infantry storm for more than a century, practically ceased to be used, but the very ideas on which this weapon was based, albeit in a modified version, continue to be used today even at a new level of development of science and technology.
Information sources:
https://fakel-history.ru
http://otvaga2004.ru
http://www.popadancev.net
http://www.battlefield.ru
https://russian.rt.com
Open source materials
A great step forward in increasing the combat capabilities of artillery was the invention of the British officer Henry Shrapnel. He created a new ammunition, the main purpose of which was to fight the enemy with manpower. It is curious that the inventor himself did not witness the triumph of his brainchild, but he found the beginning of the use of new ammunition in combat conditions.
Henry Shrapnel became the creator of the projectile, which brought artillery to a new level of its power. Thanks to shrapnel, artillery was able to effectively deal with infantry and cavalry, located in open areas and at a considerable distance from the guns. Shrapnel became a steel death over the battlefield, hitting troops in marching columns, in moments of rebuilding and preparing for an attack, on halts. In this case, one of the main advantages was the range of use of ammunition, which could not provide the canister.
Henry Shrapnel
Henry Shrapnel, whom descendants began to call the "killer of infantry and cavalry," began to create a new artillery ammunition at the end of the XNUMXth century. The idea of a British army officer was to put together a new weapons - two types of already known shells - a bomb and buckshot. The first ammunition was a hollow core filled with gunpowder, and having an ignition tube. The second - was a set of metal striking elements that were placed in a bag, or in the late stages of development in cardboard, metal packaging of a cylindrical shape. Shrapnel’s idea was to combine the striking power of these two ammunition, from the bomb he wanted to borrow the radius of destruction and the power of the explosion, and from the buckshot, the lethal effect of defeating the enemy’s openly located infantry and cavalry.
The birthplace of shrapnel can be called Gibraltar, where Lieutenant of the British Royal Artillery Henry Shrapnel was appointed in 1787. Here the inventor not only served, but also seriously studied the experience of the Great Siege of Gibraltar (1779-1783), mainly the use of artillery by the opposing sides. Six months after arriving at the fortress, the lieutenant showed his brainchild to the commander of the British garrison. The date of the first experiment using shrapnel is December 21, 1787. As a weapon, an 8-inch mortar was used, which was loaded with a hollow core, inside which was placed about 200 musket bullets and the powder necessary for an explosion. They were shooting from the fortress towards the sea from a hill about 180 meters above the water level. The experiment was deemed successful, the new ammunition exploded about half a second before meeting the water surface, the water literally boiled from being hit by hundreds of bullets. The officers present, including Major General O'Hara, were well impressed by the tests, but the Gibraltar garrison commander did not dare to take the implementation of the project under his personal patronage.
Shrapnel Card Grenade
As a result, in 1795, Henry Shrapnel returned to the British Isles with ideas, test results, but without the ammunition itself and the prospects for its production. Already in the rank of captain, he did not abandon his idea and engaged in “the beloved affair of the inventors” - active correspondence with all sorts of officials. Continuing to improve the new ammunition Henry Shrapnel prepared several reports to the Commission of the Artillery Council. Here his paper lay motionless for several years, after which the inventor received a refusal to support the work. However, Shrapnel did not intend to surrender and literally threw the commission with his messages and suggestions, after all the artillery officer knew a lot about conducting good artillery preparation. As a result, in June 1803, the bureaucratic British monster fell under the attacks of a persistent officer, and a positive review was received on his messages. Despite the fact that at that time the problem of premature detonation of ammunition was not fully resolved, the results of tests conducted in England were considered successful and encouraging. A new artillery shell entered the approved list of ammunition for the British field forces, and Henry Shrapnel himself 1 November 1803 year advanced in service, receiving the rank of major artillery.
