CHAPTER XXX

THE TERRIBLE WORK OF ARTILLERY IN WAR

SEVENTY PER CENT OF CASUALTIES DUE TO ARTILLERY FIRE -- INCREASED RANGE -- MODERN GUNS -- RAPID FIRING -- HOW A BIG GUN IS AIMED -- AWFUL DESTRUCTIVENESS OF MODERN GUNS.

A full century ago, Napoleon the Great, himself an artillery officer, had developed the fighting power of artillery of his day so as to make its fire a dominant factor on the battle-field. In the present war its action is even more important, since we learn from the front that seventy per cent of the casualties are due to artillery fire. It was the gun that took Liège and Antwerp, and it is the gun which held the contending armies pent up within a semicircle of fire. Once massed formations were abandoned, the gun lost its terrors to a great extent, and did not regain its place in military estimation till the introduction of the shrapnel shell.

This is a hollow steel projectile, packed with bullets, and containing a charge of powder in the base. (See Fig. 1.) It is exploded by a time-fuse, containing a ring of slowly burning composition which can be set so as to fire the powder during the flight of the shell, when it has traveled to within fifty yards of the enemy. The head is blown off, and the bullets are projected forward in a sheaf, spreading outwards as they go. The British eighteen-pounder shell covers a space of ground some three hundred yards long by thirty-five yards wide with its 365 heavy bullets.

INCREASED RANGE

In 1885 the British brought out the twelve-pounder high-velocity field-gun, which remained for some years the best gun in Europe. Its power was afterwards increased by giving it a fifteen-pounder shell, and, as a fifteen-pounder, it did good work in South Africa. Then came another development, the quick-firing gun now being used in the war, with a steel shield to protect the detachment. The quick-firing gun is badly named; its high rate of fire is only incidental, and is rarely of use in the combat. The essential feature of the “Q.F.” gun, as it is generally styled, is that the carriage does not move on firing, so that the gunners can remain safely crouched behind the shield.

MODERN GUNS

The French gun as it was originally brought out has now been improved by the addition of a steel plate which closes the gap between the shields; and a steel shield is also provided to protect the officer standing on the upturned ammunition-wagon.

The carriage does not move, and the men remain in their positions behind the shield while the gun recoils between them. The carriage is prevented from sharing the movement of recoil by the spade at the end of the trail, which digs into the ground so as to “anchor” it.

RAPID FIRING

The gun-recoil carriage, as the new invention was called, increases the rate of fire, since there is no delay in running up. The French were quick to develop this new feature, and set to work to make the rate of fire as high as possible. Up till then the ammunition fired from a field-gun had consisted of a shell, a bag of powder, and a friction-tube introduced through the vent to fire the charge. This was called a round of ammunition, and its complexity was increased by the fuse, which was carried separately and screwed into the shell when the round was prepared for loading, and afterwards set with a key to burst the shell at the required distance. The French combined the whole of these separate parts into one, so that a round of “fixed” ammunition, as now used, looks exactly like an enlarged rifle cartridge. (See Fig. 2.)

Further, they did away with the cumbrous process of setting the fuse by hand, and introduced a machine which sets fuses as fast as the shell can be put into it. One of these machines is shown in Fig. 4. It is of a later pattern than that of the French service gun, being the one used by the Servians with their new gun made by the famous firm of Schneider of Creusot. The machine is set to the range ordered by the battery commander, the shell is dropped into it, and a turn of the handle sets the fuse.

HOW A BIG GUN IS AIMED

The independent line of sight is another modern device for facilitating the service of a gun. With this the gear for giving the gun the elevation necessary to carry a shell to the required distance is kept entirely separate from that used for pointing the gun at the target. The gun-layer has merely to keep his sighting telescope on the target, while another man puts on the range-elevation ordered by the battery commander.

The result of all these improvements is that the best quick-firing guns (among which the French gun is still reckoned) are capable of firing twenty-five rounds a minute. The German field-gun is hardly capable of twenty rounds a minute, being an inferior weapon converted from the old breech-loader.

But these high rates of fire are used only on emergency, as a gun firing twenty-five rounds a minute would exhaust the whole of the ammunition carried with it in the battery in three minutes.

One of the first consequences of the introduction of the shielded gun was the reappearance of the old common shell in an improved form. The common shell is almost as old as Agincourt, and consisted simply of a hollow shell filled with powder, which exploded on striking the object. When shrapnel came into use most nations abandoned the common shell. But shrapnel proved almost ineffective against the shielded gun, and the gunners were indifferent to the bullets pattering on the steel shield in front of them. The answer to this was the high-explosive shell, a steel case filled with high explosive, such as melinite, which is the same as lyddite, shimose, or picric acid. This, when detonated upon striking a gun, can be relied upon to disable it and to kill the gunners behind it.

AWFUL DESTRUCTIVENESS OF MODERN GUNS

Of late years a shell which combines the action of the shrapnel and the high-explosive shell has been introduced. This is the “Universal” shell (see Fig. 3) invented by Major van Essen, of the Dutch Artillery. It is a shrapnel with a detachable head filled with high explosive. When burst during flight it acts like an ordinary shrapnel, and the bullets fly forward and sweep the ground in front of it; at the same time the head, with its explosive burster, flies forward and acts as a small but efficient high-explosive shell. These projectiles have been introduced for howitzers and for anti-aircraft guns, and some of the nations with new equipments, such as the Balkan States, have them for their field-guns. Their introduction has, however, been delayed in Western Europe, as they are less efficient as such than the ordinary shrapnel, which is considered the principal field artillery projectile.