Shell

in warfare, a modern missile used in bombardments. It is loaded with a powerful explosive, and is designed to burst on striking. The modern shell is of cylindrical shape, perhaps three times as long as wide. The shells used by the Japanese in the siege of Port Arthur were loaded with English lyddite. Each shell was eleven inches in diameter and weighed five hundred pounds. The value of the shell alone was $175. The cost of each discharge, reckoning the shell and the powder with which it was discharged, is placed at $400. They were fired from rifled mortars with a range of seven or eight miles. The favorite position for a battery of mortars is in shelter behind a range of hills out of sight of the object to be bombarded. An observer, with a telephone on the crest of the intervening hill, directs the gunners in finding their range. The charge is so uniform and the management of the gun is rendered so exact by the use of mechanical devices, that, after wasting a shell or two, a battery is expected to land a dozen shells within the space occupied by a battleship, and this without the gunners seeing the object at all. Shells fired in this manner come down literally like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. See Cannon