A very long range was claimed for Krupp’s guns at the time of the Franco-German War, for at the siege of Paris (1870) it was said they could hurl projectiles to the distance of five miles, though probably there was some exaggeration in this statement. There is no doubt however that the Prussians had very effective and powerful artillery, as may be gathered from Fig. 105, which is taken from a photograph of part of the fortifications of Strasburg after the bombardment of that fortress. The explosive shells used by the Prussians against masses of troops were not precisely segment shells of the form already described, but the principle and effect were the same, for the interior was built up of circular rings, which broke into many pieces when the shell exploded.
Out of the very numerous forms in which modern ordnance is constructed, we have been able to select but a few examples for illustration and description. These will suffice, it is hoped, to give an idea of the progress that the century has witnessed. It would be beyond our scope to give details of the ingenious mechanical devices that have come to be applied to guns: such as the breech-closing arrangements, the various ways in which recoil is controlled and utilized, etc. A good illustration, had space permitted, of the scientific skill applied to ordnance would be found in the contrivances fitted to certain projectiles in order to determine their explosion at the proper moment. These are very different from the cap or time fuse that did duty in the first half of the century. We have indeed said little of the projectiles themselves beyond mention of the Palliser chilled shot and the obsolete studded projectiles. We have not explained how bands of copper, or other soft metal, are put round a certain part of the shot or shell, in order that, being forced into the grooves, the axial rotation may be imparted, or how windage is prevented by “gas checks” attached to the base of the projectiles. We must now be contented to conclude this section by showing the structure of two kinds of explosive shells which have been much used.
Shrapnel shell takes its name from Lieutenant Shrapnel, who was its inventor about the end of last century, but the projectile began to be used only in 1808. Fig. 105_a_ is a section showing the shell as a case containing a number of spherical bullets, of which in the larger shells there are very many, the interspaces being filled with rosin, poured in when melted; the bullets are thus prevented from moving about. The figure shows the shell without the fuse or percussion apparatus, which screws into the hollow at the front. The bursting charge of gunpowder is behind the bullets, and when it explodes they travel forward with a greater velocity than the shell, but with trajectories more or less radiating, carrying with them wide-spreading destruction and death.