THE KOYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
59 
RECENT EXPERIMENTS 
WITH 
HEAVY RIFLED GUNS IN RUSSIA, 
[COMMUNICATED BY A MEMBER OE THE R.A, INSTITUTION.] 
The two following papers do not belong to the series of papers on Foreign 
Bided Artillery,* but their intrinsic interest has led to their translation for 
these “Proceedings” independently. The first is extracted from the Bussian 
Military Journal of 1863, and calls for no particular comment. It describes 
the progress made at that date in the introduction of rifled guns for field 
and other services. The second is a much more important document: it 
professes to be the text of a report presented in April last to the Emperor 
of Bussia, by a commission which included among its members General 
Todleben and many other officers of distinction, and it embraces the whole 
question of supplying rifled ordnance of the heaviest calibre to the fleets and 
fortresses of the Bussian empire. It details experiments with nine large 
steel guns, none under 7 tons in weight, and is worthy of more particular 
attention from the parallelism of much of the enquiry with those which have 
been conducted by the Ordnance Select Committee in this country. The 
paragraphs are not numbered, nor the guns distinguished by any references 
in the French version, from which the present is a translation, but they will 
be here designated as follows :— 
A , a so-called 9-inch gun of 7| tons (apparently 245 mm. or 9’65-incli) shunt 
rifled. 
B , a gun of 121 mm. or 8*58-inch rifled. 
C , a second 8’58-inch gun, shunt rifled. 
D, a third 8’58-inch gun. French rifled. 
B, a fourth 8’58-inch gun smootli-bored. 
F, a gun of 281mm. or 11-00 inches. Smooth-bored. 
G, a fifth 8’58-inch gun of Blakely manufacture. Parrott rifling. 
H , a sixth 8’58-inch gun. Shunt rifled. 
I, a seventh 8’58-inch gun rifled on the Prussian system and breech loading. 
Guns A and B burst respectively at the 66th and 109th round, with 
charges that were certainly excessive. Gun A, 45 lbs. of powder and a shot 
of 269 lbs. Gun B } 33 lbs. of powder and a shot of 220 lbs. The English 
guns of 7i tons used in the competitive trial of 7-inch muzzle-loading 
rifled guns in 1864-5,f w r ere not taxed beyond charges of 25 lbs. of 
* Vide VoJ. IV. p. 343, 
f Ibid, p. 389. 
