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Q.F. GUNS FOR FIELD ARTILLERY. 
None of the essays appear to me sufficiently go ahead. All seem 
to look for a Field, Q.F. which shall be a combination of a 12-pr. B.L. 
shrapnel gun and a Garrison 12-pr. Q.F. shell gun. There must be 
an entirely new departure. A great deal may be learnt from the 
experience of much shooting with Maxims of what will be required in 
your future field guns. I am not advocating small bore like the 
present Maxim. The effect of small blind projectiles cannot be seen 
except at very short ranges ; at 1,200 yards one generally ceases to 
be able to tell where little bullets are striking. Still I think you can 
learn from the Maxim the nature of the future fire for Field Artillery, 
—a stream of bursting projectiles. 
The practical rate of fire of a garrison quick firing gun has been 
enormously over-estimated by the essayists, and it will nob do for you. 
This over-estimation of speed is caused by reference to shooting at a 
target that is quite close to the gun. It is easy to fire at even a fast 
target running 600 or 800 yards from you ; you lose no time in seeing 
the shell strike, but a well placed 12-pr. quick firing garrison gun 
makes splendid practice up to 5,000 yards range, and firing at that 
distance it takes a time for the shell to arrive. Then the brain will 
not work instantaneously, you must add the time lost in making cor¬ 
rections. The stream of fire is not continuous. As long as you 
stick to shrapnel, which all the essayists seem to think must be 
the projectile for future work, you impose the greatest difficulties in 
the way of attaining really effective quick firing guns in the field. 
The essayists do not conceive anything beyond a quicker loading 12-pr. 
and existing methods of fire discipline. 
Make up your minds to abandon shrapnel. It seems rather a large 
order, but let the English artillery once more lead, as they did when 
an artillery officer invented the shrapnel which has served so well, 
instead of following other nations afar off. The problem, as I see it, 
is really this : “ How small a calibre of shell can be used, so that its 
striking effect can be fairly seen at the greatest ranges at which you 
are likely to use it ? Supposing you take 5,000 yards, you must have 
a just sufficiently large projectile to see plainly a rain of bursting 
shell at that distance. Ranging with quick firing guns is the easiest 
and deadliest thing possible. I think I have seen battery majors who 
would be glad to do away with all trouble in the matter of ranging 
for length of fuze. The smaller the projectile you can bring your¬ 
selves to accept the easier the question of quick firing guns in the 
field will become. Instead of trusting to chance (for owing to many 
causes shrapnel fire with the most skilled major is chance) I offer al¬ 
most a certainty of immediate effect. You have been working for 
years with the present gun, and yet the last speaker tells us there is 
plenty of room for improvement. This is very discouraging ; I urge 
you to throw over a system which has wasted so much energy and 
cleverness and jump at a simpler and easier system which has less 
chance in its operation. I am quite certain that a rain of high ex¬ 
plosive shells from a very quick firing gun which trusted to speed 
and accuracy for its effect is preferable to a shrapnel slowly bursting 
in the air, which, even on the experimental ground, is a somewhat un- 
