Jasper County Democrat, Volume 3, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 May 1900 — EXPLOSIVE SHELLS. [ARTICLE]

EXPLOSIVE SHELLS.

Gnat Havoc That Has Been Created by Them. The physical effect of highly explosive shells is clearly shown from the results obtained by Emsley’s battery at Omdurman; their effect on men can be deduced from the action of the dynamite guns employed by the Americans in Cuba. These fired a projectile weighing llj pounds, and which contained 3| pounds of nitro-gelatine, and had a range of about 3,000 yards. Even with such small shells the effect produced seems to have been extraordinarily great. One shell, according to the English consul, destroyed a house which it struck. Parker, to whose Gatling battery one was attached, says: “We could drop one within 20 yards or so of the place aimed at. It invariably created a commotion, as may be well imagined, and the gunners of the machine guns were keenly alert to restore order among the Spaniards on these occasions.” On one occasion a dynarfiite gun put a Spanish battery, apparently of three five-inch guns, completely out of action. A shell struck fairly under the center gun, blew it fully 20 feet into the air, disabled the other two, and killed or wounded most of the men in the battery. The moral effect of the guns in the Porto Rican expedition also seems to have been great. You must not imagipe that this weapon is of the Zalinski type. It is really an ordinary gun, the charge being largely air spaced, so as to reduce the pressure, and the explosion taking place in a subsidiary chamber. The advantage of this method of construction over the ordinary howitzer is that it gives a much lighter weapon, as the powder pressures are so much less. Since the war it has been largely improved. A five-inch gun constructed for the United States government fires a 33pound shell containing 11 pounds of nitroglycerin, and with a pressure below 2,000 pounds per square inch. Groups of three and four shots at from 2,500 to 4,000 yards were contained in a circle of three yards’ radius. The board charged with the experiments stated that, in its opinion, “no living being could exist within 100 yards of the bursting shell.” This gun on its carriage weighed 31 hundred weight and had hardly any recoil.—Journal of Military Service.