High explosives
Some weapons, though, like 6 inch or 9.2 inch guns, were classified by the diameter of their bore. Both mortars (short, stubby weapons usually used in siege operations) and howitzers (which, like mortars, tended to fire their shells at a high angle) fired explosive shells, iron spheres filled with black powder ignited by a slow-burning fuse.
Cannon fired canister at close-range targets. This consisted of a tin filled with balls about the size of a thumb-nail: the tin split as it left the muzzle, turning the cannon into a gigantic shotgun.
'The Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) had persuaded the British to issue only shrapnel shells for its 18-pounders ...'
The 75mm and the guns it inspired fired shells which now contained high explosive, a far more effective compound than the old black powder. Some of these shells had fuses which burst them when they struck the ground, or might delay the burst long enough for the shell to penetrate overhead cover.
Others – which took their name, in the British service, from their inventor Henry Shrapnel – were packed with lead balls and exploded in the air over the target.
At the start of the war the 18-pounder field gun, with a range of some 6,500 yards, was the mainstay of British field artillery, backed by the 4.5 inch howitzer, with a range of 7,200 yards and a few 60-pdr heavy guns with a range of 9,500 yards. The Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) had persuaded the British to issue only shrapnel shells for its 18-pounders, but it soon became clear that high explosive shells were far more useful in trench warfare.
Concrete pill-boxes and deep dugouts favoured by the Germans could only be destroyed by high explosive shells fire by the heaviest guns: they would simply shrug off direct hits by 18-pdrs.
Published: 2005-03-01
