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MINUTES OF PEOCEEDINGS OF 
Captain Browne replied that they were first adopted some months ago. 
Captain E. II. Cameron, E.A., said the lecturer had quoted from Captain Noble 
as to the penetration of an ogival-headed shot into armour being estimated at 
one inch in excess of its diameter. He wished to enquire if that law applied to 
chilled shot only? 
Captain Browne answered that it applied to chilled shot or steel, which was 
nearly as good. 
Major Campbell, B.A., said he had not exactly understood the lecturer’s remarks 
as to the objections against time fuzes. 
Captain Browne said the principal objection to time fuzes with segment shell 
was that they could not be set so accurately as to make sure of that shell being 
effective; and the chances were a hundred to one that the round was spoilt. If 
they could set the fuze so that it exploded the segment shell at 10 yds. from 
the object, the effect would be good, but if 50 yds. in advance or 50 yds. beyond 
it would be bad; and the fuze was much more likely to operate 50 yds. 
away than close to the target. In fact, in firing time fuzes, every alternate shell 
would probably burst 50 yds. in front, and every other shell would go through 
the target like a mere shot. In the Dartmoor trials, officers were perfectly aware 
of this peculiarity, their intelligence being actually in advance of their morals— 
(a laugh)—for they purposely set their time fuzes long, so as to give the shells their 
percussion action against the target. They fired in fact with percussion fuzes, 
while the shell had the credit of acting with time fuzes. 
Major Campbell. —Then you would reject the time fuze altogether? 
Captain Browne. —With segment shell. 
Captain Majendie, B.A., Assistant Superintendent lloyal Laboratory, said it 
might interest some officers to know that the experiments to test the relative 
advantages of segment and shrapnel shells, used with percussion fuzes in the 
manner described by Captain Browne, would take place next day at Shoeburyness. 
It was, he considered, an experiment of very great importance; for, as Captain 
Browne had justly said, there was a greater necessity for getting rid of their surplus 
material and simplifying their equipment, than there was of new inventions. As 
to the merits of the two systems, his own opinion was that the shrapnel shell, fitted 
with a fuze which burst on graze, was so little inferior in effect to the segment burst 
in the same way, that he very much questioned whether, for the sake of such a 
slight difference, which would hardly be sensible at all on service, they ought to 
maintain the two shells. (Hear, hear.) He knew there were officers who could see 
no objection to having two, three, or any number of different kinds of projectiles 
with the gun, but he held complication and multiplicity of projectiles to be a valid 
and practical objection, and he hoped the results of these experiments would show 
that the shrapnel shell, with a percussion fuze, was practically able to answer all 
the purposes of the segment, while as a time shell the shrapnel was admitted to be 
very superior. Another thing might be said of the shrapnel: that although its want 
of quick scattering effect might be disadvantageous when burst very close to an 
object, if it burst 50 yds. in front of the object, that action was rather an advantage 
than otherwise ; but with the segment shell, if it burst 50 yds. in front, the round 
was almost thrown away. These, however, were points still under discussion, and 
soon to be put to the test. Some objectors argued that segment shells were better 
than shrapnel against materiel —an advantage which he could certainly not appre¬ 
ciate. What materiel did they mean ? They would surely not fire either one or 
the other shell against a house; and if they did, one would be of just as much or 
as little use as the other. It was said that the segment was better for cutting away 
the branches of abattis , but it was not the segments with which the shell was 
charged, which only cut the twigs, by which an effective destruction was caused, 
but the body of the shell itself which cut away the big branches; and the same could 
be said of stockades—one shell would do for such a purpose as well as the other. 
