Exploding projectiles

[Captndan]

Cannons were often loaded with a projectile made to explode on impact. How were these projectiles fused? How was time delay determined?

 

[tenngun]

Until Shapnal battlefield guns shot solid shot or canister. Exploding rounds were used in mortar. The shot looked like the bomb in cartoons. A burning fuse was inserted and was lit at first by a linstock match before fired. They soon learned the heat of the shot could light the fuse.
It was Based on the gunners experience and not perfect timing.
Motors had limited use on a battlefield and were mostly reserved for shooting in to prepared defenses or siege of a fort or city.
Mechanical fuses were used on rifled cannon. These were set for time and the shock of being shot started them. But even so the backbone of artillery, even in the WBTS ,was solid shot and canister.

 

[wganz]

Mechanical timed and impact fuses were the norm until the last 6 months of WWII. At that point, it was judged safe to release VT fuses for artillery use due fears of the Germans duplicating them to use in air defense mode. The US Navy used them in limited numbers for ship air defense against Kamikaze aircraft due to limited supply.

 

[Robby]

I used to make my own firework using the cardboard containers that machine tooling came in by stuffing them with powder and titanium chips, sealing them up and sticking a piece of fuse through a predrilled hole. I'd frey up the end of the fuse a bit to help with ignition and drop them in one of my cannon barrels pointed near vertical, the charge never failed to ignite the fuse. This from a guy with no experience in the field of pyrotechnics, I think the fellows back then did pretty much the same thing, of course with much more precision.
Robby

 

[64Springer]

Domestic Terrorism. Domestic Terrorism.

The Right is talking about exploding projectiles and time delay fuses.

You guys just made it onto another list.

Where's The Geriatric? Where's the F-15s?

 

[mushka]

What is the Geriatric? F-15's are parked where they're supposed to be. List, who gives a sxxt about lists. If you are a person in this country, you are on several lists anyway. Quit worrying.

 

[zulu]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Henry Shrapnel
Born	3 June 1761 Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire, England
Died	13 March 1842 (aged 80) Southampton, England

Lieutenant General Henry Shrapnel (3 June 1761 – 13 March 1842) was a British Army officer whose name has entered the English language as the inventor of the shrapnel shell.
Henry Shrapnel was born at Midway Manor in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, England, the ninth child of Zachariah Shrapnel and his wife Lydia.[1]
In 1784, while a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery, he perfected, with his own resources, an invention of what he called "spherical case" ammunition: a hollow cannonball filled with lead shot that burst in mid-air. He successfully demonstrated this in 1787 at Gibraltar.[2] He intended the device as an anti-personnel weapon.
In 1803, the British Army adopted a similar but elongated explosive shell which immediately acquired the inventor's name.[3] It has lent the term "shrapnel" to fragmentation from artillery shells and fragmentation in general ever since, long after it was replaced by high explosive rounds. Until the end of World War I, the shells were still manufactured according to his original principles.
Shrapnel served in Flanders, where he was wounded in 1793. He was promoted to major on 1 November 1803 after eight years as a captain. After his invention's success in battle at Fort Nieuw-Amsterdam, Suriname, on 30 April 1804,[4] Shrapnel was promoted to lieutenant colonel on 20 July 1804, less than nine months later.
In 1814, the British Government recognized Shrapnel's contribution by awarding him £1,200 (UK£ 89,000 in 2023)[5] a year for life. Bureaucracy however prevented him from receiving the full benefit of this award.[1] He was appointed to the office of Colonel-Commandant, Royal Artillery, on 6 March 1827. He rose to the rank of lieutenant-general on 10 January 1837.[6]
Shrapnel lived at Peartree House, near Peartree Green, Southampton from about 1835 until his death.[7][8]

 

[Flint62Smoothie]

Mechanical timed and impact fuses were the norm until the last 6 months of WWII. At that point, it was judged safe to release VT fuses ...

For those who don't know, 'VT' is a variable-timed fuse, otherwise what really is a proximity fuse. The VT moniker, as it was then called in WW2 as part of the deception, whereas all Nations where chasing this technology. The combat effectiveness when used in AA shells or land-based artillery was immediate, destructive and demoralizing to enemies.

 

[Dusty_Traveler]

There are several CW era artillery fuses for sale on GB right now.

 

[Captndan]

Senior moment what is GB?

 

[Whitworth]

Senior moment what is GB?

GunBroker.

 

[Captndan]

Thanx

 

[Bushfire]

The idea of fighting a battle in the 18th to 19th century and facing grape...would have been terryfing.

 

[Rudyard]

In Small arms I believe Captain Norton was one of the early experiments with explosive bullets .Egg shaped 7 studded wings to be fired in the Govt Baker Rifle then following him Gen Jacobs developed explosive shells in his rifles then I think it was Wm Ellis Metford developed explosive bullets for the WW rifles .or perhaps the Enfield rifle ( T Foley will know) . A common Enfield will admit of excepting say a cattle killer or Hilti gun blank that will go bang on a hard surface but lands miserably in earth ..Or so Im'e given to understand . No names , no pack drill !. But it wouldn.t do to go ramming a tight bullet . Such ' Shells 'had a following but it was found the hollow alone was just as effective .So for all practicle purposes the explosive notion might be safley confined to the Dead duck shelf .
Rudyard

 

[smoothshooter]

Cannons were often loaded with a projectile made to explode on impact. How were these projectiles fused? How was time delay determined?

During the Civil War they had the Borman Fuse. It was used in smoothbore artillery and was a variable time fuse that required the fuse setter to punch a hole in a thin lead disc the that had markings showing which place to punch the hole to one of several internal powder trains to set the delay. The internal powder train was ignited by the burning barrel charge..
For a better description of this, you can look up “ Borman Fuse “.

 

[Okie Hog]

See page 30 for Civil War artillery fuzes:

https://www.bulletpicker.net/pdf/Hackley-Civil-War-Ordnance.pdf
BTW:

F. W. Hackley was an Army Lt and instructor at EOD school when i attended in 1959. Hackley retired as a full Colonel.

After graduating EOD school, my first assignment was to Fort Bragg, NC. We often answered calls involving Civil War explosive ordnance. Some of those calls involved people injured or killed while messing with Civil War cannon projectiles.

 

[Chris Reagan]

Honestly, solids and canister will be more important for today's field anyhow.

 

[LECook]

Check the book “Artillery and Ammunition of the Civil War” for a good explanation of fused projectiles in use at the time. I have read that the Confederates had a hard time producing reliable fuses.

 

[Chris Reagan]

Check the book “Artillery and Ammunition of the Civil War” for a good explanation of fused projectiles in use at the time. I have read that the Confederates had a hard time producing reliable fuses.

Yeah it is why they lost the war. Gettysburg would've turned out differently if the fuses had detonated above and not behind the union line.

 

[Juice Jaws]

I used to make my own firework using the cardboard containers that machine tooling came in by stuffing them with powder and titanium chips, sealing them up and sticking a piece of fuse through a predrilled hole. I'd frey up the end of the fuse a bit to help with ignition and drop them in one of my cannon barrels pointed near vertical, the charge never failed to ignite the fuse. This from a guy with no experience in the field of pyrotechnics, I think the fellows back then did pretty much the same thing, of course with much more precision.
Robby

Just wondering do you still have all of your fingers??