The article talks about what shrapnel is, when this type of projectile was used and how it differs from the rest.

War

Mankind has been at war for almost the entire time of its existence. In ancient and modern history, there has not been a single century that has passed without this or that war. And unlike animals or our humanoid ancestors, people exterminate each other for various reasons, and not just for the sake of a banal living space. Religious and political strife, racial hatred and so on. With the growth of technological progress, the methods of warfare changed greatly, and the bloodiest began precisely after the invention of gunpowder and firearms.

At one time, even primitive muskets and shotguns significantly changed the methods of clashes and tactics. Simply put, they put an end to the era of chivalry with its armor and long battles. After all, what's the point of carrying heavy armor if it doesn't protect you from a rifle bullet or

For a long time, gunsmiths tried to improve the design of guns, but this only happened in the second half of the 19th century, when artillery shells became unitary and barrels were rifled. But it was shrapnel that made the real technological breakthrough in the field of artillery ammunition. What it is and how such shells are arranged, we will analyze in the article.

Definition

Shrapnel is a special type of cannon projectile that is designed to engage and destroy enemy manpower. It was named after its inventor, British officer Henry Shrapnel. The main and distinctive feature of such ammunition was that it exploded at a given distance and showered the enemy forces not with fragments of the shell, but with hundreds of steel balls that scattered in a cone directed by the wide part towards the ground - this is exactly what shrapnel is. What it is, we now know, however, we will consider in more detail the design features and history of the creation of such ammunition.

Story

At a time when gunpowder artillery was widely used, one of its shortcomings was very clearly manifested - the cannonball fired at enemies did not have sufficient damaging mass factors. It usually only killed one or a few people. In part, they tried to fix this by loading the cannons with buckshot, but in this case, the range of its flight was greatly reduced. Everything changed when they started using shrapnel. We already know what it is, but let's take a closer look at the design itself.

Initially, such a projectile was a cylindrical box made of wood, cardboard or thin metal, inside of which steel balls and a powder charge were placed. Then, an ignition tube filled with slowly burning gunpowder was inserted into a special hole, which was set on fire at the moment of the shot. Simply put, it was a primitive retarder fuse, and by adjusting the length of the tube, it was possible to calculate the height and range at which the projectile would break, and it would throw striking elements at the enemy. Thus, we have sorted out the question of what shrapnel means.

This type of projectile very quickly proved its effectiveness. After all, now it was not necessary to hit anyone at all, the main thing was to calculate the length of the ignition tube and the distance, and there steel buckshots would do their job. The year 1803 is considered to be the year of the invention of shrapnel.

Rifled guns

However, for all the effectiveness of defeating manpower with new types of projectiles, they were far from perfect. The length of the ignition tube must be calculated very accurately, as well as the distance to the enemy; they often misfired due to the different composition of the gunpowder or its defects, sometimes exploded prematurely or did not ignite at all.

Then, in 1871, the artilleryman Shklarevich, on the basis of the general principle of shrapnel shells, made a new type of them - unitary and for rifled guns. Simply put, such a shrapnel-type artillery shell was connected to a powder seed by means of a cartridge case and loaded through the gun breech. In addition, inside it was a fuse of a new type, which did not misfire. And the special shape of the projectile threw out spherical bullets strictly along the flight axis, and not in all directions, as before.

True, this type of ammunition was not without drawbacks. The main thing was that the burning time of the fuse could not be adjusted, which means that the artillery crew had to carry different types of it for different distances, which was very inconvenient.

Adjustable Undermining

This was corrected in 1873, when the demolition tube with a swivel adjusting ring was invented. Its meaning was that divisions indicating the distance were applied to the ring. For example, if a projectile was required to explode at a distance of 300 meters, then the fuse was turned to the appropriate division with a special key. And this greatly facilitated the conduct of the battle, because the marks coincided with the notches in the artillery sight, and additional devices were not required to determine the range. And if necessary, by setting the projectile to a minimum detonation time, it was possible to shoot from a cannon like from a canister. There was also an explosion from hitting the ground or other obstacle. What shrapnel looks like can be seen in the photo below.

Usage

Such shells were used from the very beginning of their invention until the end of the First World War. Despite their advantages over the old solid-cast shells, over time it turned out that shrapnel also had disadvantages. For example, its striking elements were powerless against enemy soldiers who took refuge in trenches, dugouts, and in general any shelters. And poorly trained gunners often set the wrong fuse timing, and shrapnel was an expensive type of projectile to manufacture. What is it, we sorted it out.

