A Sunken Ship
30 YARDS DOWN, AS SEEN FROM AN AIRPLANE ARTILLERY These were supguns of 28-cm. 42-centimeter guns. plemented by other heavy gur and 35-cm. and constituted the heaviest siege artillery hitherto employed in war- ARTILLERY decreased as the conflict went on. ful as that of Germany at the beginning of the war, but the disproportion steadily dec The French, however, had two admirable 155-MILLIMETER GUN, WITH DIVIDED TRAIL (FRENCH MODEL, 1918) fare. The next class in size and power was their heavy army artillery with 13, 15, and 19 centimeter caliber, having a range of between 10 and 12 miles.
Lighter than these were the corps artillery pieces, of which the 105 and 150 was mobile, light, and worked with reguns. The former was the most useful guns. The former was the most useful piece employed by either side. It threw projectiles weighing between 12 and 16 pounds to a distance of 5½ miles. It UNITED STATES 4.7" FIELD GUN mm. howitzers were the types. These latter were the more mobile, and were able to follow or accompany the infantry to any desired position.
The Allied artillery was not as powerof the gun and then returns it to posimarkable speed and precision. A recoil mechanism, with which it is provided, allows a certain retrogade movement tion for the next shot. Instead of being ARTILLERY pointed each time it is fired, it needs only to be sighted at its target at the beginning of the action and can repeat the shot indefinitely.
The French 155-mm. howitzer was worthy to rank with the 75-mm. It was perhaps the finest specimen of French gunmaking. It weighed less than 4 tons, and thus could be transported quickly to any desired location. It threw a 95pound shell more than 7 miles and could fire several times a minute. Its rapidity of action was made possible by a hydropneumatic recoil system that supports the barrel of the gun and utilizes the energy of the recoil by the compression of air. In less than thirteen seconds the mechanism throws the gun into position again. The shell and the powder charge are loaded separately. The gun has an extremely light carriage to favor its mobility. The muzzle velocity is 2,400 feet a second.
Another formidable weapon was the French 240-mm. howitzer. Its range was 10 miles, and over that distance it hurled a 356-pound shell with a bursting charge of 50 pounds of high explosive.
Although about the size of the British 9.2-inch howitzer, it was far more powerful than the latter, whose range was 6 miles and whose projectile weighed from 200 to 290 pounds.
The American 4.7-inch field gun also proved an admirable weapon. It carried a 60-pound projectile 4½ miles and with a 45-pound projectile an additional mile's range is secured. The American 6-inch gun carried to a distance of over 10 ARTILLERY of 12, 14, and 16 inch size. The mounting of these on railway carriages gave them the rigidity necessary on account of their size and weight, and also secured great mobility, as they were able to be transported along railway tracks to any part of the battle zone. The guns were so mounted that they could be swung in any direction, elevated or depressed, by the working of their mechanisms.
The need for heavy guns for our military operations abroad caused the Navy to lend some of its huge naval guns to the War Department. They were transported to France in 1918, and arrived in time to do important work in the Meuse- Argonne offensive. They were able to throw a projectile of more than half a ton to a distance of over 16 miles. Their bombardment cut the line of the Mézières-Longuyon-Sedan railway that was the main artery of supplies for the Gersupplies man armies in France, and hastened the signing of the armistice.
The anti-aircraft gun was a new artillery feature developed by the war. Its characteristics are small caliber and long bore, so that high initial velocity may be attained. They are capable of being elevated to an angle of 70 degrees and in some cases of 75. There are three leading types, designed respectively for field work, for mounting on automobiles, and for use on ships. This latter has a central pivot base that enables it to be turned rapidly in all directions. A rangefinder is employed to ascertain the distance of the target and a sighting telescope is used for taking aim. GUN IN FIRING POSITION AMMUNITION CAR LOADING PLATFORM A 14" RAILWAY GUN, WHICH CAN HURL A 1,200-LB. PROJECTILE 18 MILES miles, while the 5-inch had a maximum range of 9 miles. They were very successful in destroying the 77-mm. guns of the enemy.
The great railway-mounted mortars were one of the most striking developments of the war. The giant guns were Various kinds of charges are used.
Shrapnel had its advantage because of its wide range of action, but in actual practice it has been found in firing at a balloon that the slight wounds inflicted by the fragments are not serious enough to bring down the quarry.
