530 
OKEHAMPTON EXPERIMENTS. 
Superintendent Royal Laboratory, to extend their enquiries in the direction 
of an efficient percussion shell for field service. 
This Committee reported in March 1871 that the inferiority of the 9-pr. 
muzzle-loading segment shell tried at Aldershot had been fully established 
by repeated trials; that although the shrapnel shell could on an emergency 
be used as a percussion shell, the effects produced were not, in their opinion, 
such as would warrant its adoption for that special purpose ; and that, of all 
the projectiles tried by them, a “ bullet shell” submitted by the Super¬ 
intendent Royal Laboratory, had given the best results. 
They considered, however, that the experiments already made had been far 
too limited to admit of any definite recommendation being submitted, and 
recommended that the subject should be taken up by a Special Committee 
of artillery officers. 
This led to the question being referred, in April 1871, to the present 
Committee on Rifled Field Guns and High-Angle Fire. They were directed 
to draw up a programme with a view of testing the comparative merits of 
the three kinds of shells (shrapnel, segment, and bullet), and to report 
whether there should be one or more projectiles of this nature in the service, 
and whether they should be fired with time or percussion fuzes, or with both. 
2. The experiments instituted by the Committee for this purpose were 
carried on during the years 1872-73, and the results, so far as they went, 
shewed that the shrapnel shell, when used as a percussion shell, produced 
equal effects to either of the other two (bullet or segment), while as a time 
shell it was far superior to either of them. 
Subsequently, further consideration of the bullet shell was postponed, 
pending a contemplated trial by the Committee on Explosives of 16-pr. 
common shell when burst under different conditions. 
In January 1874, a report by the Committee on Explosives upon the results 
obtained by bursting 16-pr. common shells with small charges of dry 
gun-cotton, acting through water, was forwarded to the Committee, with 
instructions to report whether common shells charged in this manner would 
prove more effectual against troops than common shells charged with gun¬ 
powder. 
Some preliminary experiments were made at Shoeburyness in March 1874, 
in which 16-pr. common shells filled with water, and fitted with a metal 
' socket containing a small amount of dry gun-cotton and a detonator, were 
fired in comparison with ordinary common shells, both being burst by 
percussion fuzes. The results given by the “water shell” were decidedly 
superior to those produced by the powder shell, and these results were 
corroborated by further trial. 
The Committee, however, were unable to fully test the comparative merits 
of the projectiles, as Shoeburyness did not afford a sufficiently extensive 
land range to test percussion shells against targets representing troops— 
indeed, throughout the whole of their experiments, the Committee had been 
impressed with the difficulty of drawing any definite conclusions from trials 
in which percussion shells were burst under circumstances, as to ground, 
that bore no relation to actual service. 
With a view, therefore, to meet this difficulty, and at the same time to 
attempt the solution of many other problems connected with field artillery 
