330 
COMMENDED ESSAY, 1898. 
3. Mechanical 
tiring. 
4. A possible 
reduction in 
strength of 
detachments. 
to neighbouring guns and other troops. Do away with recoil, however, 
and unaimed fire may be quite accurate enough for short ranges, and 
the increased rate of fire on emergency may be invaluable. In proof 
of this the following extract from experiments carried out with the 
Canet field quick firer is of interest ; the writer, from the context, 
evidently using the word “training” in the sense of “laying”; he 
says : “ Ten shots were fired successively without any rectification being 
made in the training, and the target was struck 10 times, the points of 
impact being so close as to be almost identical.” 
The target fired at was about six feet wide by nine feet high and the 
range 120 yards. 
3. Mechanical firing.—Although it is not absolutely necessary that 
the charge for a quick firer should be contained in a metal case, still it 
is most probable that it would be, if only for the time that would be 
saved by the cartridge being able to contain its own means of ignition, 
and thus do away with friction tubes and the irritation and delay which 
so frequently attend their use. 
Missfires would then be due to some error of manufacture and not, 
as is usually the case now, to excitement on the part of the firing 
number ; also there would be fewer stores to be thought of, and in the 
event of the firing number being disabled any other man could at once 
take his place without having to provide himself with special stores, 
such as lanyard, tubes, etc. 
And lastly, and this is a thing which not infrequently occurs, there 
would be no fear of having to interrupt the fire owing to being short 
of tubes at any particular gun, as the number of rounds available would 
be the number of cartridges in hand, without reference to any small 
stores. 
That the above are matters of importance may be gathered from the 
following remarks of the Commandant at Okeliampton on the practice 
of a battery there last year :—“ The firing numbers constantly jerked 
the lanyards.” “ Two missfires in succession in No. 3 owing to bad 
jerking.” “ Tubes exhausted in No. 1 ; gun remained out of action.” 
“No. 1 of No. 1 gun himself ran to get spare tubes from the wagons.” 
4. A possible reduction in the strength of detachments.—The great 
advantage gained by not having to run up the gun after firing has 
already been considered with reference to the saving of time and labour, 
but it has not been considered with reference to the number of men 
employed over the work. Three men are necessary to run up a field 
gun, so that, if this operation can be dispensed with, there will be 
considerably less for these numbers to do each time the gun is loaded 
and fired. Again, with the trail anchored, there will be no necessity 
for a number to attend to it in laying for direction, this having of 
necessity to be arranged for by the gun being carried in a cradle with a 
certain amount of lateral play to be worked by the gun layer. 
Taking these points into consideration it might be possible to assimu- 
late the drill of the Q.F. field gun to that of the Q.F. gun on a permanent 
mounting by telling off one number to load, another to attend to 
the breech, and a third to lay and fire, or else to let the number who 
attends to the breech also fire ; either of these arrangements would save 
one man in each detachment, but would have the disadvantage of 
giving the No. 1. a great deal of work, and, when rapid firing was 
going on, would make it very difficult for him to look after his detach¬ 
ment. Whether or not it would be advisable to so weaken the 