ARTILLERY Shrapnel therefore has been largely supplanted by a grenade which pierces the Shrapnel therefore has been largely sup- planted by a grenade which pierces the envelope and explodes inside, thus set- 100 BRITISH 6" ANTI-AIRCRAFT GUN ting the balloon in flames. The trail of the grenade is made by a special smoke BRITISH 6" ANTI-AIRCRAFT GUN and leaves a faint white wake at night.
In this way the gunner is able to see how nearly he has to come to the mark. In the case of field guns, the caliber is 2.6 ....
ARTILLERY at times inaugurated, because they could Great quantities of them be set up rapidly in newly acquired positions. were used in connection with the German drive of March, 1918. other over No Man's Land. Because of MACHINE GUNS (q. v.) have claims to accompanying the drives that both sides MACHINE GUNS (q. v.) have claims to be classed as artillery, although mostly they were used as the personal weapons of the individuals that handled them.
They had never before been used in such almost incalculable numbers.
In its broadest sense, "Artillery" includes all those forms of weapons and their appurtenances that are designed for projecting missiles at an In this narrow enemy. Technically speaking, however, as has been already stated, it applies only to guns from which projectiles are thrown by the explosive force of gunpowder. sense, its history naturally begins with the invention of gunpowder.
Guns. Essentially a gun is a tub closed at one end, into which are loaded a charge of gunpowder and a projectile, the powder. As the powder burns, velocity from the muzzle. the powder. As the powder burns, it is converted into gas and exerts a pressure which drives the projectile down the bore and projects it at high velocity from the muzzle.
Guns are commonly designated by their not within the scope of this article, guns of the present day range from 3 to 16 inches in caliber; the 16-inch, the most powerful gun in existence in 1921, caliber; as "3-inch," "12-inch," etc., the having been designed especially for the "caliber" being the diameter of the bore armament of the United States battleand of the projectile. Excluding shoulships of the 1920 class. der pieces and machine guns, which are The guns in use up to the middle of the last century were of cast iron or 11" SUTTON TRENCH MORTAR AND PROJECTILE and the projectile weighs 9 pounds. For the gun mounted on a motor car the caliber is 3-inch and the projectile weighs 12 pounds, leaving the muzzle with a velocity of 2,060 feet per second. The range is about 6 miles and the height attained is nearly 4 miles.
The trench mortars were valuable chiefly for the work at short distances when the opposing armies faced each ..........00 000000 ۰۰۰۰۰۰۰۰۰۰۰۰۰۰۰۰۰۰۰۰۰ 00000000 1000000000000 AMERICAN CIVIL WAR THE RODMAN 10" GUN, USED IN THE bronze, cast in a single homogeneous mass around a core. They were "smoothbored" and "muzzle-loading" and fired ARTILLERY a spherical shot or shell weighing perhaps 10 per cent. of the weight of the elongated projectile of a modern gun of the same caliber. About 1850, General T. J. Rodman, of the United States Army, conceived the idea of increasing the strength of guns by casting them with a hollow core through which a stream of cold water was kept flowing.
The effect of this was to produce a varying tension in the successive layers of metal from the inside out, so that the walls of the gun acted as a whole in resisting the pressure of the powder when the gun was fired. This principle, of "varying initial tensions," is applied in modern guns by building up the walls in successive layers of steel hoops, shrunk, one upon another, over a central tube.
Figure 1, Plate A. The tube is pierced throughout its length to form the bore, which is rifled by grooves running spirally from breech to muzzle. The projectile, which is cylindrical with a pointed head, carries at its base a ring of soft copper, which, when the gun is fired, is forced into the grooves of the rifling and sets the projectile spinning with great velocity as it is driven along the bore.
It is this spinning that keeps the projectile true in flight and makes possible the long ranges and great accuracy attained by modern artillery. The gun is fired by a primer through a vent in the breech plug. 174ed Built up The practical development of the rifled gun of large caliber as an actual and important factor in warfare dates from about 1855, although the principle involved had long been familiar to artillerists and had been applied experimentally as early as 1745. Built-up guns came into use at about the same time (1850-1860), and the combination of these two factors resulted in the development of the high-powered, builtup, rifled gun, which, in the last half of the 19th century, practically revolutionized artillery, especially naval artillery, and, in association with smokeless powder-perfected about the end of the century-may be held to have practically revolutionized warfare.