Therefore, after the First World War, shrapnel was completely replaced by fragmentation shells with a percussion-type fuse.

But in some types of weapons, it was still used, for example, in the German jumping mine Sprengmine 35 - at the moment of activation, the expelling charge pushed a “glass” filled with spherical bullets to a height of about one and a half meters, and it exploded.

On August 7, 1914, there was a heated battle: the French fought the Germans, who had just crossed the border and invaded France. Captain Lombal, the commander of the French 75-millimeter cannon battery, was examining the battlefield through binoculars. In the distance, about five kilometers away, a large forest could be seen. Columns of German troops appeared from there, and Captain Lombal fired at them.
Suddenly, some yellow spot, which appeared to the left of the forest, attracted the attention of the captain. The spot widened, as if spreading across the field. But for five kilometers, even with binoculars, it was not possible to see what it was. Only one thing was clear: this spot did not exist before, but now it has appeared and is moving; Obviously, these are German troops. And Captain Lombal decided, just in case, to launch several shells in that direction. He quickly determined on the map exactly where the spot was, made calculations to move the fire, and gave commands.
With a sharp whistle, the shells rushed into the distance. Each of the four guns of the battery fired four shots: Captain Lombal did not want to waste many shells on this incomprehensible target. The shooting continued for only a few tens of seconds.
The stain stopped spreading across the field.
By evening, the fighting had died down. A large forest fell into the hands of the French. And to the left of this forest - in a large clearing - the French found mountains of corpses: about 700 German cavalrymen and the same number of horses lay dead. It was almost the entire 21st Prussian Dragoon Regiment. He caught the eye of a French artilleryman at the moment when he was reorganized into battle formation, and was completely destroyed in a few tens of seconds by sixteen shells of Captain Lombal.
The shells that caused such havoc in the German ranks are called shrapnel.
How does this wonderful projectile work, and who invented it?
For a long time - back in the sixteenth century - gunners thought about this question:
- What is the point of hitting an enemy fighter with a large, heavy cannonball, when a small bullet is enough to disable a person?
And in those cases when it was necessary not to destroy the walls, but to defeat the enemy infantry, instead of the core, the artillerymen began to lay a whole bunch of small stones in the gun barrel.
Rice. 80. Buckshot reliably protects the cannon from attacking enemy infantry or cavalry

But loading a gun with a bunch of stones is inconvenient: the stones crumble in the barrel; in flight, they quickly lose speed. Therefore, soon - at the beginning of the seventeenth century - they began to replace stones with spherical metal bullets.

To make it more convenient to load the gun with a large number of bullets, they were pre-packed in a round (cylindrical) box.
Such a projectile was called "buckshot". The buckshot box breaks at the moment of the shot. Bullets fly out of the cannon in a wide sheaf. They are good at hitting living targets - advancing infantry or cavalry, literally sweeping it off the face of the earth.
Buckshot has survived to this day: it is used when firing from small-caliber guns that do not have shrapnel, to repel an enemy attack, for self-defense (Fig. 80).
But buckshot has a significant drawback: its ball bullets quickly lose speed, and therefore buckshot acts at a distance of no more than 150-500 meters from the gun (depending on the caliber of the bullets and the strength of the charge).
The captain of the English artillery Shrapnel in 1803 proposed filling a grenade with bullets and in this way sending bullets further than 500 meters. Along with the bullets, of course, he poured into his projectile a small explosive charge of gunpowder (Fig. 81).
The "card grenade" - this was the name of this projectile - exploded like any grenade, and showered the enemy, in addition to fragments, with bullets.
A wooden tube with a powder composition was inserted into the point of this projectile, as well as into a grenade.
If, when firing, it turned out that the tube burned for too long, a part of it was cut off for the next shots. And they soon noticed that the projectile strikes best when it bursts in flight, in the air, and showers people with bullets from above.
But few bullets were placed in a ball projectile, only 40-50 pieces. Yes, of them a good half was wasted in vain, flying up (Fig. 81). These bullets, having lost speed, then fell to the ground like peas, and did not harm the enemy.
“Now, if you could direct all the bullets at the target, and not let them scatter in all directions! Moreover, to make the projectile explode where it is necessary, and not where the tube wants to break it, ”artillerymen dreamed at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
But only at the end of this century did technology achieve the fulfillment of both wishes.
The current shrapnel - as it was named after the inventor - is a projectile obedient to the will of the gunner.

