BRACKENBURY STEEL ARMOUR PLATES.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1499, 5 December 1878, Page 3

BRACKENBURY STEEL ARMOUR PLATES.

The account published in the "Times" of some recent trials made with some steel plates designed for the purpose of protecting the detachment of a field piece in action from the musketry and shrapnel fire of the enemy will be read with much interest. When the idea of protecting the men serving a gun by means of iron plates, to bo carried with the battery and set up on the latter coming into action, was first suggested by Colonel Brackenbury in an article in the July number of the "Nineteenth Century," we examined at some length the arguments adduced by the author in favour of his plan, and pointed out the advantages derivable from its adoption. Since the proposal was put forward it has been severely criticised, and its originator has been taunted with being rather a theoretical student of the art of war, and an able newspaper correspondent, than a practical soldier. After a careful examination, however, of the objections urged against the proposed method of providing cover, we have failed to discover that any of them are very serious; while in the trials recently made itwas at all events very conclusively proved that plates can be manufactured which, while of no great weight, are perfectly proof against the bullets either of a rifle or a shrapnel shell. On the 22nd instant the shield fired against consisted of five small plates of tempered steel, litenths of an inch thick, bent back at the edges to form an angular support and thus give thickness. Each plate wns sft. high and 2Kt. wide, weighed about lewt , and could be easily carried and erected by two men. To test the resisting power of those plates a Q-atling gun, firing the heaviest Martini-Henry amiiunition, opened fire upon them from a distance of 500 yards. More than 200 bullets struck the shield, but none of them penetrated the plates. At 300, 200, and even at 100 yards' range, also, none of the bullets fired found its way through the shield. Fire was subsequently opened against this latter with shrapnel from a field gun of the newest pattern at a range of 800 yards, and again the plates offered a perfect resistance to the bullets, and even to the smaller splinters of shell fired with concussion fuzes. It may, therefore, be taken as proved that such shields would afford very effectual protection against infantry and shrapnel fire —against the very kinds of fire, that is to say, which inflict the greatest losses upon a battery in action. The only difficulty in the way of their adoption appears to be the question of transfer, but this, as Colonel Brackenbury has shown, is one which may be very easily overcome.