Landships II

The 21cm Mörser 10 has suffered from a barrel burst as you may see by the blown-off breech portion.

This is a classical damage done by the so called "Ekrasit"-filling of the early 1915-made grenades, made from picric acid. The picric acid was loaded into the machined grenades and when exposed to heat of the sun, the picric acid inside the grenade is reacting with the steel of the grenade and is thus developing very sensible salts that are susceptible to heavy jolting.

For this reason, about 3500 german guns exploded upon firing a round always killing gunner 1 and 2 and with the bigger calibres most probably also the gunners 3-6 plus the gun-captain.

This problem was solved by laquering the shell-cases from inside with a heavy-duty varnish.

Yes, even my Grandfather's Webster dictionary of 1910 notes the instability of the metallic salts of picric acid.

Hello, Roger!

"Füllstoff 02" was the German official designation for TNT as grenade-filling explosive. Due to the exorbitant use of artillery during the first few month of WW I. all TNT reserves have been used up and therefore a lot of "Ersatz-" (replacement) "Stoffe" have been used to fill the grenades.

In the "Heeres-Versuchs-Anstalt" (Army-Testing-Grounds) at MEPPEN, several replacement explosives have benn tested during Decembre and January , 1914-1915. Picric acid with a loading rate like TNT, but an superior detonating speed was most welcome and as the loaded grenades have been filled afresh for the testing with at least 3 days before firing, no such shit happened to the test-crews.

"Füllstoff 02" (TNT) was cast into the grenades in 3 steps to compensate for the dwindling upon cristallisation.

Picric acid had to be pressed in the grenade-shell housings and be phlegmatised with pentrythe-wax to keep the charges in shape inside the shell-bodies. When firing the test-grenades at MEPPEN, no such difficulties did occur, because the grenade filling wasn't phlegmatized.

In production first made up at "STADTALLENDORF" / Hessia, the picric acid was phlegmatized at first with "Ammo-Nitrat", a "weather"-explosive from the mining-branch. This didn't make troubles upon firing a shell. Just the bad explosion-rates of the grenades caused few splinters that have been to few and too heavy. The german 7,7 cm Field-grenade 98 with thin walls and much explosive (6,5 kgs and 500grs. TNT) produced about 700 fragments of 10-110 gr. weighing.

The "Cast-Iron"-Grenade "14" with its only 180 gr. of Lyddite-filling only produced 20-55 fragments up to 230 gr. weight.

To-day, nobody cares about the grenades fired at those times in the end of 1914 and the first 3 month of 1915, but these "trials" took more victims in the artillery than the live-firing of the enemy. My grandfather served with the 76th Field-Artillery, Hamburg on the Western Front throughout the entire war and stated afterwards, the same thing: most "Rohrkrepierer" (exploders upon firing) occured during January through April 1915, then ceased to be until June, 1917, when the "Clark"-Gas-shells have been issued to the front.

That stuff was built and filled in grenades of field-artillery and howitzers to penetrate the gas-masks filters to make the cosummator vomit inside the mask and thus take it off. Then the phosgene should work and find its way into the enemy's body. ("Bunt-Stern-Schiessen")

The glas-made flasks embedded in the explosives of the grenade of these "blue-star" grenades caused them to explode quite often upon firing the artillery-round. Everytime, the gun was shattered and destroyed plus gunners 1+2 killed, at least.

Please find more info on:

 

Gerd Linnenkohl

"Vom Einzelschuß zur Feuerwalze"

Edition "Bernard & Graefe", Bonn 1996,

 

regretfully not to be had in translation... although I'm thinking about that....