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Post Info TOPIC: Artillery shells evolution through the war
CharlieC


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Artillery shells evolution through the war
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The evolution of artillery projectiles and fuses during WW1 would probably fill a decent sized book.

It really depends what sort of artillery you are talking about - for light field guns they started out with mostly shrapnel but 

used more HE once the front stabilised.  The graze fuses were developed because the standard fuses often wouldn't activate when

the shells landed on soft mud. The many thousands of UXPs still on the Western Front battlefields says a lot about the limitations

of many of the WW1 fuses. The craters created by field guns were too small to be much of a problem for tanks.

The howitzers and heavy guns tended to fire HE although there were shrapnel rounds available for the lighter howitzers.

Shrapnel and HE weren't the only rounds available there was also gas (number of types), incendiary, armour-piercing, illumination, etc.

The website: http://nigelef.tripod.com/directory.htm is a good place to start to study artillery - the WW1 sections are very relevant.

Regards,

Charlie

 



-- Edited by CharlieC on Tuesday 2nd of July 2013 01:18:49 PM

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bonzillou


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Bonjour 

I have a new interest in the use of artillery during the GW but I don't know well this subject.

Through my reads I understood that:

1914 : shells are mostly of schrapnel type

1915 : extensive use of HE shells

from end 1917 : to avoid cratering of the landscape (and to permit the use of tanks) new type of shells are used (106 fuse for Britain)

am I right

Cheers
 
Pascal



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bonzillou


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thanks Charlie for your advice and this link



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ain92


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Hello, Charles.
Do you know any statistics on percentage of duds?
Thank you beforehands.
Regards,
Ilya

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Pzkpfw-e


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I've seen rates of 20-30% for duds, with another 0.1% with the 106 fuses detonating prematurely. That works out at one every other day, Gunners' Russian Roulette?
If you extrapolate the tonnage of shells still being dug up, 2-300 tons a year, it's not an unbelievable number.

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