She carries bullets in herself to the place where she was "ordered" to explode (Fig. 82).
It is like a small flying gun: it fires when the shooter needs it, and showers bullets on the target (Fig. 83 and 84).

There are a lot of bullets in the oblong shrapnel: in the 76-millimeter - about 260; in 107-millimeter - about 600 ball bullets from an alloy of lead and antimony.

A thick sheaf of these bullets, with a successful break, showers an area about 150-200 meters deep and 20-30 meters wide - almost a third of a hectare.
This means that the bullets of one successfully exploded shrapnel will cover in depth a section of a large road along which a whole company is walking in a column - 150-200 people with machine-gun carts. In width, the bullets will cover the entire road with its shoulders.
Shrapnel has another remarkable property: if the shooting commander needs the gaps to be lower, and the bullets fall thicker, it is enough to give the appropriate command, and the shrapnel will explode lower. The sheaf of bullets will be shorter and narrower, but the bullets will fall thicker (Fig. 85).
The mechanism that allows you to control the shrapnel is its "remote tube" (Fig. 86).

The remote tube has a device similar to the one you have already seen in the fuse. As well as there, here too there is a drummer with a primer and a sting. But here they seem to have changed places: the drummer is not behind, but in front of the sting; in order to stumble upon a sting, the primer must move along with the drummer not forward, but backward. Such a movement of the drummer back and occurs without fail at the moment of the shot. The drummer is a heavy metal cup; when fired, when the projectile moved forward sharply, the drummer, by inertia, tends to stay in place, settles, and because of this, the primer attached to the bottom of the drummer pricks on the sting.
The explosion of the primer in the remote tube occurs, therefore, very early - even before the projectile leaves the gun.
But this explosion is not immediately transmitted to the expelling charge, it only ignites the gunpowder in the "transfer channel" (Fig. 86), and after that, a special powder composition, pressed into the annular groove of the "upper remote part" of the tube (that is, in its upper ring).
Having run along this groove, the flame reaches the gunpowder in the same groove of the “lower remote part”. From there, through the “ignition hole” and the transmission channel, the flame enters the “firecracker” (or powder chamber). An explosion in a firecracker knocks out a brass circle, which closes the bottom of the tube, and the fire is transmitted further, into the "central tube" of the projectile, filled with powder cylinders (Fig. 82).
Having quickly run through it, the fire detonates the “expelling charge” of the shrapnel.
The projectile head breaks off and bullets fly out of the shrapnel. As you can see, the flame has to travel quite a long way before it finally breaks the shrapnel.

But this was done on purpose: while the flame moves along the channels and grooves of the rings, the shrapnel reaches the place planned in advance.
We just need to lengthen the path of the flame a little - and the shrapnel will burst later. On the contrary, if we shorten the path of the flame, shorten the burning time, the shrapnel will burst earlier.
All this is achieved by a suitable remote tube device.
The lower spacer ring of the tube is rotated with a special key, and sometimes just by hand, and is set to any division (Fig. 87).
In some tubes, these divisions are applied so that each of them corresponds to the range of the projectile at 50 meters. Putting the ring by dividing "100" against the risks (dashes) on the "plates", we get a shell break at a distance of 50x100 = 5000 meters from the gun. And if we add one more division, then the shrapnel will burst at 5,050 meters from the gun. This is convenient because the gun sight divisions have the same rifling: if we add one sight division, the projectile will fly 50 meters further. There is no need to count for a long time: it is enough to command the same installation of the sight and tube, for example: “Sight 100, tube 100”.
Some tubes have cuts in seconds: if, for example, you put the ring of such a tube on the "20" division, then the projectile will burst in 20 seconds. Each such division of the tube is divided into five more small divisions. So, if we increase the setting of 20 seconds by one small division, then the projectile will explode in 20.2 seconds. The required installation of such a tube is determined by special shooting tables.
In any tube, the whole secret lies in the fact that when we turn the lower ring, setting it to one division or another, we thereby move the through channel of the lower ring.

