THE FAMOUS FRENCH 75

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2431, 9 April 1915, Page 6

THE FAMOUS FRENCH 75

A MARVELLOUS WAR MACHINE

ITS TERRIBLE EFFICIENCY

Since the beginning of the war the French preponderance in field artillery has been an accepted fact, and so far as the general public is concerned the credit of this preponderance has been assigned almost exclusively to the 75 gun. There is a general impression that one can state that the gun is better, but that expert knowledge would be required to appreciate the points in which this superiority consists. A French artillery officer, who has been in command of a battery Bince the beginning of the war and is hoping to be given command of one of the heaveir batteries now ill course of formation, described to me yesterday some of the reasons that account for the superiority of the French over the German gun, which, it must be remembered, never tame as a surprise to the French. Like a Small Gannon. He took an old shrapnel 75 shell as the text of .his rem irks. "AVhat you have to remember with such a shell," he said, "is that the shell really acts as a small cannon. When the time fuse explodes it fires a small charge at .the base of the shell. The whole shell is then travelling at a certain speed. The effect of the explosion is to give a slightly increased velocity to the bullets in the shell and at the same time—by the effect of the recoil—to stop the shell itself and . allow it to fall more or less dead. In this conneotion you touch on one of the advantages of the French 6hells. The bullets of the 76 shrapnel weigh eleven grammes, whoreas the similar German bullets only weigh nine grammes, and experiment has shown that eleven grammes is the weight necessary to stop a man advancing. The effect is enormously increased by the higher velocity of the French shell. The bullets of the 75 shrapnel will strike at a velocity of ninety metres a _ second, whereas those of the corresponding German gun will be travelling at sixty metres. The .nergy of the two bullets would be given therefore by the ratio 11 x 90(2) : 9 x 60(2), and this'works out in favour of tho French bullet to a ratio of about three to one. "A great virtue of the French _75 gun is i the extent to which it resists If you examine a French shell that has been fired vou can notice that the copper ring at ino base of the shell has been scored by the rifling of the gun. The rifling '.s intensely hard metal, and though my guns have been in action steadily since the war began they are as good and efficient to-daj as they were at the beginning of the war. This comes lather as a surprise to many people who have heard of the. rapidity with which big naval guns deteriorate, but the conditions are, of course, quite different, as the velocities needed in naval work make an enormously greater demand upon the naval gun'' Rapidity of Fire. "The feature in which the gun has most conspicuously established its superiority is in the rapidity of its fire. This to some extent depends on the division of labour among the gunners, but even more conspicuously on tho mechanical properties of the gun. The public is quito familiar with the general action of the gun. Tho beche, which holds the ground and ultimately prevents the recoil of tho gun driving it backwards, becomes firmly fixed in the ground after the first shot, with the result that each successive shot fired has no effect on the breaing of the gun. Consequently the gun remains pointing in the same direction for an indefinite number of shots and does not require to be re-aimed So much is common knowledge, but I think it is not generally realised how the gun is directed the direction of the passes directly through the point at which the beche of the gun is fixed. In the case of the German gun the foice is directed not at the point of the beche, but at a point to right or left of it, the effect of which is that the gun tends to he slewed round and the gun has continually to be directed afresh.

"Another way in which rapid firing has been facilitated with the 75 ie that a division of labour has been effected in what may crudely be spoken of as the angle of elevation. It may bo assumed that the eun is at sea level and that fire is being directed at a point 100 feet above sea Jevel. Clearlv the muzzle has to be inclined upwards for two reasons: firstly, to compensate for the difference of level in gun-size and objective, and, secondly, because of the , ordinary trajectory of the missile. In the case of the French gun two separate men made the necessary corrections. while in the case of the German gun one man has to do both operations. "A great deal has been written about the deadliness of the, French shell-fire and the relative inefficiency of that of the Germans. Assuming *Jmt the shells of both guns explode, tho French shell will have the advantage of the German shell for the following reason. The German shell hits the ground and bursts, It digs a hole, and by tho nature of things —as tho fragments of shells must flv, roughly, straight—nothing will bo hit that is below a line tangential to the curve of the liolo dug hy the shell; In other words, it is possible to be lying on the ground quite close to the spot where a shell has burst and to be untouched. A horse has obviously to be a yard or two further off, but even he soons get out of the zone of fire. With the French shell it is different. The French shell is intended to ricochet. It strikes the ground and bounces, only exploding when it is in the air as the result of the bounce. Consequently, the explosion occurs at a moment when the shell is a foot or so off the ground, and nothing ■on the ground is under cover, because there is no ground or 'hole surface' to protect a possible, victim from tho fragments of snell," Improvements from Krupps. "There are several other points that might be mentioned," the artillery officer continued, "but it would not be easy to make thom clear without diagrams, and they are points that would appeal to the expert rather than to the layman. From one general point of view, however, the German artillery has long stood condemned in our eyes. In Germany there has been for mauy years a divorce between tho artillery officer and tho artillerymen who handle the pieces and the moil who manufacture thom. Every improvement with tho Germans has had to originate from Krupps, and there has been, from their point of viow, a disastrous divorce of theory and practice. With. us it is different. Our artillery has made its own gun. We have accepted improvements from every quarter, 'ami have paid our mou not by cash reward, but by promotion or recognition. The result is that any improvement has rtimo direct from the field, when it lias been brought at once to the test of experience—in somewhat the same sort of way, in fact, that English industry has all along been fostered ami improved by inventions made by operatives who have been thoroughly familiar with the conditions of working. And this, after all, is a' more truly scientific method of improving artillery than that which the Gormans have adopted."