372 MILITARY ORDNANCE 



scale. In Austria a g-inch howitzer, firing a 25o-lb. shell, was recently made available 

 as a field weapon, the equipment being mounted on three motor lorries. 



Mountain Guns. In view of the prospect of a war in Central or Southern Europe, 

 where fighting must largely be in mountainous country, the importance of quick-firing 

 mountain guns has been generally recognised: yet the greater powers have been very 

 slow to introduce them. The principal modern development in the construction of 

 mountain guns is the system of weighing the gun with a removable jacket, carried 

 separately, in order to reduce the recoil and so to enable a more powerful shell to be 

 fired. This system is used in the Schneider-Danglis gun, adopted by Russia and Greece. 



The breech ring, carrying the breech-block, is prolonged forward into a loose jacket 

 surrounding the gun, and secured to it by a bayonet joint; this enables the weight of the 

 shell to be increased to 14.3 Ibs., with a muzzle velocity of 1,150 fs. This gun forms 6 

 mule loads with shield. Other nations use lighter guns; thus Servia and Bulgaria have 

 ii pr. Schneider guns, and Turkey a 12 pr. Krupp. 



Balloon Guns. Guns for the armament of dirigible balloons have been designed, but 

 none had in 1912 been constructed. The nearest approach to such a weapon is the 

 machine gun carried on top of the structure of the latest military Zeppelin, and the 

 bomb-launching tubes of the Italian semi-rigid dirigible launched in 1912 at Milan. 

 Guns for the attack of dirigibles from the ground have not yet been manufactured on 

 any large scale, as it still appears doubtful whether the military dirigible will not be 

 superseded by the aeroplane, at which the fire of land guns would be no more effective 

 than snipe-shooting with a rille. The standard pattern of field guns for the attack of 

 balloons is the Krupp high-velocity 12 pr; this gun has differential recoil, rear trunnions, 

 and semi-automatic breech action, and fires a high-explosive shell which leaves a smoke- 

 trail behind it, and has a sensitive fuze designed to act on the envelope of a balloon. 

 Messrs. Ehrhardt have a similar gun, which however fires universal shell in place of 

 high explosive shell. Messrs. Schneider of Creusot have proceeded on different lines, 

 and have built a i. 47-inch pom-pom mounted on a motor car, producing effect rather 

 by the number than by the individual efficiency of the projectiles fired from it. 



Ammunition. During the last few years the combined shrapnel and common shell, 

 or " universal " shell, has attracted much attention, especially since its adoption in 1910 

 as the sole projectile for the new German light field howitzer. The best known pattern 

 of this projectile is manufactured by Ehrhardt. It consists of a shrapnel with separate 

 high-explosive head; when burst in air as a time shrapnel the shrapnel portion acts in 

 the ordinary way, while the head flies forward and acts as a percussion high-explosive 

 shell on its own account. When burst on impact, the head detonates, and the detona- 

 tion is also communicated to the explosive (trinitrotoluol) in which the bullets are packed. 

 Experiments conducted in Austria and elsewhere have shown that the head of the 

 shell alone produces good destructive effect on a shielded gun, while the shrapnel effect, 

 as compared with ordinary shrapnel, is in proportion to the weight of bullets. Since 

 ordinary shrapnel contains 50 per cent of its weight of bullets, while the latest patterns 

 of universal shell contain about 43 per cent, the new projectile entails a loss of 14 bullets 

 in a hundred, or 14 per cent of shrapnel effect. This consideration, together with the 

 extra expense, has so far stood in the way of its general introduction. 



Stores and Appliances. Within the last three years, the increased employment of the 

 concealed position for field artillery has led to the general introduction of sights and appli- 

 ances for indirect laying. The panorama sight, which enables the gun to be layed on an 

 aiming point to the flank or rear, has been adopted by Great Britain, Austria, Russia, Italy, 

 and several minor States; the battery director, which is similar in principle to a theodolite, 

 has been introduced for measuring target angles, and so enabling the guns to be layed on a 

 target invisible from the battery; and telephones for connecting the observing station with 

 the guns have been issued to batteries and brigades. Thus in Germany every battery has 

 now an observation wagon carrying a ladder which can be set up in the battery, so that the 

 commanding officer can see the target while keeping his guns concealed; and this wagon 

 contains a complete set of telephones and indirect laying stores. 



(H. A. BETHELL, Col., R.A.) 