In order to understand how important this is, one must clearly imagine the path of the flame in the remote tube (Fig. 88).
This path is made up of four parts. The first part - the flame runs along the groove of the upper ring of the tube. The second part - the flame runs through a short through channel from the upper ring to the lower one. The third part is the groove of the lower ring. The fourth part - the rest of the way to the "expelling charge".
Of all these sections of the path, the longest in time are the upper and lower grooves. When the flame tube is set to the full burning time, it is necessary to run the upper groove to the very end, only then it can go down through the kagal to the lower groove. And again - you need to run the entire lower groove from beginning to end, in order to then set off on a further journey.
But here we turn the lower ring so that the through channel now connects not the end of the upper groove with the beginning of the lower one, but the middles of both grooves. This will immediately greatly shorten the path of the flame: now he does not need to run through both grooves from the beginning to the end of each: it is enough to run half of the top and then half of the bottom. The path of the flame in time will be halved.

By moving the lower ring, it is possible, therefore, to change the burning time of the tube.
You can not only set the tube for one or another burning time, but also get, if desired, an almost instantaneous rupture of the projectile.

If you install the lower ring with the letter “K” against the risks on the plate, then the through channel will connect the very beginning of the upper groove to the very end of the lower groove, the fire will quickly be transferred from the tube head, from the primer, into the projectile (Fig. 89). The shrapnel will explode 10-20 meters from the gun and shower bullets on an area up to 500 meters in front of the gun.
This is the so-called "buckshot" installation. This is how shrapnel is installed when it is necessary to repel an attack by infantry or cavalry on guns. Shrapnel acts in this case like a buckshot. Some remote tubes are installed "on buckshot" directly at the factory.
If you put the letters “UD” against the risks on the lower ring, the fire from the upper ring will not be transmitted at all to the lower one: it will be prevented by a jumper, against which there will be a through channel of the lower ring (Fig. 90).
The remote part of the tube in this case cannot cause the projectile to burst.
But the tube also has an impact mechanism, similar to the mechanism of the UGT fuse (Fig. 91).
When the projectile break is not caused by a remote device, it will be caused by another device - a percussion device; the shrapnel will explode like a grenade on impact with the ground.
That is why the remote shrapnel tube is called the “double action” tube.

Not only shrapnel is supplied with a remote tube. Sometimes a remote tube is also screwed into a grenade. Then you can cause a grenade to explode in the air (Fig. 92), hit an air target (aircraft), or get the fighters hiding in the trenches and pits with fragments. Such a grenade is commonly referred to as a "blasting" or "remote" grenade. Most often it is used for shooting at aircraft.
Thus, the remote tube is now very widely used - not only in shrapnel, but also in grenades, not only when firing at ground targets, but also when firing at air targets.
However, an obedient, generally speaking, remote tube still has its own whims: the powder composition burns differently at different atmospheric pressures, and at high altitude, where the pressure is very small, the tube goes completely out; in addition, the tube is very sensitive to moisture.
To protect against dampness, the tube is covered with a cap, which is removed only before firing.
But this does not always help: sometimes the remote tube still fails.
That is why samples of a more accurate tube have now appeared, in which, for counting time, a kind of clockwork is inserted, working with an accuracy of up to a tenth of a second.
Shooting projectiles with such "stopwatches" is beneficial in that the clock mechanism operates very accurately and its operation is almost independent of atmospheric conditions.
But such stopwatch tubes are very expensive and difficult to manufacture. They are mainly used where particularly high accuracy is needed - in anti-aircraft artillery.

The section is very easy to use. In the proposed field, just enter the desired word, and we will give you a list of its meanings. I would like to note that our site provides data from various sources - encyclopedic, explanatory, word-building dictionaries. Here you can also get acquainted with examples of the use of the word you entered.

The meaning of the word shrapnel

shrapnel in the crossword dictionary

shrapnel

Explanatory dictionary of the Russian language. D.N. Ushakov

shrapnel

shrapnel, w. (English shrapnel, named after the inventor).

Artillery shell filled with bullets for firing at live targets. Shrapnel bursts.

trans. Pearl barley (colloquial family joke). Shrapnel soup.

Explanatory dictionary of the Russian language. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova.

shrapnel

And, well. Explosive artillery shell filled with grapeshot or other destructive means. I) adj. shrapnel, th, th.

