DISCUSSION ON ARTILLERY. 77 
therefore there will not be so much damage done. If you double the 
bursting charge the shell must be so much thinner. 
Colonel Bainbridge, c.b. :—That is quite true, Sir, but the effect of 
this shell was considerable. I do not know that I am divulging any 
secrets, but it was decided by those, who have to decide, that the effect 
of this shell was much greater; it has a length of 3*65 calibres as 
against 3*2 calibres. 
fi Captain May, R.N. :—Perhaps, Sir, I can answer this question. If 
you take the old shell it is thicker throughout head, base, and walls. 
The head generally does not do much harm, or the base either; the 
walls are the effective part. The new shell has a greater proportion of 
its weight in the walls and a thinner head and base besides the extra 
weight of the explosive. I examined a great many of the craters and 
there is no doubt that the effect is much greater. 
Major E. S. May :—I cannot help thinking Sir, that the real influence 
after all of these howitzers is mixed up with the question whether the 
howitzer is a field-gun or not. 
The Chairman :—I think that if we enter upon that discussion we 
shall be wandering just a little bit wide of the question. 
Major May : —I did not propose to enter into the whole subject, but 
there are several points which, I think, it would be interesting to 
have some more information about. 
The Chairman :—Certainly. 
Major May :—I will not take up much time. In the first place 
when Colonel Elmslie described the weight behind the teams as being 
only 45 cwt., it certainly surprised me, because I saw some howitzer 
batteries last autumn at Okehampton, and I understood then that the 
weight behind the teams was nearly 50 cwts., but it was at any rate 
such a weight as appeared incompatible with mobility for the field. 
If they can bring it down to 45 cwts. behind the team I think it would 
be a great improvement and a great advance. 
Then it seems to me that a great difficulty with howitzers is as to 
how you are to meet an infantry attack. Did Colonel Elmslie glean 
any experience which will throw light on this question, and on the 
man-killing capacity in the open of the howitzer ? If you take a 
howitzer into the field you may have to meet such an attack and to 
engage troops in loose formation, not in compact masses, or in works. 
In this connection I should like to ask whether anybody here can give 
us any information as to what the area of the space is over which the 
burst of one of these shell operates. What I mean is how many yards 
is the diameter in which one of these shell operates when it bursts and 
what is the average size of the fragments into which it breaks, looking 
at it from the point of view of a man-killing projectile ; in other words 
whether its effect would be very local or not. 
The Chairman :—I will ask Captain May of the Royal Navy to 
answer those questions, because I think he has seen as much of the 
firing of howitzer shells as any of us. 
Captain May, R.N. :—As regards pieces, I think I may say 
that the head of a shell commonly tears into four or five segments. 