The grenade grenade proposed by officer Henry Shrapnel was made in the form of a hollow solid sphere, inside which there was a charge of gunpowder, as well as a bullet. The main feature proposed by the inventor of the grenade was a hole in the body, which was placed in the ignition tube. The firing tube was made of wood and contained a certain amount of gunpowder. Such a tube served as both a moderator and a fuse. When fired from a cannon, gunpowder ignited while it was in the barrel bore in the firing tube. Gradually, while the projectile flew toward its target, the powder burned through, as soon as it burned out all, the fire approached the powder charge, which was located in the hollow case of the grenade itself, which led to an explosion of the projectile. The effect of such an explosion is easy to imagine; it led to the destruction of the body of a grenade, which in the form of fragments and bullets flew apart, hitting the enemy’s infantry and cavalry. A feature of the new projectile was that the length of the pilot tube could be adjusted by the gunners themselves before the shot. Thanks to this solution, it was possible to achieve an explosion of a grenade at the desired time and place with an acceptable level of accuracy at that time.
Attack of the light cavalry brigade under the fire of Russian artillery
The brainchild of Henry Shrapnel was first tested in real combat conditions of 30 on April 1804 of the year. The debut of the new shell came on the attack on the fort New Amsterdam, located on the territory of Dutch Guiana (Suriname). Major William Wilson, who in the battle led the actions of the British artillery, later wrote that the effect of the use of new shrapnel shells was stunning. The garrison of New Amsterdam decided to capitulate after the second salvo, the Dutch were amazed that they were suffering losses from their musket bullets at such a large distance from the enemy. It should be noted here that the smooth-bore guns of that era could effectively shoot a canister at a distance of 300-400 meters, while the cores flew to a distance of 1200 meters, the same was true for smooth-bore guns, whose firing range was limited to 300 meters. In the same year 1804 Shrapnel was promoted to lieutenant colonel, later this artillery officer and inventor successfully rose to the rank of general and even received money from the British government in the amount of 1200 pounds a year (a very serious sum of money at that time), which also shows recognition of his merits. And shrapnel was becoming more common. In January, 1806, the new ammunition brought death and horror to the opponents of the British in southern Africa, where the empire, over which the sun never set, regained control of the Cape colony, after a new projectile was used in India, and in July, 1806, and in the battle at Maida . New artillery ammunition quickly took its place in the sun and every year was increasingly used in battles around the world.
Over time, the British invention became widespread in the armies of all countries. One of the examples of successful use of shrapnel is the famous “attack of light cavalry” during the years of the Crimean War of the 1853-1856 years. The witness of the battle, General of the French Army Pierre Bosquet, described it best of all at one time: “This is great, but this is not war: this is madness.” We can only agree with the French general, the attack of the English light cavalry brigade, commanded by Lord Cardigan, entered into history. Poetry, paintings, and then films were devoted to this event. The attack itself under Balaclava under the fire of the Russian artillery, which used shrapnel, and the shooters, located on the heights dominating the terrain, cost the British about half the brigade’s personnel and even more horses.
Projectile with diaphragm shrapnel
It is worth noting that it was Russian artillerymen who made a significant contribution to the improvement of ammunition. In the Russian Empire, he found his own Henry Shrapnel, his place was taken by the Russian artillery scientist Vladimir Nikolaevich Shklarevich. Once in the armies of the world only began to appear rifled guns, Vladimir Shklarevich presented a new type of projectile - diaphragm shrapnel with a central tube and bottom camera, this happened in 1871 year. The presented ammunition looked like a cylindrical body, the diaphragm (cardboard partition), it was divided into two compartments. In the bottom compartment of the Shklarevich projectile was placed a charge of explosive. Ball-shaped bullets were placed in another compartment. Along the axis of the projectile was a central tube, which was filled with pyrotechnic composition. On the front of the projectile was placed the head with a cap. After the shot from the gun, an explosion occurred and the ignition of the slowly burning pyrotechnic composition in the longitudinal tube. In flight, the fire passed through the tube and reached the powder charge in the bottom compartment, which led to the explosion of the projectile. The explosion was pushing the diaphragm forward along the projectile's flight, as well as the bullets behind it, which flew out of the projectile. The new scheme proposed by the Russian engineer allowed the use of ammunition in modern rifled artillery. There was a new projectile and a significant plus. Now, when the projectile was blown up, the bullets did not fly evenly in all directions, as originally happened when the spherical grenade of the Shrapnel construction was blown up, but directed along the axis of the flight of the artillery projectile with a deviation from it. This decision increased the combat effectiveness of artillery fire when shooting shrapnel.