New explanatory and derivational dictionary of the Russian language, T. F. Efremova.

shrapnel

Explosive artillery projectile containing round bullets, rods, etc. to defeat openly located enemy manpower.

trans. unfold Cool barley porridge (usually with a touch of playfulness).

Encyclopedic Dictionary, 1998

shrapnel

SHRAPNEL (English shrapnel) an artillery projectile, the body of which was filled with spherical bullets (rods, arrows, etc.) that hit open live targets. Torn at a given point in the trajectory; was used in the 19th - early. 20th century, replaced by fragmentation and high-explosive fragmentation shells.

Shrapnel

an artillery shell filled with round bullets. Designed to destroy mainly live open targets. Named after the English officer G. Shrapnel (N. Shrapnel), who in 1803 proposed to equip an artillery grenade with cast-iron grapeshot bullets, which enhanced its effect. Sh device, see Art. Artillery shells. Shotguns exploded in the air at a certain distance from the target, were highly effective, and were widely used in World War I of 1914–18. In the 30s. 20th century Sh. was replaced by more powerful fragmentation and high-explosive fragmentation shells. At the end of the 60s. 20th century Artillery shells of the Sh type appeared, equipped with arrow-shaped rods, to defeat the uncovered manpower of the enemy. For example, in an American 105-mm projectile there are up to 8 thousand of these rods (length 24 mm, weight 0.5 g), which are ejected from the projectile due to centrifugal forces and pressure of the propellant gases of the expelling charge and disperse in the form of a cone.

Wikipedia

Shrapnel

Shrapnel- a type of artillery projectile designed to destroy enemy manpower. Named in honor of Henry Shrapnel (1761-1842) - an officer in the British army who created the first projectile of this kind.

A distinctive feature of the shrapnel projectile is the detonation mechanism at a given distance.

Shrapnel (disambiguation)

Shrapnel:

• Shrapnel, Henry(1761-1842) - an officer in the British Army who proposed the design of an artillery projectile to destroy enemy manpower, later named after him.
• Shrapnel- a type of artillery shells designed to destroy manpower.
• "Shrapnel"- barley porridge.
• Shrapnel Decepticon Transformer.

Examples of the use of the word shrapnel in the literature.

The Austrians responded shrapnel, and the seventh immediately tempered the fighting ardor.

Kovalevsky and went down from the ridge, barely having time to shake hands with Urfalov and some of the junior officers, because an Austrian shrapnel, and behind it another, so that there could be a suspicion that the Austrians had not learned about the impending attack and whether they wanted to show that they were ready for it.

shards shrapnel they slammed into the ground a sazhen from Pukhov and threw gravel and torn soil in his face.

He still thrashed his tail in disagreement, bounced, as much as the stone flew shrapnel, getting into the face of a jubilant getter.

Bunsen and Kirchhoff laid the foundation for spectral analysis in 1854, when all of Europe was watching the unfolding Crimean War, where for the first time rifled guns and shrapnel in the cores, and the ships fought under sail.

Then the Russians retreated and settled in the trenches, but shrapnel our multi-barreled mortars covered them from above.

Tin cans with dumplings exploded loudly when they hit the ice, and frozen dumplings, as if shrapnel scattered in all directions.

They could only be smashed with grenades, and our artillery wise men, destining field guns for combat in the open field, supplied them with one shrapnel.

It’s lucky that they had a connection with Post-Volynsky - they let me know, and from there some kind of battery ran around them shrapnel, well, their ardor died away, you know, they did not bring the offensive to the end and were wasted somewhere to hell.

Covered by a line of skirmishers, their brigade marched forward, while the English artillery, taking up positions on the flanks, showered the Boers with a hail of shells and shrapnel.

The fighting on the old Bucharest road, which had long been drunk with blood, was apparently especially bloody, judging by the number of dead, now covered with grass, along defensive trenches, large craters from shells and smaller ones from shrapnel.

Into their powerful and alarm-filled call entered the whistle of a power plant, high and shrill as flight. shrapnel.

At state-owned factories, the procurement price of one shrapnel- fifteen rubles, and Goujon - thirty-five.

Over their heads was torn shrapnel, machine guns hit them in the back, and along the hillock, cutting off the path to retreat, the lava of the Kalmyk regiment flowed.

The collapsed ice floe hit the foot of the Mansky bull, burst shrapnel, ringing fragments scattered along the river, and again everything froze.