The first built-up guns were of wrought iron, but this was soon replaced by steel, the manufacture of which was greatly improved through the demands of artillerists for a combination of elastic and tensile strength never before considered possible. The leader in the manufacture of the new guns on a commercial scale was the English metallurgist Sir William Armstrong. In Germany, Krupp used steel at an early date, but was behind Armstrong in adopting the built-up system. The first modern gun in the United States ARTILLERY was built about 1880, but the manufacture on a large scale was not undertaken until several years later, when the great steel plant at Bethlehem was established through the influence, and to meet the demands, of the navy. By 1917, when the United States entered the World War, the manufacture of ordnance by Bethlehem and other establishments and especially by the Naval Gun Factory at Washington, had so far progressed that more than three thousand guns of all calibers, with their mounts and ammunition, were turned out in little more than a year.
As used on shipboard, guns of the larger calibers from 10 to 16 inchesare mounted in turrets with elaborate mechanism for handling ammunition, loading, pointing, firing, and controlling the recoil. On shore, these calibers are mounted in fortifications, often on "disappearing" carriages by which the gun is held behind the shelter of a parapet until ready for firing, when it is lifted, fired, and automatically returned to shelter by the force of the recoil. The smaller calibers, as used by the army, are mounted on mobile carriages, drawn by men or horses or by automobile tractors, constituting what is technically known as "field" and "siege" artillery.
Projectiles. In the long struggle between the penetrative power of projectiles and the resisting power of armor, the projectile appears to have established a permanent advantage, at least under proving-ground conditions, which are admittedly unfavorable to armor.
The 16-inch guns with which the 1920 class of United States battleships are armed have power enough at fighting ranges to drive their 2,100-pound projectiles through the thickest armor carried by any ship that has up to the present time been proposed.
The Powder Charge. - Modern gunpowder, composed of gun-cotton and nitroglycerine, is as different from the powder of fifty years ago as modern guns are from the guns of the same period. Although commonly called "smokeless," it is far from being so, but it produces decidedly less smoke than the old "black" powder, and its force is many times as great. Its essential feature, apart from its force, lies in its "progressiveness," by which is meant that, instead of burning all at once, with a violent explosion, it burns slowly and gives off its gases gradually, thus giving ing the the projectile projectile a a push p rather than a a push that becomes more and more pronounced as the projectile moves toward the muzzle. In this way it gives a higher velocity to the projectile with much less strain on the gun.
ARTILLERY SCHOOLS Gun Mounts. The problem of mounting a high-powered gun of large caliber in such a way as to admit of manipulating it freely and controlling the tremendous shock of the recoil is a difficult and complicated one. Figure 2, Plate A, shows three 14-inch guns of the U. S. S. Idaho on a single mount as installed in each of the turrets of the ship. The photograph shows the three guns firing simultaneously. The power developed by a salvo of this kind would suffice to lift a city skyscraper some four feet off its ARUNDEL Monroe, Va., first established in 1823, discontinued, re-established in 1867, discontinued again in 1898, and again reopened in 1900, gives instruction, both theoretical and practical. The artillery regiments of the regular army have each one foot-battery at the school; term of instruction, one year. A school of five for field artillery was opened at Fort Sill in 1911. All of the other important artillery powers have artillery schools, France at Fontainebleau, England at Woolwich, Italy at Natturno, etc.
THE GERMAN LONG-DISTANCE GUN THAT SHELLED PARIS FROM A POINT 75 MILES AWAY foundation. Plate B shows one of these guns photographed in a way to illustrate its length, which is a little more than 70 feet. The length of the 16-inch gun previously referred to is about 10 feet greater.
Plate C shows a 14-inch gun on a specially designed railway mount as used at the French front, together with its powder charge and projectile. Five of these guns were used in the last months of the World War and with great effect. They were the most powerful guns used on either side during the war, either ashore or afloat; and they were designed and built, with their mounts, at the Naval Gun Factory at Washington, and were transported to the front and operated there by officers and men of the United States Navy.
The freak gun used by the Germans in their long-range bombardment of Paris had a greater range than these guns, but its projectile weighed only 200 pounds as against 1,400 for the American gun, and the damage to be anticipated from an explosion of its projectile was not more than 5 per cent. as great.