The design presented was a significant disadvantage, but it was quickly eliminated. The first projectile of Shklarevich envisioned firing only at a predetermined distance. The deficiency was eliminated already in 1873, when the tube of remote blasting of a new ammunition with a rotating ring was created. The main difference was that now from the capsule to the blast charge the fire went along the path consisting of three parts. One part, as before, was the central tube, and the remaining two sections were channels with the same pyrotechnic composition, but located in rotating rings. By turning these rings, the gunners could change the amount of the pyrotechnic composition, providing shrapnel at a distance that was needed during the battle. At the same time, two terms appeared in colloquial artillery calculations: the projectile was put "on shrapnel", if it was necessary that it exploded at a great distance from the gun and "on the canister" if the remote tube was regulated for a minimum burning time. The third use of such projectiles was the “strike” position, when the path from the capsule to the blasting charge was completely blocked. In this position, the projectile exploded only at the moment of encountering an obstacle.
The use of shrapnel shells reached its peak by the beginning of the First World War. According to experts, for the field and mountain artillery caliber 76 mm such shells were the absolute majority of ammunition. In this case, shrapnel was actively used by large-caliber artillery systems. For example, in the 76-mm projectile fit about 260 bullets, and in 107-mm already about 600. In the event of a successful break, a similar deadly swarm of lead could cover an area 20-30 meters wide and up to 150-200 meters deep - almost a third of a hectare. With a successful break, only one shrapnel could cover a section of a large road, along which in the column a company of 150-200 moved along with its machine-gun gigs.
One of the most effective episodes of using shrapnel shells came at the beginning of the First World War. 7 August 1914, captain Lombal, the commander of the 6 battery of the 42 regiment of the French army, during the battle that began, managed to locate the German troops that had left the forest at a distance of five kilometers from the location of their guns. A cluster of troops was fired with shrapnel shells from 75-mm guns, 4 guns of his battery made 16 shots in total. The result of the shelling, which caught the enemy at the time of restructuring from marching to battle formation, was disastrous for the Germans. As a result of an artillery strike, the 21 th Prussian Dragoon Regiment lost only 700 people killed and about the same number of trained horses, after such a strike the regiment ceased to be a combat unit.
Fight during the First World War
But by the middle of the First World War, when the parties switched to positional actions and the massive use of artillery, and the quality of the officers of the warring parties fell, the minuscule shrapnel began to manifest themselves. Among the main shortcomings were:
- a small slaughter effect of spherical shrapnel bullets (usually quite low-grade ones), any obstacle could stop them;
- powerlessness against targets concealed in trenches, trenches (with a flat shooting trajectory), dugouts and caponiers (with any trajectory);
- low efficiency of firing at a long range when using poorly trained officers, especially reservists;
- a small damaging effect against the material part of the enemy, even openly located.
- greater complexity and high cost of such ammunition.
For these reasons, even during the First World War, shrapnel was gradually supplanted by a fragmentation grenade, which had an instant fuse, which did not have these shortcomings and, moreover, had a great psychological effect on the enemy soldiers. Gradually, the number of shrapnel in the troops was declining, but even during the Second World War, such ammunition was used quite extensively, as search engines working on the battlefield can tell you. And the very use of shrapnel shells was also reflected in fiction, for example, the famous novel Volokolamsk Highway. In the second half of the 20th century, shrapnel shell, which had been a real infantry storm for more than a century, practically ceased to be used, but the very ideas on which this weapon was based, albeit in a modified version, continue to be used today even at a new level of development of science and technology.
Information sources:
https://fakel-history.ru
http://otvaga2004.ru
http://www.popadancev.net
http://www.battlefield.ru
https://russian.rt.com
Open source materials
Information